Go, Bush!
Remarks, and advice, from a skeptic.
By John O’Sullivan, an NR editor-at-large
May 14, 2001 Issue
Not long ago, I was asked to give my judgment on the early days of the George W. Bush administration and throw in
some advice to the new president. Perhaps the editor in question recalled my contribution to a 1989 Wall Street Journal symposium in which we were asked what was the best thing that had happened in the first 100 days of the elder Bush. I boldly answered, "Lent."
On this occasion, however, I shrank from glory. My open — nay, flamboyant — criticism of George W. the Candidate disqualified me, I felt, from the advice-giving racket for a while. And besides, even the most attentive administration would hardly be likely to listen to suggestions from someone who had consistently treated its leader as a good mayor of Austin in a lean year.
It did occur to me a few months ago that I might work some useful mischief and destroy the prospects of liberal Re publicans by enthusiastically endorsing them for jobs in the administration. Just as I was about to call for Christie Whitman to be made head of EPA, however, she got the job. And I lost the appetite for advice-giving.
There remains, however, a slightly more subtle and interesting question: Do conservative critics of Bush not owe him some sort of apology for underestimating him? Has he not been both more commanding and more conservative than we forecast? And is not his "compassionatge conservatism" the potential philosophical foundation of a new political majority?
The Bush administration has certainly begun more impressively than most observers on all sides expected. In part this is because Bush is the kind of relaxed personality who is not afraid to surround himself with such highly experienced and competent politicians as Vice President Cheney, Defense Sec retary Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Powell. The administration ac cordingly handled a crisis — the Hainan plane standoff — with forethought, deftness, and a disciplined self-restraint; its subsequent decision not to give Taiwan the Aegis system now, but to deliver it if Beijing increases the number of missiles aimed at Taipei, very neatly forces the Chinese to choose between avoiding escalation and taking the blame for an eventual Aegis sale. If this administration makes mistakes, they are less likely to be minor errors than serious and sustained misjudgments.
It is also a genuinely conservative administration. Of course, it is not as extravagantly conservative as the media regularly suggest. And the frequent suggestions by reporters that Bush is a calculating deceiver who disguised his cold conservatism during the campaign by being amiable to everyone merely reveal that they have a bias toward Gothic fiction as well as liberal politics. Even so, the administration has fought for a substantial tax cut (if an ill-judged one spread over too long a period); it has refused to sign the Kyoto treaty; and it has placed conservatives in senior positions throughout the ad ministration. At the very least, Bush and his house Machiavelli, Karl Rove, appreciate that conservatives are an essential element in the Republican coalition and have to be kept reasonably content. That is a great deal more than his father ever understood.
As the current standing of Ronald Reagan demonstrates, however, the reputation of any presidency is likely to rest on the outcome of two or three major issues. In Reagan's case, these were the West's victory in the Cold War, the revival of the American economy, and the associated restoration of America's self-confidence in world affairs. Let me suggest that three issues, none of them at present in the headlines, will retrospectively determine how we judge the Bush presidency.
The first is how successfully he brings the growth of the regulatory state back under democratic control. At home and abroad, the state extends its regulatory powers in all directions. It determines our use of the environment; it lays down minute rules for workplace be havior; it seeks to regulate our lifestyles to improve our health; it affects recruitment, promotion, and remuneration in all but the smallest companies; increasingly it regulates free speech. Yet this regulatory state increasingly exempts itself from democratic control by transferring decision-making power from elected bodies to the courts, federal agencies, and international organizations. International lawyers argue that U.S. courts are bound to interpret the law in the light of even those treaties the U.S. has refused to ratify. And re cent treaties like Kyoto and the Law of the Sea seek to establish bodies to regulate international economic activity. If these trends continue unchecked, then democracy, market freedom, and U.S. sovereignty will all suffer. But opposing them would be highly controversial since they are deeply entrenched in international (and especially European) politics. To do so, Bush must not only curb judicial power and resist the spread of international regulation, but also vigorously preach the virtues of the low-tax, low-regulation model of a free economy and demonstrate its superiority over the EU's regulated "Rhineland" model. Making his case will be an economic version of the long Cold War.
The second issue is whether Bush will be able to halt the drift towards an America balkanized into ethnic, cultural, and linguistic tribes. Perhaps it is wrong to call this a drift; it is in fact a government-enforced stampede. From the imposition of race and gender preferences in college admissions to the EEOC's campaign to inflict "language rights" in the workplace, the state is fostering a divided and difference-conscious society. The binding concept of an inclusive American identity founded on a common language and culture — though it still has the support of the great majority of Americans, including minority Americans — is regarded as oppressive by political, cultural and governmental elites. Ethnic and racial resentments are on the rise; the economy is suffering, as merit becomes less important; cynicism and a culture of lies are taking hold, as the concept of equal opportunity becomes increasingly debased.
Unfortunately, Bush may be on the wrong side of this issue. He has equivocated on racial preferences and supported bilingualism. Although his motives are doubtless honorable, the effect of his policies is the opposite of inclusionary; the longer they persist, the more they promote division in U.S. society and weaken its solidarity in the face of external challenges. And, incidentally, because difference-conscious policies intensify ethnic grievances, they help the Democratic party politically.
The third issue is whether Bush will entrench America's position as the leading world power or preside over the development of a multipolar world in which the U.S. is, at best, first among equals — and some hostile equals at that. Here a little history may be in order: America's current preoccupation with the rise of China is often compared with Britain's dilemma on how to deal with the rise of the Kaiser's Germany. In fact, the dilemma was Germany's, not Britain's. London would have been happy to maintain friendship with a Germany that confined its ambitions to the European continent; it had no choice but to resist a Germany that was plainly outbuilding the Royal Navy and seeking "a place in the sun." What the British saw clearly was that the rise of Germany compelled them to establish a firm friendship with the United States. From the 1890s onwards, they did just that, and as a result Britain and the U.S. were allies in the 20th century's two hot wars and one long cold war. On all three occasions, moreover, the British were on the winning side.
Bush should ponder this lesson. The U.S. can do little about China except to be prepared to wage peace or war as the Chinese decide. Nor can the U.S. turn for help to an exact equivalent of the U.S. to which Britain turned: NAFTA, even expanded into an hemispheric American Community, would add very little to America's clout. What the U.S. must do is ensure that it remains the unquestioned leader of a Western alliance that can outpunch any other potential alliance of great powers. That in turn means that the U.S. must discourage and, if necessary, prevent the emergence of a single European superpower with a military capacity that matches its economic power. Among the many policies to achieve this — bringing Britain and Eastern Europe into NAFTA, establishing a Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area, offering the Europeans greater influence over the development of grand strategy — the most obvious one currently is to delay and obstruct the proposed European Rapid Reaction Force. Again, however, this is an issue on which the Bush administration's trumpet gives forth a decidedly uncertain sound; perhaps too many people are wrestling for control of the instrument.
To prevail in these three major struggles, conservatives will need leadership that is not only bold but eloquent. So far, this administration has been able to rely on Disraeli's observation that "a majority is always the best repartee." But building the majorities required to face these particular challenges will require a little eloquence first.
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