Which Way For Bush?

The question on every conservative's mind has been, what will George W. Bush do in his second term? In a matter of weeks, he has begun to show his hand and the results so far have been surprising, even counterintuitive, to this observer who one of our readers labeled extremely pessimistic just two weeks ago. Now we are not so sure. What is President Bush up to?

President Bush began with major personnel changes. In the key job of Attorney General, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales was named to replace social conservative favorite, John Ashcroft, who was quietly told after the election that his services were no longer required. Spokesman had made it clear to reporters beforehand that the president wanted to appoint the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice and preferred his long time friend and lawyer for the job. Social conservative leaders, however, had made it clear that Gonzales was unacceptable as a court nominee on the basis of his ruling as a Texas high court justice in an abortion parental notification case. By the opinion of fellow state Supreme Court justice and Bush federal appeals court nominee, Priscilla Owen: "The court," including Gonzales, so broadly interpreted a notification exception that it "disregarded the law and has trampled the process on which the legitimacy of our law depends." In other words, he was a judicial activist of the type the president promised not to appoint, and was so on the key issue of abortion, the central value of the morals debate.

Everyone was surprised that Gonzales was appointed as AG instead. While it could be argued that position was almost as important to the social conservative agenda, they were so relieved he was not going to the court that the Focus on the Family lobby not only did not oppose Gonzales they actively supported him. Another leader even found the nomination "reassuring," saying it proved that President Bush would not appoint Gonzales to the court. At the same time, White House sources were telling the New York Times that Gonzales was being nominated as attorney general to "get out of the way" the controversy over Gonzales' authorship of a White House legal opinion to the president recommending that he declare Geneva Convention rights for prisoners of war "obsolete" for Afghanistan detainees, and supporting some forms of torture apparently outlawed by the Convention, which opinion was subsequently relied upon by the military for decisions relevant to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

On November 12, 2004, the Times reported that White house sources said the appointment "was part of a political strategy to bolster Mr. Gonzales' credentials with conservatives and position him for a possible Supreme Court appointment." The plan was supposedly "in large part the work of Karl Rove, the president's top political advisor." The idea was to appoint an obvious conservative to the high court first as "a thank you to the right for the election" and allowing that "toughest nominee" to absorb the flack from the expected Democratic assault over his confirmation. By then Gonzales would have put Abu Ghraib behind him, taken actions as attorney general that pleased the right and would be ready for the second appointment to the Supreme Court.

President Bush's second domestic appointment was, if anything, more provocative to the social right. Margaret Spellings had been a Texas public school administrator close to the National Education Association who was a top advisor to Governor Bush and moved with him to the White House as senior education advisor. She worked with Sen. Teddy Kennedy to get his support for the No Child Left Behind Act that led to the first major new program of federal control of local schools in decades and to the largest increase in national education spending since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. She was reportedly violently opposed to school vouchers and helped eliminate them from the bill. When the president nominated Ms. Spellings as Secretary of Education, she was unanimously opposed by conservatives and supported by Kennedy and the NEA.

While the social conservatives who were so critical to Mr. Bush's electoral victory were getting this bad news on appointments, the fiscal conservatives who were reluctant supporters at best were overwhelmed by good news on spending. In the final weeks of the campaign the president began speaking about restraining government growth and bragging about the pending Omnibus Spending Bill for only increasing non-defense discretionary spending by one percent, verses Bush's eight percent per year average increase earlier. Cynics, including yours truly, fully expected spending projects to be added back during the post election lame duck session. Lo and behold, on November 20 Congress passed the smallest increase in domestic federal spending since 1995 following the Republican take-over of both houses of Congress. Social conservatives even won a bonus, with an amendment voiding laws that did not allow physicians or other health care providers to refuse to participate in abortions

What happened? Did President Bush and the GOP Congress come to their senses, returning to their conservative roots? Hardly. But events conspired to work to the benefit of conservative principles in spite of the Machiavellization of the Republican Party, especially for fiscal conservatives. President Bush did not become more ideologically pure as the Gonzales two-step strategy makes clear. He simply prizes friendship and loyalty above all and just wants like-minded associates in the top executive positions. He very much desires to appoint the first Hispanic to the Supreme Court and will do so for Mr. Gonzales if he can be confirmed for attorney general. The president does not want to appoint a social liberal and hopes his appointees will not vote that way--but ideology will take second place to personal considerations and the rest will follow regardless of political pressures from the right. The same may be said for Ms. Spellings at Education. While appointing too many yes men has its dangers in choking off alternative views, the president is confident in his own opinions and will not be swayed by such considerations.

The good news for social conservatives is that Congress, unlike President Bush, does follow the election returns. Congressional Republicans are convinced that moral conservatives provided their margin of victory and want to repay them and to nurture them for the tough presidential sixth year elections of 2006, when the party in charge of the executive branch always loses seats. This explains why Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was able to push the amendment allowing medical providers to refuse to perform abortions through his caucus of hardheaded pols who last year would have blanched at such a radical idea. The dynamics of the 2008 presidential election have come into play too, as the otherwise very hardheaded and pragmatic Mr. Frist has presidential ambitions that require support from the religious right, which also explains his very public initial reluctance to support Arlen Specter for judiciary committee chairman.

So how did the spending bill remain so frugal? To some extent, the Republicans in the House had buyer's remorse after four years of reckless spending. To some extent, they realized that the spending--except for local pork, which frankly is not all that expensive even if it makes an easy target--did not help them politically. Both the drug and education spending splurges were outbid by Democrats demanding more, denying any additional support from these senior and educationalist constituencies for all of the money expended. So why not vote one's heart--and there is plenty of time for spending later if things look too dangerous for 2006, they reasoned? But they just might be surprised this time that the White House--which did hold their feet to the fire on the one-percent solution--might not just continue on the road to austerity.

Something very important happened to President Bush at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Chile at the end of November, an experience that just might turn him into a consistent deficit hawk. The critical meetings with Pacific Rim nations were with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizummi and China President Hu Jintao. While the president does not generally suffer fools gladly, like his father, he listens to and respects leaders of nations who meet the same challenges as he, even if to a lesser degree, especially if he views them as allies. The president pressured Hu to moderate China's exchange link to the dollar but it was Hu who responded that the U.S. needed to do more to sustain the dollar. It was Koizummi who bluntly told Bush he must deal with the American twin deficits in government and trade to stabilize the currency, echoing the concerns raised by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan the same week. Japan and China are the two largest holders of U.S. debt and funds. If they lost confidence and redeemed them, it would cause economic catastrophe.

President Bush responded immediately and publicly, acknowledging his "concern about whether or not our government is dedicated to dealing with our deficits." He promised: "the best way to affect those who watch the dollar's value is to make a commitment to deal with our short-term and long-term deficits." And he headed home, unlikely, in our opinion, to change his mind and disappoint his foreign friends and allies.

Fiscal conservatives have had a bit of luck and they can thank Mr. Koizummi for alerting the president to the coming economic crisis. Reigning in non-defense discretionary spending is an essential first step. Yet, that represents only 14 percent of national government spending. Entitlements must be restrained if confidence is to be restored in the dollar and Medicare and Social Security are to avert bankruptcy. The president has already proposed private accounts for Social Security but most speculate he will devote only two or four percent of the payroll tax to the matter. The Democrats are already proposing any private accounts be added on top of the present tax, which will do nothing to deal with the red ink. The problem is that even if the president were to be fully successful with his proposal, it is not large enough to avert the crisis--and Medicare is the larger problem anyway.

What will President Bush do? He is not especially interested in domestic policy and will leave most of it to Congress, which might be fortunate for social conservatives given their present standing there, although it will probably mean a Justice Gonzales. He will pursue the war on terror and will keep his main attention on foreign affairs. He is not concerned with limiting government for ideological reasons, as Ronald Reagan was, but he will be forced by international events to put his economic house in order. On entitlements, he might as well be bold, for the Democrats will attack whatever he proposes as harming the old and poor. He might as well be hung as a sheep as a goat and try to solve the problems of both Medicare and Social Security. In any event, he has promised his foreign friends to begin to deal seriously with spending and that will advance the conservative, Reagan vision, no matter what the motivation.

Donald Devine, Editor.

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