You Can't Always Get What You Want
BARNES, FRED
You Can't Always Get What You Want George W. Bush, politician. by FRED BARNES PRESIDENT BUSH is a conservative politician, not a conservative ideologue. This explains why Bush sometimes does...
...i don't think there's any problem in looking into the possibility of price gouging," the administration official says...
...His job approval rating dipped into the low 30s, the worst of his presidency...
...Ninety percent in a poll by the Tarrance Group say they understand the plan and how to use it...
...While enrolling may have been difficult and time-consuming, 65 percent say it was worth it...
...He insisted on picking a woman, moderate Sandra Day O'Connor, as his first Supreme Court nominee...
...So in this fall's midterm election, the drug benefit will hardly be an albatross...
...If it doesn't exist—and the odds are quite strong it doesn't—nothing will be lost...
...He does so to survive and, if all goes well, to prosper politically...
...That was not politically feasible...
...This explains why Bush sometimes does things that aren't conservative...
...Month after month, polls found it to be unpopular...
...a Bush adviser says...
...That issue has essentially been taken off the table since the program was created [in 1965] and over time our proposal may well make Medicare a net plus for Republicans...
...But it's true that this may shore up the president's popularity and enhance his ability to pursue conservative issues like the war on terror, Iraq, and tax cuts...
...Rather than aiding only needy seniors—perhaps a quarter of the over-65 population—he championed a far more expensive universal benefit...
...His divergence from conservative orthodoxy was probably harmless...
...Conservatives fumed...
...Medicare...
...The public and the politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, were attacking the oil compa-nies—and Bush as well...
...And second, even the most sainted conservatives—Reagan, for instance—harbor nonconservative thoughts...
...That, while basically true, would no doubt have further injured his political Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...President Reagan, like Bush, was a politician first and an ideologue second...
...His approval rating in the Fox News poll rose from 33 percent to 38 percent...
...Two days later, the president conceded he had "no evidence that there's any ripoff taking place...
...standing...
...At a minimum, though, Republicans have been pretty much inoculated against the charges by Democrats...
...instead, he moved to take control of the issue and protect himself politically...
...If it helps Republicans stave off a Democratic landslide, its political value will have been confirmed...
...So did Democrats and liberals...
...Republicans will have a positive achievement to brag about...
...One, conservative presidents—indeed, conservative elected officials at all levels of government—will always wander from conservative tenets...
...There are two points in all this...
...The president works at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, not 214 Massachusetts Avenue N.E.," a Bush administration official says...
...The Massachusetts Avenue location is the site of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank...
...Besides political expediency, conservative politicians sometimes stray because they've become enamored of a nonconservative position for policy or political reasons, or both...
...Calling for a probe of oil companies for possible manipulation of gas prices is Bush's latest nonconservative position...
...Reagan wanted to eliminate all nuclear weapons in the world, despite their deterrent value...
...In fact, the president gained politically...
...Many conservatives, maybe most of them, opposed the drug benefit...
...Plus, the monthly fee and the cost of the entire program has turned out to be less expensive than had been projected...
...That wasn't the point of his intervention...
...He could have said, no, the free market is working properly...
...With prices soaring, he was losing ground politically...
...Bush touted it in the 2000 campaign and pushed it aggressively in Congress...
...Of course he hadn't...
...When Social Security was on the verge of insolvency in 1983, he had to act quickly...
...He agreed to a tax hike and a modest increase in the age of eligibility...
...And the issue went away, leaving him politically undamaged and able to pursue his conservative goals, like winning the Cold War...
...Or he does so because he actually favors some nonconservative policy or position...
...What ranks among the single best issues Bill Clinton used to club Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in the 1990s...
...But he didn't call for benefit cuts or privatization, the conservative positions...
...It was enacted in December 2003 and implemented this year...
...And it appeared that the new program might not become the political bonanza that the White House and Republicans had hoped it would be...
...Neither Bush nor White House officials have suggested, publicly at least, that there's a paradox involved in taking nonconservative positions on issues such as gas prices...
...Bush's chief apostasy is on the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the first new entitlement in decades...
...Now that 30 million of the country's 43 million eligible seniors have signed up, the drug benefit has become popular...
...Not anymore...
...If this is an insurmountable problem for conservatives, my advice is, get over it...
...The test is whether there's a flip side, a strengthening in the fight for conservative aims...
...He met repeatedly with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
...Conservative politicians are never ideologically pure...
Vol. 11 • May 2006 • No. 33
