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Where's the Faith In This Agenda? (E. J. Dionne Jr., February 19, 2005, Washington Post)

I recently reread one of the best political speeches of the 1990s. It was powerful because the leader in question not only discussed his own views but also offered a vision of who we are as Americans.

He set his face against an empty conventional wisdom -- a "destructive mind-set" he called it -- and challenged "the idea that if government would only get out of our way, all our problems would be solved. An approach with no higher goal, no nobler purpose, than 'Leave us alone.' Yet this is not who we are as Americans."

There is much of the speech I'd like to cite here, but consider just a few passages: "We have always found our better selves in sympathy and generosity, both in our lives and in our laws. Americans will never write the epitaph of idealism. It emerges from our nature as a people, with a vision of the common good beyond profit and loss. . . .

"We are a nation of rugged individuals. But we are also the country of the second chance, tied together by bonds of friendship and community and solidarity. We are a nation of high purpose and restless reform, of child labor laws and emancipation and suffrage and civil rights. . . . We can, in our imperfect way, rise now and again to the example of St. Francis, where there is hatred, sowing love; where there is darkness, shedding light; where there is despair, bringing hope."

I feel like standing up and cheering, which would be unusual for me these days because the speaker is George W. Bush. He gave that speech in Indianapolis on July 22, 1999. [...]

I still hope that liberals and conservatives might someday come together in acknowledging that alleviating poverty requires the energies of both government and the charitable sector, emphatically including our religious institutions.

Unfortunately, the president's new budget moves us no closer to that happy time. It cuts programs for the poor while insisting that no tax cut for the wealthy be left behind. The politician who spoke so movingly in 1999 about our "bonds of friendship and community and solidarity" and offered "a vision of the common good beyond profit and loss" was on to something important. Whatever happened to that guy?

He's creating programs that don't just eliminate poverty but make the average American truly wealthy--school vouchers, HSAs, home ownership, and personal retirement accounts--while at the same time reknitting social bonds--via the Faith Based Initiative (which has been enacted by executive order, rather than legislation, which Democrats could block) and moral initiatives, like the limitations on abortion, embryonic stem cell experimentation, and the like. What are liberals doing? Other than obstructing all those things?

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 19, 2005 10:01 AM