THAT RAREST OF ALL FRENCHMEN, A WORTHWHILE ONE:

Bush Finds Affirmation in a Frenchman's Words (ELISABETH BUMILLER, 3/14/05, NY Times)

The story begins on March 1, when a president who prides himself on his unpretentious Texas style mentioned Tocqueville in a speech to 300 leaders of charitable religious organizations at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington. In off-the-cuff and slightly confusing remarks, Mr. Bush said that "de Tocqueville, the Frenchman who came to America in the early 1800's, really figured out America in a unique way" because he saw that "Americans form association in order to channel the individualistic inputs of our society to enable people to serve a cause greater than themselves."

On March 7, in unprepared remarks introducing his wife at an event to help troubled children in Pittsburgh, Mr. Bush again mentioned Tocqueville, this time saying that the Frenchman had written about Americans who were able "to associate in a voluntary way to kind of transcend individualism."

Before going further, it must be said that Mr. Bush's comments may have been rare for him, but not for the collective occupants of his office. Modern American presidents of both parties have always quoted Tocqueville, the French aristocrat who landed on these shores in 1831 at the age of 25, spent nine months traveling from New York to the Great Lakes to New Orleans and back, then produced the classic "Democracy in America." The work is still lauded, in the most recent English translation by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, as "the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America."

Mr. Mansfield and Ms. Winthrop point out in their introduction that politicians of the left and of the right have long looked to Tocqueville for affirmation of contrary policies. Liberals like his warnings about the dangers of industrial aristocracy and American materialism; conservatives like his concerns about big government and, these days, his admiration for the ability of Americans to unite in what Tocqueville called "associations," which in the early 19th century meant all manner of temperance clubs, religious organizations and community groups.

It should also be noted that Mr. Mansfield - a professor of government at Harvard and a translator of Machiavelli - is a well-known conservative who has shaped the thinking of a conservative generation, including William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, and former Vice President Dan Quayle.

Which brings us back to Mr. Bush.

If his words about "association" perplexed some in his audience, authorities on Tocqueville knew where the president was headed. He was using Tocqueville, they said, to underscore the philosophy behind his religion-based initiative, the expanding $2 billion program that makes it easier for religious groups to get government money for social programs.

"Tocqueville latched right on to the idea that you can have a limited government that really works as long as you've got healthy institutions of civil society which perform character-shaping functions," said Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton, the director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at the university, and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics.

"This is the idea behind the faith-based initiative," Mr. George said. "Bush wants to be an exponent of limited government but at the same time a compassionate conservative, because he's interested in escaping the dilemma that links limited government with radical individualism. So Bush says that government just can't retreat from the social sphere altogether; government must cooperate with the institutions of civil society in a kind of partnership that brings compassion to people in need."

But the conservatrism of compassionate conservatism lies in the recognition that only if government retreats somewhat from the social sphere will the civil society, institutions, and associations be revitalized.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 19, 2005 12:00 AM