CAN'T MAKE AN OMELETTE WITHOUT CRACKING EGGS:

The Character Question (Sebastian Mallaby, August 30, 2004, Washington Post)

Even before Sept. 11, 2001, Bush signaled his future impatience with Europe's diplomats by tearing up both the Kyoto environment treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He delivered the most radical tax cut since 1981 and transformed federal education policy, and the early signs were that he really meant to privatize Social Security. It isn't true, as some now suppose, that Bush's radicalism is merely the product of 9/11 -- that extraordinary times drove an otherwise temperate man to extraordinary measures. Bush behaved extraordinarily in ordinary times too. As he promised in his convention speech four years ago, "We will write not footnotes but chapters in the American story."

Part of me quite likes this. There's plenty of stuff that's wrong with the world, and presidents ought to be activists. Bush's radicalism -- his willingness to see problems and embrace bold solutions despite urgings of caution from all sides -- can be glorious when applied to a good cause: Think of his huge expansion of international AIDS funding, which goes way beyond anything the Clinton administration ever contemplated. But Bush's radicalism has a scary side as well, and it goes to the heart of his fitness for a second term. In his zeal to be a strong leader, and in his disdain for policy detail, Bush sometimes defends positions that have no intellectual basis.

This weakness is most commonly associated with his war in Iraq -- a radical policy that has backfired on him. [...]

The clearest illustration of this inflexibility is not Iraq. It is the central plank of the economic agenda: the tax cuts. These were conceived when the economy was booming and huge budget surpluses were expected, but when the boom turned into bust, Bush showed no ability to course-correct. Almost unbelievably, Bush not only rammed through the huge tax cut he had promised in the campaign: He cut taxes again in 2002 and a third time in 2003. Even now he seems ready to sign an appalling pork-ridden corporate tax reduction. In the past, ambitious tax cuts have tended to happen only once every two decades or so. Before Reagan's in 1981, you have to go back to 1964 to find anything comparable. Bush's tax radicalism is breathtaking.

Again, this is not just a policy issue; it goes to Bush's character. How can he push such a dramatic shift in economic policy without grappling with the basic point that his cuts are unaffordable? [...]

[T]he truth is that Bush has no shortage of radical ideas. The question about his candidacy is whether he has other qualities: A willingness to grapple with the messy reality of the world and the honesty to switch course when necessary -- in a word, pragmatism.

This essay is an incoherent mess. Radical change always creates some degree of mess. If you don't want to create a mess you can just accept the mess you're in.

Mr. Mallaby's notion that the radical ideas of George W. Bush are worthwhile but that he should stop forcing change anytime it turns out a little messier in reality than it was in Mr. Mallaby's imagination is a recipe for inaction. There's a certain wisdom in that reactionary posture, but if you're advocating it you oughtn't praise activism.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 1, 2004 8:01 AM