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June 22, 2006

Conservative Bush Critics Late to the Party

By Robert Robb

In the June 19th New Republic, Jonathan Chait contends that, by criticizing George W. Bush, conservatives are acting like spoiled brats.

This continues a long-standing presumption on the left to instruct conservatives about what they should think and how they should behave. Conservatives used to leave it largely up to liberals to sort out their own take on things. Lately, however, the talk-show right has shown a reciprocal presumption.

There is something to Chait's contention. It is hard to reconcile the unbridled support conservatives gave to Bush up through his re-election with the harshness of the criticism today.

However, he has the inconsistency backwards. According to Chait, conservatives were right to be uncritical in their early support. They are only abandoning Bush now, he suggests, because Bush has become politically unpopular. So, to avoid conceding that it is conservatism that is unpopular, as Chait sees it, conservatives are now arguing that Bush is unpopular because he is not conservative enough.

In actuality, it was the unbridled early support for Bush by conservatives that was unwarranted.

The ambitiousness of Bush's domestic agenda was not widely recognized when he was first elected. Bush aimed to transform American politics by establishing a durable conservative consensus. But he was going to do that in significant part by transforming conservatism as well.

In domestic policy, conservatism has long stood for the proposition that the power and scope of the federal government needed to be trimmed. Bush instead stood for the proposition that federal authority should be retained and even expanded, but harnessed to conservative ends.

This is clearest in his No Child Left Behind Act. Conservatives traditionally have advocated that the federal role in elementary and secondary education be reduced and even eliminated. Bush, however, proposed that it be expanded, but primarily to impose the conservative reform of accountability through testing.

Initially, Bush proposed a similar transformation of Medicare. The scope of the program would be expanded to include prescription drugs. The prescription drug benefit, however, would be available only to seniors who switched from the traditional fee-for-service program to a private health insurance plan. The role of the federal government in providing health care to seniors would have been transformed from paying for services directly to paying subsidies for private insurance.

Although the Bush administration scrupulously avoided saying so, this transformation would set up a further transformation of making the premium subsidy a function of income, a necessary reform as the ratio of workers to retirees continues to deteriorate.

Tellingly, the Bush administration abandoned the reform, but not the benefit, when congressional Republicans exhibited cold feet about it.

This was part of a pattern of the Bush administration failing to fight for true conservative reform when it involved political risk. It abandoned vouchers as part of No Child Left Behind at the first whiff of Democratic opposition. It abandoned fundamental Medicare reform, but continued to push for the expensive prescription drug entitlement.

Chait notes that after the election, Bush advocated tirelessly for private retirement accounts as part of Social Security reform, even as the idea was taking a beating in public opinion surveys. What else could he have done?

Well, he could have put forward a relatively specific reform plan that addressed the hard issues of transition costs and investment risks, rather than continuing to speak of private accounts as though they were a cost-free add-on to the existing system. They aren't, as the subsequent public debate quickly established, with critics given the chance to take the offensive on these tough issues.

And he could have put forth such a plan before the 2004 election, so that he could claim a mandate for it if elected. That, however, required taking a political risk for a fundamental conservative reform. And, except for tax cuts, Bush has consistently flinched at taking such risks.

Now, some conservative commentators (including me, from my relatively obscure desert outpost at the Arizona Republic) pointed out these things as they were happening. But Chait is right, for the most part conservative commentators and activists gave Bush a pass until recently.

There are several reasons why.

For the most part, conservatives strongly supported Bush's foreign policy. They liked the declaration of American independence from the constraints of multilateralism reflected in the rejection of the Kyoto treaty, the international criminal court and the ABM treaty.

After 9/11, protecting the country against terrorist attacks became the national priority, for conservatives and everyone else. Conservatives liked, and still like, Bush's standup stance on the war on terror.

On domestic policy, the conservative commentariat was willing to consider Bush's proposed transformation of harnessing federal authority to serve conservative ends. The neoconservative wing sort of liked the idea. Social conservatives were also mostly on board, quite willing to use the power of the federal government to support and promote traditional values and institutions.

Small-government conservatives feared that the political point might be valid. Fighting to trim the size and scope of the federal government was, perhaps, futile. Maybe Bush was right that the only way to a durable conservative consensus was through accepting a large and active federal government.

Of course, a durable conservative consensus within the body politic no longer seems near. The American people seem to have had enough of complete Republican control of the federal government.

Small-government conservatives are now striking out with a vengeance, at Bush and a profligate and pork-addicted Republican Congress. It's one thing to have one's principles rejected by the body politic. It's quite another to endure the perception that those principles are being rejected when, in reality, they were never fought for.

Chait is right that the piling on by conservatives against Bush does appear unseemly, given the pass he was largely given as the apostasies were being committed. It does give the impression of conveniently abandoning a sinking ship.

The mistake, however, isn't the current criticism. The mistake was not providing a more balanced and challenging assessment of Bush and his domestic policies all along.

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