Permanent Defense

...Tom Daschle dictated the pace of the health bill debate...

...Maybe the sad truth is that right now the majority of the American people support soft Democratic ideas on most major domestic issues...

...Conservatives have long countered that, while these sorts of questions suggest that the country is liberal, if you ask voters a different set of questions, you get GOP-friendlier results...

...government with a positive approach of their own...

...There is no National Rifle Association...

...The media are liberal...

...Republicans are happy to benefit from these people's votes, but when they get to Washington they find these same conservatives pressuring them to support big government programs...

...This went nowhere...

...It could be that Bush will be able to revive conservatism, perhaps with Social Security privatization...

...One of the most impressive things about George W. Bush's presidential campaign was that his team came up with a strategy to do precisely this...

...The deduction passed by the House would put in the pocket of a single non-itemizer at most about $3.75 a year...

...Look across the Atlantic...

...Similarly, the faith-based initiative is now basically an extension of Bill Clinton's charitable choice initiative...

...Yet in 2001, the evidence is hard to deny...

...In its rush to get a bipartisan bill, and to please Senator Kennedy, it pretty much accepted the education status quo, with a few more tests...

...The Bush education plan has faced a similar barrage...

...The Bush administration signaled that it was eager to pass a patients' bill of rights so long as it would not lead to out of control litigation...

...To see how decidedly the ground is tilted toward the soft left, look at what is happening to major Bush initiatives...

...From trade to taxes to regulation to energy to spending, the policy momentum has shifted to those promoting larger and more intrusive government...

...The activists raise a stink and block any measure that seems conservative...

...If the orthodox conservatives don't come up with some way of realigning politics in their direction, it is certain that liberal Democrats, or centrist Democrats, or some as yet unformed coalition of independents will...

...President Bush has been unable to hold Republican legislators on an array of issues ranging from oil drilling to stem cell research...

...Instead, the administration signaled that its first priority was to get some-thing—anything—called an education bill passed, and something—anything—called a faith-based initiative passed...

...Perhaps it reflects it...

...The real problem is that Republicans lack the guts to buck this establishment...

...True, the first Gingrich budget did keep spending down, but then Republican approval ratings plummeted, and pretty soon GOP stalwarts were spending with abandon, hoping to win back their popularity by appropriating more money for, say, the Department of Education than the Clinton administration even asked for...

...Feckless Republicans, fearful of Daschle's threat to their Fourth of July recess, did not slow the Democratic timetable, much less really alter the bill's content...

...In a pair of columns early in July, columnist Robert Novak summarized the argument...

...The president did propose a reasonably strong testing program, to at least give parents a look at how their school is doing...

...David Brooks, a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There...

...The problem is that issues are never framed that way...

...That way the president could go back to the American people in 2004 waving two new laws and announcing that he had changed the tone in Washington...

...But why is the situation so bad...

...Conservatives are far from disenchanted with the Bush administration...

...They emerge from the White House crisp and clear, but on Capitol Hill they are muddied or eviscerated...

...BY DAVID BROOKS We're a half year into the Bush presidency, and many conservatives are moderately morose, and many liberals are moderately happy...

...Some of the gloom on the right has been induced by a stream of Bush administration retreats on relatively minor issues: military testing in Vieques, energy price caps for California, the Salvation Army's hiring practices, and so on...

...In the end, the Bush administration had to side with the weaker Senate testing plan against the stronger House plan merely to get a bill with a chance of passage...

...Congress is full of people who see it as their job to monitor the desires of their constituents...

...By 2000, domestic spending was growing 10 percent a year...

...Those who are actively religious, or who want to appear so, are largely Republican, while those who are not active churchgoers are largely Democrats...

...The nation's destiny will be in the hands of whatever faction spots the next decade's salient issue and launches that transforming crusade, the one that finally busts up the status quo...

...The Democrats have had a pretty good month," he wrote...

...That's because the Bush White House hasn't used it to reframe the debate and so realign the political landscape to benefit Republicans over the long term...

...Why have Democrats been able to control the agenda since the Jeffords defection, pushing issues like the patients' bill of rights, prescription drugs, and campaign finance to the top of the agenda, with a minimum-wage hike and more slated later this fall...

...In the American Prospect, liberal economist Robert Kuttner captured their mood...

...With values issues playing a much smaller role, the political debate is between a squishy center-left party that wants slightly bigger government and a conservative party that wants smaller government...

...It could be that the GOP is competitive only because of its strength on values and cultural issues...

...Bush built on the successes of activist Republican mayors and governors, like Tommy Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, and John Engler...

...Why does the correlation of forces still seem to favor the moderate left...

...On the administrative side, the Bushies picked up on a Democratic Leadership Council idea and proposed to consolidate 56 different federal education programs in 5 rationally organized ones...

...Since 1994, Utt notes, the budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development alone has skyrocketed by 44 percent...

...The first is that American voters remain fundamentally conservative, but Washington is the problem...

...Both pieces of legislation may end up being positive steps, but they are small, not transformational...

...According to conservatives of this school, inside-the-Beltway types distort the public will...

...And in that debate, the squishy bigger-government Blairites crush the Tories...

...If compassionate conservatism involves trusting people to make choices for themselves, then in education, it means fighting for vouchers...

...Early on, Bush made clear that he was not a Leave Us Alone Republican...

...These advantages are longstanding, as are the Republican leads on taxes and defense...

...But that provision has been liquefied in Congress (under pressure from both the National Education Association and Republican governors, opposed to federal meddling), so that the tests may produce little information helpful to parents and reformers...

...If you ask people whether they want government to do more or less, the electorate is more evenly divided...

...But the administration gave up its minuscule voucher provision without a fight, so school choice looks farther away than it did five years ago...

...Instead, compassionate conservatism has mostly been a social lubricant facilitating White House deals with the status quo...

...It can't be that Democrats are always brave and masterful and Republicans are always short-sighted and feckless...

...The government might spend more money, but in ways that would allow people to make their own choices about their own lives, and thereby assume responsibility for their own destinies...

...Moreover, the theory doesn't explain why Republicans are able to succeed on the issue that is most vital to the Washington establishment: tax cuts...

...But on the federal level, we see no similar transformation...

...But that can't be the main explanation...

...Meanwhile, we're all sitting around waiting for a realignment...

...It could be that in the United States, if you took away guns, abortion, and God, the Republicans would be in the same political mess...

...On education, Democrats have about an 8-point edge, on Social Security a 15-point edge, on energy an 8-point edge, on health care a 21-point edge, on the environment a 38-point edge, on Medicare a 24-point edge, on patients' rights a 29-point edge...

...And the Democrats have an advantage...

...The essence of compassionate conservatism was that it aggressively tackled liberal issues, but with conservative approaches...

...But so far, compassionate conservatism has turned out to be pretty thin gruel...

...and if you ask people whether they'd rather see fewer government services in exchange for lower taxes, they sound Republican...

...But if you ask voters what party does a better job of handling bread and butter issues, voters trust Democrats more...

...Bush's faith-based initiative has been compromised to a sliver of its former self...

...So if Republicans are serious about reducing the size of government, or at least reforming government programs, they need to reformulate arguments that have failed to attract the public over the past few decades...

...The White House didn't...

...It could have given Republicans an offensive playbook, in budget battles and on the whole range of domestic uses...

...Most people feel the Bush team is making the best of a bad situation...

...And the White House budget's projected growth rate for 2000-2005— 16.2 percent—is probably low...

...No longer would voters automatically assume that Democrats were better equipped to deal with the "mommy" issues of education, health care, poverty, and housing...

...For the past quarter century, conservatives have argued that the problem with public education is that it is a monopoly...

...They can't just rail against bloated government and out-of-touch bureaucrats...

...In a compassionate conservative world, cultural conservatives would have merged with Giuliani moderates, Tommy Thompson blue-collar voters, Bret Schundler urban realists, and high-minded Olympia Snowe suburbanites to create a new Republican governing majority...

...But what is the crucial issue that divides the Democratic side of the country from the Republican side...

...Moreover, the longer the measure stays on Capitol Hill, the more expensive it gets...

...Republican mayors have transformed urban policy...

...Bush never went to the American people—with, say, a prime-time address—to explain how his approach to domestic policy would be different...

...Especially in an age of surpluses, the issue is always: What should we do about education...

...Sometimes you get the impression that today's Republicans have ended up ratifying the Great Society programs exactly as the Eisenhower Republicans ratified the New Deal...

...Barone is quite definite: religion...

...On the right, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot summed up the outlook earlier this month: "All of a sudden the political debate has taken a notable turn to the left...

...Even when Republicans are in control, Congress supports increased government spending year after year...

...Bush the younger is suffering from a collision between his agenda and the prevailing liberal culture of the Washington establishment," Novak wrote...

...In the Senate, the bill's cost has risen 50 percent, so that under a Republican administration, the Department of Education could see a massive infusion of cash without any radical restructuring...

...For each of its gestures to the left, there's at least an equal gesture to the right...

...Barone paints two Americas, one traditionalist and observant, the other liberationist and rel-ativistic...

...Look at the polls...

...In other words, compassionate conservatism could have realigned American politics...

...In Britain there is no real pro-life movement...

...Legislatively, the soft liberals have a structural advantage...

...Republicans have a huge advantage on values issues...

...There are two general theories about why Republicans find it so difficult to build any policy momentum...

...If that passes and succeeds, it could launch a new round of welfare-state reform, giving more power to individuals to control their own benefits...

...Five senior GOP senators, including Minority Leader Trent Lott, did not even stick around for final passage...

...As Michael Barone pointed out recently in National Journal, in 1996, Republicans won 48.9 percent of the votes in House races and Democrats won 48.5 percent...

...A Wall Street Journal editorial estimates that Congress is on its way to exceeding its budget caps with a 9 percent increase in the total federal budget...

...There is a second possibility...

...Republicans may hold the White House, but thanks to congressional appropriators, government keeps growing in a mindless, ad hoc fashion...

...Any president who aggressively advocates tax reduction, reduced spending and less government is in for trouble...

...These Republicans showed they were just as interested as Democrats in solving domestic woes like poverty, drug addiction, and illiteracy...

...Perhaps Washington isn't some alien force that distorts the popular will...

...After the failure of the Gingrich revolution, many Republicans explained away their party's defensiveness by saying the real problem was that they didn't control the White House, with all its visibility and power...

...Edward M. Kennedy, as floor manager, controlled its content...

...It could be that a lot of people who vote for Republicans because they are culturally conservative still want the government to spend more on education, health care, and Social Security...

...The bureaucrats want bigger budgets...

...Republicans saying "No" versus Democrats saying "Yes...

...As a study by the Heritage Foundation's Ronald Utt, commissioned by the Project for Conservative Reform, shows, real-dollar nondefense spending, excluding net interest payments, has increased pretty steadily since 1985: 1985-1990 14.6 percent growth 1990-1995 12.9 percent growth 1995-2000 14.3 percent growth This is a growth rate much lower than in the liberal heyday of the 1960s and 1970s, but it hardly suggests that we are living in a conservative era...

...Bush refused to run his campaign along orthodox lines: Republican parsimony versus Democratic generosity...

...Gigot quoted the Club for Growth's Stephen Moore, "Through the remainder of this year we could see more bad legislation passed than at any time since the first two years of Bill Clinton's administration...

...It's not really clear how deep the divide is between these two cultures, but the electoral consequence is a dead heat in election after election...

...As Barney Frank crowed to the Washington Post, "They did write it in very strong language that says you cannot use this money to do anything religious...

...No longer would Republicans have to face the suspicion that they didn't care about the poor and underprivileged...

...Yet Bush was successful in pushing through a large tax cut bill, despite liberal howls...

...Meanwhile, Democrats are feeling upbeat...

...Washington tilts in the direction of big government...

...Republican governors have transformed welfare policy...

...Meanwhile what remains of Bush's plan to give non-itemizers tax breaks for charitable donations is a parody of a tax break...

...This is not only depressing in policy terms, it's depressing politically...

...Congressmen like pork...

...This theory contradicts a central assumption of the conservative movement—that the elites may be against us, but the people are with us...

...The Republicans agreed to changes that seem to force groups to distance their religion from their counseling...

...But now the Republicans have a popular conservative president in the White House, and still the GOP seems to be playing defense...

...In 2000, Republicans won 49.2 of the votes for the House and Democrats won 47.9 percent...

...On issue after issue, Bush and the Republicans are losing ground: * The original Bush energy plan was a sophisticated balance of conservation measures, production incentives, and infrastructure improvements...

...But just because the country is evenly divided on cultural issues—and votes accordingly—does not mean it is evenly divided on bread and butter issues, like education, health care, and so on...

...They have to dislodge the Democrats' positive approach to In a compassionate conservative world, cultural conservatives would have merged with Giuliani moderates, Tommy Thompson blue-collar voters, Bret Schundler urban realists, and high-minded Olympia Snowe suburbanites to create a new Republican governing majority...

...But that's not the main thing...

...There's obviously a lot of truth to this theory...

...Tax revenues are the spigot Washington depends on...

...In his next column, Novak summarized what had happened to the patients' bill of rights legislation in the Senate: "Sen...

...But the Democrats were able to roll their bill through the Senate over a Bush veto threat and seize the momentum in the House...

...parents need more choice...

...But to sell it, the Bushies have gone into a defensive crouch, sounding like Barry Commoner on the wonders of conservation while minimizing the planks designed to increase supply...

...But if it doesn't succeed, or if the administration fails otherwise to transform politics, then we will remain in this unsatisfying age of parity and ill-tempered drift...

...Over the last several elections, the electorate has been split down the middle...

...Electorally, the two parties are dead even...

...Some has been induced by major policy cave-ins: The Bush defense budget wins rave reviews from the editorialists at the New York Times, while some conservatives fume...

...In the House bill, according to National Journal, there are now 47 different programs, while the Senate bill creates a slew of new ones, for a total of 89 competing and overlapping initiatives...