WE DETECT A BOGUS ANALOGY:

Richard Milhouse Bush (James Pinkerton, 10/09/2002, Tech Central Station)

Nixon, of course, was a Californian who eked into office with just 43 percent of the vote. His campaign was mostly homefront slogans such as "law and order" and "bring us together," including also a specific pledge to purge the legacy of Lyndon Johnson's soft-on-crime attorney general, Ramsey Clark. Yes, the Vietnam War was raging all during the 1968 campaign year, but Nixon offered nothing about the war, other than to say he had a "secret plan" for ending it. But once in office, he found foreign affairs to be more congenial than domestic matters, and he left much of the domestic cut-and-thrusting to his attorney general, John Mitchell, who became the chief spearcatcher on hot-button issues including crime, civil liberties, and judicial selection. And in the 1970 midterm elections, Nixon found that talking about the war--although he didn't so much praise the Vietnam conflict as attack anti-war protestors--made for effective vote-getting. Ultimately, Nixon's neglect of the economy hurt him as well as the country; the Watergate scandal coincided with the 1973-4 recession, leaving Nixon with little support among those who worried about the economy, stupid.

Thirty years later, President Bush could find himself following a similar scenario. Elected as a "compassionate conservative" who would "restore honor and integrity to the Oval Office," he now finds himself focused on foreign military theaters. [...]

Put simply, Bush has made a choice: foreign policy is more important than domestic policy. And the Democrats have made their choice: domestic policy is more important than foreign policy. That is, they--most of them, anyway--will suppress their dovish instincts and support the war, even as they press for greater domestic spending. So it wouldn't be a surprise if both sides get what they most want: Bush will dominate foreign policy, and Democrats will dominate domestic policy. [...]

It's too soon to predict Bush's political future, but it's the right time to prognosticate about the future of the political economy. Bush never planned to be Nixonian in his shift to international relations, but Nixonian he has become--in effect, if not intent. The result of his activism around the world may be a gain for political freedom for other countries. But the result of his passivism here at home may well be a loss of economic freedom in this country.

Mr. Pinkerton here displays a profoundly limited understanding of the past two years and of George W. Bush. We've mentioned before that Mr. Bush and his eminence grise, Karl Rove, have repeatedly espoused the theory that winning an election gives an executive a brief window of opportunity to enact a very few discrete legislative goals. The believe, it seems correctly, that the legislature otherwise has the upper hand and exerts it more and more assertively the farther you get from the election.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 14, 2002 1:41 PM