February 22, 2006
NOT MUCH OF AN INNOVATOR, BUT HE KNEW GOLD WHEN HE SAW IT (via Pepys):
The Bush Legacy: President Bush will likely be remembered as an innovator whose ideas just didn't pan out in the end. (Matthew Yglesias, 02.22.06 , American Prospect)
The interesting question is not whether Bush has a higher commitment to his career than to conservatism -- all presidents do -- but why Bush's opportunistic instincts have rendered him, if not more liberal, than at least less conservative, than Ronald Reagan. Answering the question in detail would be difficult, but the broad answer is easy to see: Public opinion changed and became more friendly to the concept of activist government. Bush's immediate predecessors as conservative leaders, Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich, hewed much closer to the Reagan legacy and wracked themselves on the shoals of an electorate that no longer had an appetite for stern budget cutting or libertarian rhetoric. Fundamentally, most Americans agree that the federal government has a responsibility to ensure that people receive a decent education, adequate health care, and a secure retirement, and that government simply can't achieve those things with large cuts in federal spending. [...]What Bush is trying to do -- whether it be called "compassionate conservatism," "big government conservatism," "pretend conservatism" or whatever else -- is fundamentally the right direction for the Republican Party. Indeed, it's fairly common in Europe, where they call it "Christian democracy," a label that probably wouldn't fly in a United States that is simultaneously more religious and less sectarian than the Old World. He's made a hash of it, but one of these days someone will get it right.
In point of fact, on every one of these questions, George W. Bush is more conservative than Ronald Reagan or Bob Dole and not much different ideologically than Newt Gingrich, just more successful. And his successors will merely pass whatever remains to be enacted of his legacy. Where Ronald Reagan proposed no fundamental changes to education, Medicare or Social Security, George Bush has begun the voucherization of education, passed HSA's and laid the intellectual groundwork for the inevitable personalization of SS.
Not that the President deserves overmuch credit for the revolution he's leading--after all, Gingrich and Bill Clinton had already effected Welfare Reform more conservative than anything Reagan ever did and the whole panoply of Third Way reforms has been enacted in whole or in part places like Chile, New Zealand, Britain, and Australia. The thing about George W. Bush that his critics--and even his allies--generally can't grasp is that he ran on and has governed on a systematic set of ideas for transforming the relationship of the citizen to his government, one that is going to be the norm throughout at least the Anglosphere. He didn't necessarily dream it all up, but he understood it -- its functionality, its political appeal, and its inevitable nature -- more quickly and more thoroughly than did any of his political peers or predecessors and, therefore, he is going to get credit for being the conservative revolutionary in the long run.
The dirty little secret is that he's the smartest politician of his generation and maybe the smartest president we've had. That's why intellectuals, of Left and Right, hate him so.
MORE (via Mike Daley):
Haters help Howard (Andrew Bolt, 22feb06, Herald Sun)
EVERY politician has enemies. John Howard's fantastic luck in his decade as Prime Minister is that these are his.Look at them -- shrill artists, damn-Australia mandarins, group-think academics, stuff-you activists, sour journalists, gimme-rights ethnic bosses and the other discords of this cacophony of hate.
When Howard on March 2 celebrates his 10th anniversary in power, he owes these yammerers, now almost toxic with impotence, a silent prayer of thanks.
For they have helped him to win four elections by demonstrating a truth few non-politicians know and even fewer politicians dare to exploit: that your enemies advertise your strengths better than can your friends.
They're not likely capable of it, but those partisans who hate[d] Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, John Howard, Tony Blair, and George W. Bush ought to consider how alike the politics of the group is and how disimilar those who hate each. When the most successful leaders of the past thirty years are all singing from the same songbook, you might try listening. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 22, 2006 11:03 PM
oj. Do you put Clinton's name in the list above and credit him for conservative accomplishments in order to infuriate?
Not to be repetitious, but Clinton had nothing to do with welfare reform or any of the other conservative reforms enacted while he was fulfilling his school boy fantasies with real school girls in the oval office and trolling for contributions to his retirement fund from various and sundry bad guys, foreign and domestic.
erp:
He ran on it. In fact, he ran to the Right of George H. W. Bush on every issue.
Posted by: oj at February 23, 2006 8:40 AMMy despising Bubba has more to do w/treating my office as a sperm recepticle.
That and he's a poster boy for everything I despise about the 60s boomer.
Posted by: Sandy P at February 23, 2006 10:20 AMSure, but his presidency advanced conservatism rather uniformly.
Posted by: oj at February 23, 2006 10:32 AMClinton's one great contribution to conservatism was the "Assault" "Weapons" "Ban," which cost those people the congress, turned the country around, and changed the course of history. That was his legacy; that was how he advanced conservatism. The NRA should give him one of those fancy flintlocks like we awarded to Ronald Reagan, Chartlton Heston and Dick Cheney.
Thank you, Bill.
Other than that, erp is correct. Homosexuals in the military and socialized medicine were his original agenda.
oj. What Clinton ran on in 1992 is immaterial. What he started to do after Perot handed him the White House is what matters and remember his first moves even before he was sworn was the big secret conference that required furniture (what ever happened to that stuff, I wonder?) costing tens of thousands of dollars and included plans to nationalize health care, allow gays in the military and solve the Irish question by sending George Mitchell, poster child of smarminess, over the Auld Sod to set matters right. There's more, but that's what comes to mind right now. Others please to join in.
I may be forgetful and God knows senility has made inroads, but the Clinton years are as etched into my memory as if they were written on a silicon chip and implanted in my head. It's a miracle we survived those eight years and it's only by the grace of God, Bush was elected to set us on the right (pun intended) path.
erp:
He ran on it and he signed the bills when they reached his desk. You can keep hating him, but in the history books he'll be indistinguishable from Reagan and George W. Bush.
Posted by: oj at February 23, 2006 12:28 PMoj. I don't hate anybody. I was terrified of Clinton and the off hand casual way he attempted to take us into the third world and I continue to be terrified that his wife will get back in there to try to finish us off.
Posted by: erp at February 23, 2006 1:26 PMBeing terrified of them makes no more sense.
Posted by: oj at February 23, 2006 1:30 PMNot recognizing and reacting to mortal danger it isn't very smart. Of the two options, fight or flight, fight seems the one that would work best in this situation. So, I will fight Hillary's election by voting for, yes, the most dangerous man on the planet, Senator McCain, rather than allow the Clinton's near the seat of government again.
Posted by: erp at February 23, 2006 3:02 PMerp:
Other than on likely judicial appointments--which does matter tremendously--how different are Hillary and McCain?
Posted by: oj at February 23, 2006 3:12 PMMr. Judd;
Isn't this the story of Bill Gates? Why don't you like him?
The difference is the media.
Posted by: erp at February 23, 2006 5:20 PMAOG:
W is trying to get everyone to adopt the software for free. Gates tries to monopolize other peoples' ideas.
Posted by: oj at February 23, 2006 5:50 PMhow different are evita and joan of arc ?
Posted by: toe at February 23, 2006 8:24 PMerp:
I certainly didn't like Clinton and on a personal level I had a viscerally negative reaction to him almost from the moment he took office, but I didn't consider him a bad president. He didn't have too many policy achievements, but welfare reform and NAFTA were biggies and he was smart enough to knock off the pinko health-care stuff after 1994.
That said, his wife is malevolent and simply must be stopped.
Posted by: Matt Murphy at February 23, 2006 8:35 PMMr. Judd;
For free? Someone is going to pay for it. Or is it that magic "government" type money? It also looks like I will have more choice about whether to use Gates' software than W's (and both are about the same level of security :-)).
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at February 23, 2006 9:36 PMWhat did it cost Stephen Harper or David Cameron to run as if they were Tony Blair/George Bush/John Howard?
Posted by: oj at February 23, 2006 10:02 PMWhat does it cost the Linux team or Apple to build their own version of the technology the Dark Empire uses?