June 4, 2002
A LIBERTARIAN'S LAMENT :
Say It Ain't So, George (James K. Glassman, 06/03/2002, Tech Central Station)By accepting the basic premise of extreme environmentalists, the president will ultimately be forced to accept the major content of the same treaty that he rejected a little over a year ago as "fatally flawed": the Kyoto Protocol, signed by then-Vice President Al Gore in 1997 but never ratified by the U.S. Senate, which instead rejected it before signing by a 95-0 vote.Bush's about-face, however, fits a pattern. One by one, he has abandoned the principles that attracted conservatives to him in the first place : [...]
Free Trade: In order to protect inefficient steel producers and try to win votes in Rust Belt states, Bush agreed to protective tariffs against imports. At every turn now, his attempts to get Europeans and Asians to drop their trade barriers are being met with (accurate) cries of hypocrisy.
Farm Bill: [...]
Spending: [...] Surpluses have turned to deficits in the years ahead.
Campaign Finance: In the wake of the Enron scandal, Bush signed a new campaign-finance law that would hurt his own party, enhance the power of organized labor and liberal special interests and limit free political choice.
Education: To get his education bill passed, Bush dropped the most important reform: vouchers. [...]
Conservatives: Bush's base is becoming demoralized.
It's conceivable that Mr. Glassman is a competent economist--though the title of his last book, "Dow 36,000", leads one to be skeptical--but this is a ludicrous piece of political analysis. Mr. Glassman is (I believe) a Libertarian, so we probably shouldn't expect him to be attuned to conservative sensibilities, but one assumes he can read and no one who can read can possibly lend any credence to the notion that the conservative base of the Republican Party feels betrayed by George W. Bush. First of all, the President is in the 70%s in general approval, so even independents and some Democrats must still like him at least a little. But even more remarkable, among conservatives he's been measured as high as a statistically unheard of 100%--pollsters routinely support he has the strongest support among his base that they've ever measured. They also, in no uncertain terms, dismiss these grumblings about Bush by "conservative" pundits as an inside the Beltway phenomena. So Mr. Glassman's story is destined from the start to be nonsensical, and he doesn't disappoint.
Let's go through his complaints :
Global warming : Mr. Glassman's assertion that President Bush "will ultimately be forced to accept the major content" of the Kyoto accords is nearly demented, as his own phrasing reflects. We can't pick and choose which parts of its contents we like. It's a treaty--we can sign or not sign. If we rewrite it in Congress then it has to be renegotiated with the entire world (which is the whole point of Fast Track authority). There is no way the treaty could get through the Senate as is--republicans will filibuster it. So let the Democrats propose their own version--with limitations placed on cars, drivers, nearly every industry, etc. There's a winning political strategy, eh? There's a reason the original vote was 95-0--it's political suicide to vote for it.
Free Trade : Sure, we'd all prefer that he not have imposed new steel tariffs but this action, already fairly minor, pales to true insignificance when you consider that he just won the "Fast Track" trade promotion authority that eluded Bill Clinton for eight years. You really have to be rigidly doctrinaire to be unable to look past the collateral damage and see that a major battle was just won.
Farm Bill : The farm bill sucks. It's also very popular. It's chump change in the overall budget. It was inevitable. It's good politics--since farm states are Republican by nature. and it's easily correctable if the GOP wins back the Senate.
Spending : we spend too much money. But our debt is the smallest of any developed nation and even if we run a deficit this year or next it will be an incredibly small proportion of our GDP. Most importantly, after almost 80 years of deficits, we still have no idea how much they affect the economy, or even if they affect it at all. The economy boomed while Reagan ran up deficits. It boomed while Clinton and Congressional Republicans did away with them. Then it tanked when we achieved surpluses. Interest rates (and inflation) plunged during the Reagan spending binge--then rates went up when we achieved the surplus. There's just no evidence that shows a brief period of deficit spending during a time of war has any deleterious effect on the economy.
Campaign Finance Reform : This is the silliest portion of Mr. Glassman's column. I'd agree if he made only a point about the principle involved--the CFR is unconstitutional and the president who signed it and every member of Congress who voted for it should be impeached. That's not going to happen though, is it? The bill, though vile, is popular.
But more than that, directly contrary to what Mr. Glassman says, it is a huge boon to the GOP in general and to President Bush in particular. It is going to lead to bloodletting among Democrats, who have trouble raising hard money. Accordingly it leaves the GOP with a huge fund raising advantage. And from the President's perspective, the spending limits it imposes means that his Democratic opponent in 2004 will have blown through a huge portion of their money by the end of the primaries and the National Party will not be able to spend soft money on ads during the summer. So he'll have months to himself, during which he can define his opponent and the race. Added to the greater ease with which an incumbent can engineer free press coverage, it means it is almost impossible for the Democrat to compete with him in terms of getting their respective messages out. Now, I'll acknowledge that this is an anti-democratic effect, but it's also what the Democrats demanded. Hopefully after the disaster of their 2004 race they'll be willing to scrap the law.
Education : As was reported several weeks ago, President Bush used the budget process to cut spending in this new bill that he didn't want in the first place and to fund voucher programs that the Dems don't want. Now that may not survive in the final appropriations bills, and it's somewhat dubious ethically, but it suggests he's got his eye on the ball.
As importantly, by just getting whatever bill he could through the Senate--which it may come as news to Mr. Glassman that we conservatives no longer control--Mr. Bush has erased the Democrats advantage on the issue of education--an advantage they've enjoyed for decades. Clearly somebody, be the Republican, Democrat, or Independent, liked the bill even if it was awful.
Conservatives : Here it might have been helpful if Mr. Glassman had looked at what Mr. Bush hasn't done. By this time in their presidencies, Reagan, Bush I , and Clinton had all raised taxes--Bush II hasn't. George W. Bush hasn't compromised on Cuba. He hasn't compromised on abortion. He hasn't compromised on cloning. He hasn't stopped talking about his religious beliefs. He hasn't been implicated in a scandal. On the core political issue--taxes--and the social/moral issues that drive conservatism--the principles by which conservatives measure him--Mr. Bush has kept the faith. This gives him enormous leeway to do things like tarriffs or bloated budgeting or whatever. He's yielding on issues that while they may upset libertarian purists, don't much bother conservatives. He's also holding firm on issues that keep conservatives very happy (though they too upset libertarian purists--for instance : cloning). No wonder Mr. Glassman is so upset. Many libertarians are upset; it's difficult to see why that's a problem for the president though, because they have nowhere to go. Their presidential candidate gets less than 1% of the vote and Democrats are much worse on all these issues. As always, when push comes to shove, most of the libertarians will grin and bear it. And to opine that Mr. Bush is in trouble with his base is just foolish. Conservatives have drunk the Kool-Aid on this one.
UPDATE :
THE BIG SELL OUT...NOT! :
White House Warns on Climate Change (John Heilprin, June 4, 2002, Associated Press)
President Bush dismissed on Tuesday a report put out by his administration warning that human activities are behind climate change that is having significant effects on the environment.The report to the United Nations, written by the Environmental Protection Agency, puts most of the blame for recent global warming on the burning of fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into the environment.
But it suggests nothing beyond voluntary action by industry for dealing with the so-called "greenhouse" gases, the program Bush advocated in rejecting a treaty negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 calling for mandatory reduction of those gases by industrial nations.
"I read the report put out by the bureaucracy," Bush said dismissively Tuesday when asked about the EPA report, adding that he still opposes the Kyoto treaty.
Maybe we can just blame the 24 hour news cycle for the way people overreact to these stories.
UPDATE II :
OR MAYBE IT'S ALL A NY TIMES PLOT :
Global Heat or Heavy Raines? : Yesterday's environmental disturbance may have been caused by human intervention (Mickey Kaus, June 4, 2002, Slate)
It certainly got the bloggers worked into a hot lather.