From: AdmrlLocke@aol.com Sent: Saturday, August 29, 1998 2:16 PM Subject: GrammNet: National Review on Bush, Jr. GrammNet Issue 8/29/98.1 Dear Friend In response to my question about George Bush, Jr., I received the following National Review column (12/22/97). To summarize, the author argues that Bush is moderately conservative: good on tort reform and juvenile crime; good on charter public schools but poor on vouchers; mediocre on welfare reform; bad on education standards and politically-correct textbooks ("Rainforest Algebra"); mixed on appointing personnel (appoints liberals as well as conservatives and, as Ronald Reagan discovered the hard way, personnel IS policy); mixed on tax reform but sufficiently tilted toward higher income taxes to earn the active opposition of flat-tax guru Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform; terrible on racial quotas and taxing your use of the Internet. He also signed a law legalizing concealed carry of firearms, which I wholeheartedly support. A similar law cut the homicide rate in Florida from 50% above the national average to 4% below the national average in just one year. The article doesn't specify whether Bush pushed the law or merely signed it. The article also mentions, without providing details, that Bush supported adoptions and parental rights. He favors welfare for legal immigrants (I don't but contend that the real problem with welfare is what it does to Americans, not that a tiny fraction of it goes to legal immigrants), public education for children of illegal immigrants (I don't favor punishing children of any sort by subjecting them to government-monopoly schools) and opposes official-English laws (I have a mixed view: it's largely symbolic; good if it eliminates "bilingual education" [which Thomas Sowell defines as "illiterate in English"] from the government- monopoly schools; likely to antagonize otherwise conservative Hispanic voters; likely to do little good because as the French have discovered, government regulation can't control language any better than it controls the economy). On the balance, then, Bush seems bad enough to oppose in the primaries, but good enough to support in a general election. He seems clearly better than Bob Dole was, or than Lamar Alexander is, but not as good as Forbes, Quayle or Ashcroft. I've heard everything from "he won't run" to "he's shoo-in to be the next president" to "he won't be that hard to beat." I think if he does run that he will be a tough candidate because Republicans like familiar faces and names, and because he's conservative enough for many Republican conservatives while not being offensive to many Republican moderates. I think he would be a decent nominee and a mediocre president. I include a few editorial comments below in brackets []. Sincerely, David B. Levenstam, CPA, MT, MA To subscribe to GrammNet, email me at AdmrlLocke@aol.com, with a message to the effect that you'd like to subscribe. -------------------------------------------- T H E F R O N T-R U N N E R Is it George W. Bush already? --------------------------------- RAMESH PONNURU --------------------------------- 'IT'S George Bush, of course it's George Bush. Why even bother to have the primaries?'' joked an insider at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami in November. He was reflecting the overwhelming consensus of political strategists that the Governor of Texas has the best odds of winning the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. George W. Bush is his father's son. Just look at his cv. Like his father, he went to Andover and to Yale, where he too joined Skull & Bones. After a stint as a fighter pilot -- just like Poppy! -- in the National Guard, he went to Harvard Business School, then tried the oil business. And like his father in 1988, Gov. Bush is the Republican establishment's candidate. He's the latest in a long line of establishment candidates who have been conservative enough to succeed in a Republican Party that was moving right. So, for instance, Gov. Bush seems more conservative than Bob Dole, who ran a more conservative campaign in 1996 than Bush's father did in 1988. And the elder Bush himself was to the right of Jerry Ford. [George Bush, Sr. actually started as a liberal Republican, probably to the left of Ford. I'm not sure that Dole campaigned as being to the right of Bush, Sr. It seemed to me that Bush, Sr. and Dole pretty much staked out the same rhetorical territory.] In each case, conservatives have been wary but ultimately swallowed their objections and hoped for the best -- only to be disappointed later. They're still chewing over Gov. Bush. [Let that list of losing candidates be a warning to conservatives thinking about settling for Bush, Jr.: not a single one of them, Ford, Bush, Sr. or Dole won a general election in his own right. (Bush won in 1988 as Reagan's successor.] For all the similarities, one thing Gov. Bush isn't is a clone of his father. For one thing, nobody doubts that he's a Texan. He used to own a controlling interest in the Texas Rangers, and, as he often says, he went to San Jacinto Junior High. Nor is his famous name what's causing national Republicans to take notice. When Bush ran for governor in 1994, there were those who considered him a lightweight trading on his father's name. He had had a wild frat-boy reputation, and a wholly justified one, as he freely admits in speeches. And he's still irreverent, giving to needling and a talented mimic. Writes Texas Monthly's Paul Burka: ``His enthusiasm for his job is that of a child who has just been let loose in the greatest playground in the world.'' [Sure he's playing on his father's name. A popular Southern Republican governor who kept his promises to defend our right to bear arm and cut our taxes, for instance, who happened to be named George Allen instead of George Bush would not automatically be the national front-runner.] But he has also discovered discipline. He married librarian Laura Welch and they had twin girls, now teens. Laura reportedly got him reading the Bible and attending a Methodist church. (She still needs to work on getting him to dress better.) Republican State Senator David Sibley remarks, ``He's maniacal about exercise. He used to drink and he just quit. When he latches on to something, he's like a pitbull.'' As his predecessor, Democrat Ann Richards, learned too late. Gov. Richards had achieved national stature in 1988, when she ridiculed Republican presidential nominee George Bush for having been ``born with a silver foot in his mouth.'' On the face of it, she was in a strong position to win re-election in 1994. As former Democratic consultant Mark McKinnon recalls, ``In '94 the economy was in great shape, the incumbent governor was one of the most popular in state history, every Democrat on the ticket won that year -- except Richards. Despite everything, George Bush beat her like a red-headed stepchild.'' He did it by sticking like rubber cement to a short agenda: tort reform, juvenile justice, education, welfare. He never took the bait when she attacked him. While he talked about the next term, she defended the last one. (He had seen his father make the same mistake two years previously.) Says McKinnon, ``He tipped his hat to the lady and said, You've done a terrific job, but I'm a conservative Republican alternative. He had a strategy and stuck to it. In old political-consultant parlance, this guy gets it. He really gets it.'' [There's a lesson here: campaign on a short list of issues. You can have a laundry list in your platform, but make the campaign about just a few of them. People have short memories, and short attention spans. There's another lesson here: keep your campaign promises.] He has kept the same focus as governor. The official powers of the governor are quite limited: Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock and Comptroller John Sharp arguably wield more power, and both are Democrats. But Bush has deftly used his weak office to become a political powerhouse. He's insanely popular in Texas. According to the Harte - Hanks poll, 71 per cent of Texans think he deserves re-election; even in the Democratic stronghold of El Paso, he has 92 per cent approval. He has no gender gap. (One adviser half-jokingly remarks that female voters must like the idea of a former wild man domesticated by a good woman.) Democrats spent the summer debating whether even to field a candidate against him: doing so could raise turnout and endanger Democrats lower on the ticket. National Democrats, on the other hand, want to raise his negatives. That's because they fear him as a presidential candidate. If the polls are right, Bush would narrowly beat Al Gore if the election were held tomorrow. Bush can face the voters with a solid, if uninspiring, record of moderate conservatism. He has promoted adoption and parental rights. He has signed legislation recognizing Texans' right to carry concealed weapons. He delivered on his promises on tort reform and juvenile justice; and, under Bush, Texas performs a third of the nation's executions. Gov. Bush can take credit for the fact that the decline in crime rates that began under Gov. Richards has continued. [Point One: Bush, Sr. called himself a "moderate conservative" back in 1980, when most people weren't too comfortable with the unadorned label of "conservative." That all changed after Reagan won, of course. [Point Two: A major reason why crime rates began to fall in the 1980s and why the actual number of crimes has fallen in the 1990s is because the population is aging. A hugely disproportionate share of crimes is committed by young males. The youngest Baby Boomers reached the age of 25 in 1989, for instance. I haven't seen anyone do a regression analysis on crime rates, but I suspect that a second major reason crime has declined is because of the "get-tough attitudes" which began to drive policy at the federal level in the 1980s and at the state level starting in some places as early as the late 1970s, and in other places as late as the 1990s. So Ann Richards and Bush, Jr., may deserve some credit, but it's hard to say if they deserve much.] On welfare, Bush's performance has lacked luster. Texas's welfare caseload is falling, but no faster than the rest of the country's. Bush might have had more success had he won his public fight with the Clinton Administration over his proposal to privatize the system. But conservative welfare expert Robert Rector is skeptical: ``Why privatizing the administration of the liberals' welfare system is a big deal is something I've never understood at all. The problem with welfare is not that it's administered badly. It's that it rewards idleness and illegitimacy.'' Indeed, the governor's idea of creating centers where those on welfare could do ``one-stop shopping'' for state services could expand the reach of that system. Similarly, though the governor's efforts to involve faith-based institutions in welfare provision have drawn raves from religious conservatives, it is not clear whether their main effect will be to reform welfare or to corrupt those institutions. States like Wisconsin, where welfare rolls have fallen at twice the rate of Texas, have instead focused on work requirements. Texas doesn't have serious sanctions for shirkers, and as a result it failed to meet the federal requirement that 75 per cent of two-parent households on welfare work. Gov. Bush can claim more success on education, his ``number one priority.'' He has passed sweeping charter-school legislation. Respected education guru Chester Finn says he's ``pretty impressed'' by the governor: ``He seems to believe in what I believe in.'' On standards, he says, ``most states are in so much worse shape that Texas gets a B.'' Bush's limited voucher program, however, has been a failure, with few parents aware of it and fewer public schools cooperating. Bush's rhetoric on standards has been conservative: he focused public attention on the need for all third-graders to be literate before President Clinton adopted the theme, and lately he has taken to touting the advantages of phonics. But critics complain about his lack of follow-through: conservatives on the state board of education have been fighting other Republicans -- including the Bush-appointed heads of the Texas Education Agency and board of education -- on behalf of higher standards, and consequently taking abuse from the press for being Christian fanatics, with nary a peep from the governor. Last month, he had nothing to say when the state board approved a textbook dubbed ``Rainforest Algebra'' by its many critics, including Chris Patterson of the Texas Public Policy Foundation: ``Although 'Rainforest' has appealing artwork, tempting chili recipes, piercing political insights on environmental issues, and fascinating myths of baffling African astronomy fabricated by European anthropologists, this textbook contains little algebra. . . . [T]he very first page of the text advises students that creative thinking and teamwork are more important skills than calculation and computation.'' Republicans who are looking for someone to lead their party out of the wilderness on education issues will not find him in Texas. School finance led Bush to his biggest political defeat -- and, worse yet, on taxes, which are still the glue that holds the Republican coalition together. In 1989, the state Supreme Court held the state's school-funding system, based on local property taxes, unconstitutionally inequitable. The legislature's solution was to redistribute tax revenues from rich districts to poor ones. Suburban Republicans saw their tax bills skyrocket under the ``Robin Hood'' system. So when Gov. Bush saw the prospect of a $1-billion surplus, he jumped at the chance to solve the problem. He proposed to use the surplus to cut property taxes. But he also proposed a tax reform: a shift from property taxes, which he called ``a tax on the American dream of home ownership,'' to an array of consumption taxes and business taxes. THE substantive objection to the plan was that it would, over time, change the political landscape in a way that would make conservative policy goals harder to achieve. The proposal that the state provide the majority of school funding could only weaken local accountability. It's no accident that the states with high-achieving schools, like New Hampshire, rely on local funding. Yet Bush, in his 1997 State of the State speech, endorsed the key finding of the Supreme Court: that ``relying too much on local property taxes . . . is inherently unequal and unfair.'' He thus conceded the framing of the issue as how to spend ``everybody's'' money on ``everybody's'' children. A similar structural defect beset his tax policy. The highly visible, and therefore hard-to-raise, property tax would be cut; an array of less visible, and thus easy-to-raise, taxes would pick up the slack. Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, who ran $120,000 worth of radio ads attacking the plan, says that though it was a net tax cut, using ``a political dynamic analysis, taxes would have been higher in ten years.'' The Democrat-run State House promptly hijacked Bush's plan; Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform itemized 75 different tax hikes in the resulting bill. Gov. Bush lobbied for its passage anyway, arguing that the State Senate would fix it. The Senate tried, but no compromise was reached. So the governor settled for a straight property-tax cut of $1 billion, which works out to about $150 per household. That surplus could have been spent instead, and so Gov. Bush effectively blocked any resumption of his predecessor's spending spree. Not a bad final result -- if it is final; Bush let the tax-reform genie out of the bottle, and Democrats may have more than three wishes in the next legislative session. After a federal court nullified Texas's use of racial preferences in state college admissions, Bush signed a law designed to circumvent the ruling by entitling the top 10 per cent of each high school's graduating class to attend the University of Texas system (just as President Bush signed a law extending preferences after the Supreme Court rolled them back). And he ignored entreaties by Ward Connerly to declare his support for an anti-preference initiative in Houston when the mayor mangled its wording; the measure lost with 46 per cent of the vote last month. Conservatives have had other disappointments. Bush's administration has been the loudest in claiming a right to tax any commercial transaction on the Internet that has some connection to the state. He supported the creation of the ``Texas Healthy Kids Corporation,'' which will probably receive federal funds under the Hatch - Kennedy kidcare bill. Like his father, Bush eschews partisanship: Republicans have complained about some high-profile Democrats he has appointed, and conservatives about the ``movement types'' he hasn't (although he did name Wrenn Archer, son of Rep. Bill Archer, as Health Secretary). Still, not many conservatives in Texas are willing to criticize the governor, even off the record. Tom Pauken, until recently chairman of the state GOP, is an exception. A movement conservative, he was willing to blast Bush's tax plan in public. Cathie Adams, head of the state's Eagle Forum chapter, shares Pauken's view. And Republican committeewoman Susan Feldman says tartly, ``He's more conservative than Ann Richards.'' Garry Mauro, the Democrat who is running against Bush next year, argues that Bush's record includes some liabilities. Says spokesman Joe Cutbirth: ``People in Texas right now think Gov. Bush is a nice guy. But his support, all the research shows, may be broad but it's very very shallow.'' Mauro draws hope from the near-defeat of Gov. Christine Todd Whitman in New Jersey last month. She seemed unbeatable and drew national interest, too, but stumbled over consumer issues. Mauro plans to talk about car-insurance rates (though they're falling), the depredations of HMOs, and education. But the fact that Lieutenant Governor Bullock has crossed parties to endorse Bush suggests how likely Mauro is to succeed. Yet even some of Bush's fans wonder whether he's ready for the national stage. Oratory doesn't seem to run in the family, and the younger Bush reportedly tends to mispronounce words. His last two appearances in the national spotlight cast him in an unflattering light. The audience at the Midwest Republican conference in Indianapolis in August was underwhelmed by Bush's speech. And at the dedication of the Bush presidential library in November, the governor's remarks about how his father had ``brought dignity and character and honor to the White House'' were taken as an ill-timed rebuke to the man who beat his father. Bush's communications director, Karen Hughes, denies any such intent -- an explanation that at least suggests a tone-deafness toward the media. Which raises another issue: Gov. Bush doesn't have to deal in Texas with a press as liberal or as nasty as that in Washington, or indeed with as entrenched a liberal culture. How would he handle it in a national campaign, or in national office? AND how would he deal with his father's legacy? Norquist wants Republicans to hold the line on taxes: ``Bush's son cannot be a national figure until he has repudiated his father's tax increase, and demonstrated to the world that he has zero intention of doing anything so stupid and destructive.'' But by the next primary season, almost ten years will have passed since that tax increase. Memories may have faded. On the other hand, if Gov. Bush wastes time trying to rehabilitate his father's Administration, control of the past would become an independent reason for conservatives to oppose him. Another worry is summed up by the slogan, ``Personnel is policy.'' Would Gov. Bush take a ``No New Souters'' pledge? There are still a lot of Souters and Darmans in the party, and many of them will try to attach themselves like barnacles to the new-model USS Bush. Old Bush hands like Rich Bond and Ron Kaufman are already on board. One man who would surely play a role in a second Bush Administration is the governor's Svengali, Karl Rove, a ``political genius'' to friends and ``the Republican Dick Morris'' to foes -- or is it the other way around? Like many in the elder Bush's circle, Rove seems to have an unhealthy obsession with loyalty to his principal rather than to principle. When I called him, he immediately brought up a poem our editor had used to poke fun at the Bushes: ``George the First was always reckoned/Vile, but viler George the Second . . .'' Quoth Rove, ``That went beyond whimsical.'' If Bush decides to run for President, though, perhaps his biggest challenge will be to explain why he wants the job. So far, he has no signature issues. His self-description as a ``compassionate conservative'' is the same as that of his potential rival Rep. John Kasich (R., Ohio) -- and in Bush's case, it inevitably recalls his father's much-mocked promise of a ``kinder, gentler'' nation. Anything else? Bush often speaks of a ``cultural crisis'' and says, ``We need a spiritual renewal in America.'' The counterculture of the Sixties, when he went to college, genuinely repulsed him. At the Midwest Republican confab, he condemned ``the culture of many in my generation, a culture that said, 'If it feels good do it, and blame somebody else when you have a problem.''' The conservative intellectuals whom he has invited to speak to him and his staff -- Myron Magnet, James Q. Wilson, David Horowitz -- tend to specialize in opposing the legacy of Sixties left-liberalism. (Another difference between the two Bushes: the governor is more inquisitive.) Says Mrs. Hughes, ``He's in politics to change the culture.'' Bush is pro-life, with the standard exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. He failed in his effort to get a parental-notification bill through the legislature, but he succeeded in blocking a pro-euthanasia bill. Yet he wouldn't divide Republicans: Ann Stone of Republicans for Choice calls him ``a bridge-builder'' and takes comfort from his feud with Pauken, ``who was the great Satan to a lot of moderates.'' If he won the nomination, Bush would be a strong candidate in the general election. His personal charm is not to be underestimated. And his more conservative brother, Jeb, is favored to be governor of the fourth-largest state, Florida. Republican strategists also think that Bush's support for welfare for legal immigrants and the public education of the children of illegal immigrants, and his opposition to official-English laws would make it harder to tag him with the anti-Hispanic label. Indeed, Gov. Bush is probably the strongest, and most conservative, candidate the Republican establishment is likely to produce. As such, how conservatives evaluate Bush 2000 will depend on the extent to which they believe their movement has been absorbed by the Republican establishment. If they think it has largely been ensconced, many of them will go with Bush. What the country needs now, they will conclude, is the implementation of an existing center-right consensus rather than the creation of a new, more conservative one. In that case, they will find the combination of substantive conservatism and temperamental moderation quite attractive. If, on the other hand, they think that the party establishment's conservatism has been exaggerated, they will hold out for more. They will opt for building their movement through fighting, in the hope that they can either extract some concessions from the eventual nominee without alienating him -- or win outright. - Mr. Ponnuru is NR's national reporter.