PART TWO:
''When George Bush Sr. took over as president, Jim Baker couldn't wait to sweep out these old Reagan people,'' one senior Reagan aide said. ''They had no positions to speak of in the first Bush administration. But now they're back.''
From Reagan's ''evil empire'' to Bush's ''axis of evil,'' clarity of purpose is now the posture, if not always the practice, of American policy. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, sees this as the clearest similarity between Bush and Reagan -- an assertion of moral certainty, even when it makes some people squirm. By framing the struggle with Communism, and now the war on terror, as a fight of good versus evil, she says, these presidents delegitimized the enemy and forced the argument beyond mere tactics.
''Many people are much more comfortable with on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand explanations,'' she said. ''But there are very often cases where there are not arguments on both sides. And I think President Bush has been pretty willing, when that is the case, to speak in black-and-white terms.''
Righteous purpose is strong stuff, and it can be highly flammable. It's worth remembering that moral certainty led Reagan's administration into the culminating scandal of Iran-contra, the scheme to sell missiles to Iran and divert the profits to arm anti-Communist guerrillas in Nicaragua. Bush has not only rehired several of the Iran-contra intriguers, but he has also reproduced elements of the climate in which the plot was hatched -- obsessive secrecy, a premium on loyalty, a taste for working through foreign proxies, an impatience with Congressional oversight.
Four years after he last slept in the White House and two years before he wrote an eloquent farewell to America and drifted into the fog of Alzheimer's, Reagan gave a speech that suggested how he might have coped with the messy world Bush inhabits. In December 1992, he walked into the Oxford Union, his perpetual tan offset by a light blue suit, and took his place behind the twin teleprompters that accompanied him on his travels.
''Evil still stalks the planet,'' he declared. At the time, the first President Bush was confounded by the horrors of failing states from Somalia to Yugoslavia. Al Qaeda's brand of stateless terrorism had not yet riveted the world's attention, but it was clear that some sort of ill-defined mayhem was replacing Communism as the main worry for Western civilization. Reagan had presided over the end of the cold war, but his successor, for all his talk of a new world order, had made little headway in defining what that would be. Now Reagan offered his answer: a great, humanitarian coalition in which America would stand alongside other civilized states.
Most of his life, Reagan conceded, he had seen international organizations like the United Nations as an encumbrance, as ''debating societies'' and hotbeds of hostility toward America. But the end of the cold war had liberated these organizations for a higher purpose. He proposed nothing less than a standing ''army of conscience,'' operated by the United Nations, to carve out humanitarian sanctuaries from evil.
The speech received almost no attention here, but it is amazing to read now, when Reagan's spiritual successor is laboring to answer the same questions of American purpose. Bush's new American imperialism -- he would prefer to call it leadership -- seems a far cry from Reagan's idealistic Oxford vision of common cause. In practice, though, I imagine Reagan would have been game to go it alone when the United Nations tried his patience, and Bush, for his part, has found it useful to temper his unilateral impulses. Bush's speech to the United Nations, warning the world body of irrelevance if it did not rise to the challenge of Iraq, was not so far in spirit from Reagan's -- though a Bush ''army of conscience'' seems more likely to be wearing the uniforms of the 101st Airborne than the blue helmets of the U.N.
Bush's domestic policy is (as Reagan's was) less coherent, obscured as it is by the preoccupation with a menacing world, and more subject to the vagaries of electoral politics. A couple of months ago, the conventional wisdom was that Bush had no domestic agenda. He had gotten his tax cut and a version of his education plan, and that was pretty much the end of it. But it should be amply clear by now that Bush is determined to break from the center-hugging course -- the incrementalism, fiscal prudence, and moderation -- that characterized the presidencies of his father and Clinton.
Bush has not just cut taxes; he has pushed tax cuts with a supply-side bias -- that is, with the professed aim of stimulating investment rather than consumer demand, and too bad if this favors the rich or engorges the debt. He has persisted in arguing for tax cuts long after many Republicans, especially the cautionary voices of big business, have started worrying more about the deficit.
Many Republicans, anxious about red ink and wary of the Democrats, expected Bush to tack toward the middle, perhaps pre-empting the Democrats by cutting the payroll tax, which would most benefit lower-income taxpayers. (Even Reagan, without recanting in the slightest his devotion to the gospel of tax reduction, responded to mounting deficits by signing three tax increases into law.) On the contrary, Bush's latest budget plan is a fresh splash of Reaganism -- eliminating taxes on dividends altogether, for instance.
Bush has already surpassed Reagan in advocating a shift of responsibilities from government to the private sector, and from the federal governments to the states. The aim to partly privatize retirement (through individual investment accounts), education (through vouchers) and welfare (through faith-based charities) has proceeded gradually, and with some temporary retreats, but no one close to Bush doubts that it is a sustained crusade. You could easily imagine Reagan's husky chuckle the other day as Bush announced plans to outsource up to 850,000 federal jobs -- about half the government's civilian work force -- to private contractors. This is on top of the 170,000 federal employees who will lose most of their contract protections when they are folded into the new Department of Homeland Security. In the name of efficiency, Bush stands not only to weaken the federal apparat, but also to bleed the public employee unions -- the lone growth sector of organized labor. By regulation and legislative initiative, the Bush administration has been methodically undermining what remains of organized labor's influence. If, as some labor experts believe, the precipitous decline of union clout began in 1981, when Reagan dismissed striking air-traffic controllers, then Bush is indeed continuing Reagan's work with relish.
Bush's appointees to federal regulatory bodies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission have, of course, been as ardently antiregulation as Reagan's, and Bush has been, if anything, more willing to brandish executive powers to accomplish deregulatory missions that might face a hard time in Congress. His scorn for environmentalists as naysayers, nit-pickers and limit-mongers is undisguised, as was Reagan's.
A world without trade barriers, in which markets spread a balm of democracy, is another Reagan dream to which Bush has professed allegiance. (Reagan first proposed a free trade zone for North America in 1979.) Here it is tempting to say the comparison breaks down. Among those who believe Bush puts political expedience above principle, there is no more damning evidence than his decision in March to slap punitive tariffs on steel imports, and his condoning of similar anticompetitive favors to the farm and textile industries. The Republican faithful were scandalized by how readily the man who preaches free trade was willing to pander to protectionist sentiment.
The indignation was justified, but possibly premature. Yes, White House officials concede, the steel tariffs were part of a political calculation, but one they insist serves a larger strategic end. The tariffs were used to persuade lawmakers in steel and textile states that Bush was not some free-trade zealot who would endanger American jobs if he was given greater freedom to negotiate trade deals without Congress looking over his shoulder. With those bartered votes, Bush won that authority by the narrowest of margins.
The president's next act got nowhere near as much attention as his protectionist backsliding. In November he proposed to the World Trade Organization that tariffs on all industrial and consumer goods be phased out, reaching zero in the year 2015. The proposal -- like Reagan's free-trade proposals -- was regarded skeptically, as a rhetorical gambit or a negotiating posture, and it may prove to be nothing more. But textile-state lawmakers were alarmed, and they have come to believe that on free trade Bush is dead serious.
So, incidentally, have the Teamsters. The conservative trucking brotherhood is one of the few unions Bush has actively courted. But in November he stiffed them on one of their highest priorities. He ordered that Mexican truckers be permitted to transport goods from south of the border anywhere in the United States. This, by the way, was another case of Bush finding the sweet spot where political advantage and principle coexist. By moving to open cross-border traffic this way, he infuriated the Teamsters -- who have taken him to court -- but he sent a valentine to the 20 million people of Mexican descent who live in America.
The point is not that Bush won't do what it takes to be re-elected. He will co-opt and retailor Democratic ideas (as he has done on the creation of a Homeland Security Department and prescription drug coverage), he will temporarily drop issues when the time is not right (as he did on school vouchers) and he will compromise (as he did, for example, by going along with the federalization of airport security). But for all the political tacking, this is a president with a discernible direction, and it is not the middle of the road.
''Bush 43 is exactly where Reagan was, but he stands on Reagan's shoulders,'' Norquist said.
When the pollster Richard Wirthlin began working with Reagan, then governor of California, in 1969, he was puzzled by the fact that Reagan consistently polled six to nine points higher than any of the opinion research models predicted. It took Wirthlin a few years to figure out the problem. The forecasting models were weighted heavily toward issues -- whether or not voters felt a candidate held compatible views on a checklist of subjects.
''Issues appeal rationally, but Reagan appealed way beyond the rational dimension,'' Wirthlin recalls. ''He tapped into values.'' Thus while many voters found Reagan's specific positions too conservative, they voted for him anyway because he seemed to care about the kind of things they cared about, and they generally trusted him to do the right thing. Bush, says Wirthlin, connects in the same way.
Bush's father and Bill Clinton were programmatic presidents. For any problem, they had a five-point plan. Al Gore, of course, was the ultimate wonk candidate, the man of to-do lists, the man who badgered Bush during the final debate to declare his view of ''the Dingell-Norwood bill,'' whatever that was. Bush, though he has a better command of detail than Reagan, is not facile enough to play that game, and when he does let himself get pinned down on the details, he exposes the fact that on taxes or guns or abortion he is more conservative than most voters.
''Bush instinctively, and Rove intellectually and tactically, knew they should not compete issue by issue,'' said a Republican strategist. ''Clinton and Gore had the edge. So you got a values campaign: 'an era of responsibility,' 'leave no child behind' and, of course, 'compassion.' ''
As president, Bush has continued to emphasize themes -- encapsulated in slogans, stenciled on backdrops, illustrated by powerful visuals. Matthew Dowd, who runs polling for the Republican National Committee, said Bush's inattention to detail -- so easily mocked -- hurts him not at all with voters. ''Voters are pretty sophisticated,'' Dowd said. ''They think nitty-gritty detail is going to be decided by Congress anyway. It's more important to connect on principles and values.''
In the alchemy of politics, moreover, stupid can be smart. Presidents who don't pretend to be supervising every detail are less likely to be blamed when details go awry.
Reagan, whose swing voters were Southerners and blue-collar Democrats, sometimes deployed the language of values to stir resentment. Bush, who hopes to add more suburban women and Hispanics to the Republican base, has managed to market fundamental changes as a gentle, centrist agenda.
''Reagan's rhetoric on welfare was the welfare Cadillac cheat,'' said a senior White House official. ''Bush's rhetoric is that welfare saps the soul and drains the spirit.'' This is probably little consolation to the poor, who face ever more stringent work requirements unaccompanied by money to help pay for child care.
If people basically trust Bush when he professes humanitarian concern on subjects like welfare, prescription drugs, education and retirement -- and so far most seem to trust him -- then he can bring about changes that would have frightened the electorate in Reagan's day.
The best example of this is Social Security. Before he was elected president, Reagan proposed allowing individuals to ''opt out'' of Social Security. But when, soon after taking office, he sent Congress a proposal to slash the retirement program, the plan hit a buzz saw. He never dared offering legislation to privatize Social Security, although the idea was discussed.
Martin Feldstein, who was chairman of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, said they couldn't figure out a way to do it without arousing a panicky backlash among elderly voters. When Feldstein worked with candidate Bush on the design of his tax and Social Security proposals, though, he was impressed that Bush had discerned a new political opportunity that may outweigh the fears of the elderly. Polls showed that younger and middle-aged voters were comfortable with individual retirement instruments like 401(k) programs. Moreover, the anxiety about whether Social Security will be around when they retire, which has always been seen as an argument for shoring up the status quo, is in Bush's mind an argument for inventing something new.
Thus while the administration is still debating the timing of an assault on Social Security -- are voters ready for it before 2004? How big a setback was the implosion of Enron's retirement plan? -- the president no longer regards Social Security as the lethal ''third rail'' of American politics. It is likely to be one of the big bets of his presidency.
Bush's thematic approach to tectonic changes in government is not all marketing gloss. Bush is not, at heart, as antigovernment as Reagan was, in part because much about government that antagonized people in the 1980's has been ameliorated. Top tax rates that seemed stifling at 70 percent are now around 40 percent. Absurd excesses of regulation have been reduced, and entitlements like welfare no longer inspire the same anger. And of course the threat of terrorism has awakened, not least in Bush himself, a greater appreciation that government has a purpose.
Thus while Reagan tried to abolish the federal Department of Education, Bush has tried instead to refashion it as an enforcer of accountability in the states and cities where most education decisions get made. (Testing, more than vouchers, has always been Bush's great enthusiasm in education.)
Whether the rationale is sound management or ideology, though, the results are no less substantial. Private retirement accounts, faith-based initiatives, vouchers, outsourcing and volunteerism all diminish the role of government in favor of the marketplace and individual responsibility.
There is little prospect, of course, that Bush will actually shrink the government. But then Reagan didn't, either. Thanks to the armor of special interests and to the predilection of presidents to do things, Reagan left behind a much bigger federal enterprise than he inherited, including a whole new cabinet department (Veterans Affairs) and 60,000 more employees. Reagan asked Americans to dream heroic dreams, but he rarely asked them to give up anything. President Bush, even with a war on, shows no greater desire to bet on sacrifice.
When he was compiling Reagan's radio addresses for publication, Martin Anderson found himself wondering how often Reagan had discussed abortion. He searched 1,044 scripts and found exactly one speech on the subject. In it, Reagan justified abortion to protect the health of the mother or in cases of rape, thus falling well short of the right-to-life hard line. As governor, he signed one of the most liberal state abortion laws, and as president he did little directly to challenge the essentially permissive state of American law.
Yet Reagan was always treated by the anti-abortion constituency as a kindred spirit. This is another Reagan lesson Bush seems to have taken on board: if you have underlying credibility with the advocacy groups, you do not have to undertake quixotic efforts on their behalf.
Friends say that on abortion, gay rights, school prayer and other culture-war issues, Reagan's sympathy for the religious right bumped up against his hands-off view of government, and against his reading of the public mood. Bush, like Reagan, understands that Americans like a good example, but they won't abide a scold. He has thus managed to champion both ''traditional'' values and ''inclusiveness,'' and when the two are hard to reconcile -- on gay rights, for instance -- he avoids the issue.
A fine example of Bush's instinct to tiptoe around cultural land mines was his intervention the other day in a Supreme Court case on university admissions. Operating in the backwash of the Trent Lott affair, with Republicans scrambling to demonstrate their empathy for black voters, Bush endorsed ''diversity'' and denounced ''quotas,'' but in his legal brief he ducked the hard question of whether racial preference is ever allowable.
Bush's concessions to the culture warriors may be meaningful, but they will not be frontal. He can, and has, cut off aid to family-planning programs overseas. He can, and will, sign a bill outlawing the procedure critics call partial-birth abortion. And he will appoint federal judges whom the right finds congenial. (Asked during the campaign to identify his favorite Supreme Court justices, Bush named Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, exciting conservatives to the point of ecstasy.)
He can also appeal to the anti-abortion movement by restricting new technologies like stem-cell research. In the months before Sept. 11, Bush went through an agonizing public process of deciding, and concluded that stem cells should be treated as human life. As Frum points out, this was the biggest political victory the ''pro-life'' lobby had enjoyed in many years, but it was accomplished without riling Americans who favor abortion rights.
In promoting his agenda, Reagan had the advantages of a silken tongue (which Bush does not) and a demoralized opposition (which Bush shares). While polls earlier this month showed the first flickers of doubt about Bush's conduct, his 58 percent approval rating is identical to Reagan's when he won his 49-state re-election victory in 1984. Bush has a few other things going for him that Reagan lacked.
First, the national war footing has generated a swell of patriotism and shared anxiety that floats not only a more muscular foreign policy but also much of the president's domestic agenda, at least until now. The president has little hesitation in invoking the war on terror on behalf of just about anything. Second, the economy, while dyspeptic, is suffering in a different way than it did in Reagan's day. In the 1980's Reagan's ambition to reduce the size of government, and particularly the relentless growth of entitlements, was impeded by the high rate of inflation. Inflation drives up the cost of government programs and makes people cling to the security of the federal safety net. Inflation today is the least of the economy's problems. Third, Bush has a friendlier and more cohesive Republican majority in Congress than Reagan had for most of his tenure.
Bush has a firmer hand on his executive branch too. Under Reagan and Bush, the tensions between conservatives and radicals have been personified by divisions among their top advisers. The skirmishes between Colin Powell's State Department and Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon over the projection of American power had their precursors under Reagan, when Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger clashed. Shultz, like Powell, was sometimes in the position of taming the in-house idealists, and like Powell, he sometimes suffered the slings of archconservatives. Bush, like Reagan, presides over an uneasy coexistence of tax-cut zealots and deficit hawks.
But Bush is undoubtedly Reagan's superior in the executive management of a divided, competitive staff. Reagan delegated all but the biggest decisions. He recoiled from internal conflict and could not bear to fire anyone. (David Stockman, the budget director, unburdened himself to a reporter on the voodoo of Reagan's economics and kept his job anyway.) The Reagan years were marked by angry resignations, endless wars of leaks and back-stabbing. Bush, perhaps by virtue of his business education and experience -- and his years as, in effect, a junior White House staff member to his father -- is more personally engaged in sorting out the issues, maintaining the discipline and culling the misfits. By comparison with that of Reagan's day, the tension between the diplomats and the moralists, between the tax-eliminators and the deficit hawks, between the idealists and the realists, has been contained and synthesized into a common cause. A result is that Bush is less likely than Reagan to be constrained by contention in his own ranks.
There was about Reagan, like it or not, a dream of America and its potential that was often utopian. It was easy to ridicule -- as the first President Bush did with his memorable sneer at the ''vision thing'' -- but it made Reagan more than the sum of his advisers and his constituencies.
What is Bush's morning in America? He clearly has the instinct to do big things, and barring some failure of leadership -- a serious misadventure abroad, a corroding economy -- he has the license. What does America look like if he succeeds?
Two years ago the question would have seemed ridiculous. We knew America had to be governed from the center. That was the lesson of Bill Clinton's popularity, it was the constraint imposed by a divided electorate and in Bush's case it was the price of a minority victory. Bush had no mandate. But Bush, like Reagan, seems to believe that presidents make their own mandates.
What Bush is striving for, on the evidence of the choices he has made so far, is bold in its ambition: markets unleashed, resources exploited. A progressive tax system leveled, a country unashamed of wealth. Government entitlements gradually replaced by thrift, self-reliance and private good will. The safety net strung closer to the ground. Government itself infused with, in some cases supplanted by, the efficiency and accountability of a well-run corporation. A court system dedicated to protecting property and private enterprise and enforcing individual responsibility. A global common market that hums to the tune of American productivity. In the world, America rampant -- unfettered by international law, unflinching when challenged, unmatchable in its might, more interested in being respected than in being loved.
If he fails, my guess is that it will be a failure not of caution but of overreaching, which means it will be failure on a grand scale. If he succeeds, he will move us toward an America Ronald Reagan would have been happy to call his own.
Bill Keller is a Times columnist and a senior writer for the magazine.
nytimes.com |
