Bush has charted own course throughout his presidency
By Ron Hutcheson
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - George W. Bush came to office without a majority of voters behind him, fueling widespread expectations that he would seek to forge a bipartisan coalition and govern cautiously from the center.
Instead he rules as though he had won the White House in a landslide.
He has stamped his mark on America and the world with a big, bold and, in some ways, even radical presidency. Emboldened by self-confidence - critics call it arrogance - Bush has made striking departures from American and Republican traditions.
"He's trying to forge a new definition of conservative," said Lee Edwards, an expert on political philosophy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "Just as Clinton was trying to be a `new' Democrat, maybe Bush is trying to be a `new' Republican."
He certainly has charted his own course on foreign policy. Bush scrapped Cold War arms-control agreements, abandoned the global-warming treaty, asserted a doctrine of pre-emptive war against threats that are only potential, not imminent, and defied global opinion to invade Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction that no one can find.
The "humble" foreign policy that he talked about during the last presidential campaign was replaced by an us-versus-them style that alienated some traditional allies, led by France and Germany, and called into question America's will to work in partnership with others. Around the world, polls show that many fear he's trying to run the world from Washington. He says he's simply providing the leadership the world needs to confront urgent problems that others prefer to duck.
At home, he slashed taxes while watching the $236 billion federal budget surplus he inherited turn into a $400 billion annual deficit. Faced with a tough choice between guns and butter - military or domestic spending - Bush chose both, along with big tax cuts.
Overall government spending is up by 16 percent since he took office, due in large part to the war on terrorism and the invasion of Iraq. But even non-defense domestic spending is up 11 percent, according to a recent analysis by the Heritage Foundation.
"This is a different orientation, that government is not necessarily the enemy," said George Edwards III, director of the Center for Presidential Studies at Texas A&M University. "He wants to use government in a conservative way for liberal ends."
In a move that alarmed fiscal conservatives of every party, Bush expanded Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legacy by adding a big new entitlement - prescription drug coverage - to Medicare. Despite efforts to hold down costs, the change is expected to cost at least $400 billion over the next 10 years, and many independent experts believe that estimate is dramatically low.
Bush also greatly expanded the federal government's role in education, a remarkable turnabout from Ronald Reagan's call to abolish the Education Department. That was still a GOP crusade less than 10 years ago, when Newt Gingrich led Republicans to capture control of the House of Representatives in the name of downsizing government. Republican control of Congress remains, yet so does a now much-stronger federal Education Department.
"We're building in a much lower revenue stream even as we've added big government initiatives. That combination is unprecedented," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan budget-watchdog group. "It's an attempt to do big government on the cheap, which comes out as big deficits."
Administration officials and most economists say the deficit isn't a problem at this point because it is relatively small compared with the overall economy. Bush also contends that his tax cuts will spur enough growth to cut the deficit in half within five years. But that's when the baby boom generation begins to retire, which will send federal spending on Social Security and Medicare soaring for decades, making it much harder to avoid deepening government debt.
Forced by the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to put the government on a war footing, Bush also created a Cabinet-level Homeland Security Department in the biggest reorganization of the federal government since World War II.
And with bipartisan support from Congress in enacting the Patriot Act, Bush's Justice Department is testing the limits of constitutional protections for individual liberties in its zealous pursuit of potential terrorists.
Recent court rulings have overturned the administration's efforts to detain terror suspects without filing charges or giving them access to lawyers. And two federal appellate courts issued separate rulings challenging the administration's treatment of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism, as well as its handling of more than 600 detainees at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Bush has other big plans in the works.
He has served notice that he will continue to push for a producer-friendly federal energy policy, an overhaul of the legal system to discourage lawsuits and legislation to make his tax cuts permanent. Bush is also expected to announce plans to revive the manned spaceflight program with trips to the moon or Mars.
His proposal to privatize Social Security by letting workers invest in the stock market is at the top of his to-do list for a second White House term.
Bush's foreign policy agenda is even more ambitious.
Some influential national-security advisers to Bush's civilian Pentagon leaders, such as Richard Perle, call for U.S. pressure to force regime change in Syria and Iran. In addition to the war on terrorism and the reconstruction of Iraq, Bush wants his legacy to include peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the spread of democracy throughout the Middle East.
"This is a guy who really wants to bring about major change. He's thinking big and bold," said Edwards, the Texas A&M professor. "He has squeezed about as much out of the system as you can. He keeps pushing."
As Bush gears up for his re-election campaign, Americans have a much better fix on the man in the Oval Office than they did three years ago, but they are as divided as ever in their opinions of him. In an era of polarizing politics, Bush is a love-him or hate-him leader.
Loyal Republicans love him, die-hard Democrats detest him. Nearly 40 percent of Americans remain convinced that Bush wasn't elected legitimately, about the same percentage as when he took office.
Swing voters tend to like his personality but aren't so sure about his policies. Bush's approval rating, as measured by the Gallup poll, has shifted from a high of 90 percent after Sept. 11 to a low of 50 percent during the fall amid the difficulties in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's capture sent it up to 63 percent.
If Sept. 11 was a watershed for Bush's popularity, the war in Iraq caused many Americans to reconsider their views.
"After 9-11, he was able to unite the country. And then Iraq came and it just all went away. It just seemed to intensify the anger," said Carroll Doherty, editor of the nonpartisan Pew poll.
But Americans also have become increasingly optimistic about the economy. The recession that started shortly after Bush took office officially ended later that year, but it wasn't until this year that average Americans began to feel the change. Even now, some parts of the country that were hard hit by setbacks in the manufacturing sector seem to be stuck in a jobless recovery.
Recent employment gains haven't been nearly enough to recoup the nearly 3 million jobs that have been lost since Bush took office. The economic outlook in 2004 may well be the key indicator in determining whether he gets a second term.
"Our economy is strong, it is vibrant, people are finding work," Bush said at his year-end Cabinet meeting. "But we won't rest until everybody who wants to find a job can find one."
Bush and his advisers also hope to make the election a referendum on his leadership, especially his role as commander in chief. For the first time since the party's founding in 1854, Republicans will hold their nominating convention in New York. The setting in Madison Square Garden, blocks away from the demolished World Trade Center, is tailor-made to evoke memories of Sept. 11.
"My job is to keep America secure," Bush said at his last news conference of the year. "I don't expect people to agree with every decision I make. But regardless of whether they do or not, I'm going to continue making the decisions in the way that I think is best for the country."
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(c) 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune |
