The president is also a son of Texas. He should act like it.
opinionjournal.com
THINKING THINGS OVER
Bush: Beyond the Bad Patch?
The president is also a son of Texas. He should act like it.
BY ROBERT L. BARTLEY
Monday, April 1, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST
"Capital atrophies. I know something about that. I learned some pretty good lessons, and I also have learned lessons as governor of Texas. It's important for a leader to act."
So George W. Bush told me on a visit to Austin back in November of 1999. I and my editorial board colleagues had cajoled him into talking about his father's failed re-election bid. "I don't think he properly spent the political capital coming out of the Gulf War," the governor allowed. "In retrospect he should have taken all that capital and spent it." These sentences were the key, in my mind at least, to stamping Bush the son as presidential timber.
I hope that the president's Texas press conference Saturday marks a return to this wisdom. For over the past few weeks he seemed to be following in his father's footsteps. In the wake of the Gulf War, the elder President Bush reached an 89% approval rating. But with conservative revolt over his tax increase, the Perot challenge and a general passivity, he sank to electoral defeat the next year. Fighting a war on terror, George W. hit a record 90% and still holds 80%, but has been curiously passive as his opponents define the agenda at home and abroad.
Last week, for example, the president retreated to the Oval Office to sign the campaign finance reform bill before an audience of two. This was to show his "ambivalence" about the bill, his spokesman said. Before setting off on a fund-raising tour, Mr. Bush managed to choke out a statement that the bill, "although far from perfect, will improve the current financing system for federal campaigns."
In fact, the president is on record with six principles on campaign finance--such things as strengthening political parties and allowing citizens groups to continue with issue advocacy. Except for the modest increase in "hard money" limits, the bill tramples them all. There is also the matter of the president's oath to defend the Constitution, since like every other sentient being he recognizes that vast swaths of the bill abridge the free speech protected by the First Amendment.
The Bush administration proclaims even stauncher devotion to the principle of free trade, as the president stressed on his Latin American tour. Yet his 30% tariff on steel was quickly followed by new tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber. The moves seem to be setting off a round of protectionist retaliation around the world.
These sellouts of principle can be excused, if you have the right tastes, by crass politics. Vetoing the campaign finance bill would be throwing down the gauntlet to John McCain, who might decide to play Ross Perot in the 2004 campaign. The steel decision is aimed at a few congressional seats in Pennsylvania and West Virginia deemed crucial to continued Republican control of the House in this fall's elections.
I tend to doubt this rationale even on political grounds. Public reversals on principle, even if less dramatic than renouncing a "read my lips" pledge, erode a president's standing and credibility. But at least the campaign-finance and tariff decisions have an element of calculation, however low. Other presidential setbacks seem to result from sheer passivity.
The fate of the Bush judicial appointments is the most prominent example. The White House waited until too late to rally behind nominee Charles Pickering, who fell before vicious lies charging racism. Mr. Bush has nominated 29 appellate court judges; the Senate confirmed only seven. It's all the more galling, of course, since the Democrats control the Senate only by virtue of turncoat Jim Jeffords.
The narrow but partisan Democratic majority has set out to use the Constitution's "advise and consent" clause to usurp the president's role in appointing appellate judges; district judges are already pretty much appointed by senators with the consent of the executive. The administration can't seem to stir itself over this prerogative, though it's quite willing to take political hits over whether to disclose who talked energy policy with Vice President Dick Cheney, a far less important executive powers issue.
Meanwhile federal scientists buried in the bureaucracy the president is supposed to direct are caught telling lies to advance the environmentalist agenda. Conservatives note that the vast apparatus of advisory boards running government cultural institutions are even now staffed by Clinton administration holdovers. The president's energy bill is stalled, perhaps to be compromised away like his education bill. And meanwhile, Social Security checks to be written this week may use up the debt limit, potentially closing down the government. The administration is unable to move Congress even on government housekeeping.
All of this would be easily enough justified, of course, if it helped President Bush's No. 1 agenda item, the war on terror. Unhappily, his war management has been showing the same indecision. Stopping terrorists at airports, for example, has taken a back seat to avoiding any suspicion of ethnic profiling. The Bush FBI and Bush CIA have gone to implausible lengths in denying evidence pointing at an Iraqi connection. Homeland defense nabob Tom Ridge is in trouble because he has nothing real to do.
Vice President Cheney set out for the Middle East hoping to line up support for invading Iraq before Saddam Hussein succeeds in his race for nuclear weapons. Instead the trip became an exercise in sucking the Bush administration into the same old policies that have recorded 50 years of failure, trying to placate "moderate" Arabs by pressuring Israel to stop defending itself from terror. Predictably, the harvest has been more suicide bombers, the Israel-Palestine border aflame, and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia bestowing a kiss on the nearest Iraqi thug.
On Saturday the president clearly, repeatedly and properly put the blame for Middle East violence on Yasser Arafat. Despite a U.S. vote for the latest United Nations resolution pressuring Israel, Mr. Bush rebuffed the suggestion that he follow up with a personal call to Ariel Sharon. This marks a return to the previous Bush policy of not negotiating with terrorists. After all, if suicide bombers succeed in the Middle East they will soon appear in the U.S. There's reason to hope that President Bush, back on Texas soil, has recognized his mistakes. And that he's stepping up to show the Arabs abroad and the Democrats at home that he can't be easily rolled after all.
Mr. Bartley is editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com. |
