Fred Barnes Labels Bush

A 'Big Government Conservatism'

The case for Mr. Bush's conservatism is strong. Sure, some conservatives are upset because he has tolerated a surge in federal spending, downplayed swollen deficits, failed to use his veto, created a vast Department of Homeland Security, and fashioned an alliance of sorts with Teddy Kennedy on education and Medicare. But the real gripe is that Mr. Bush isn't their kind of conventional conservative. Rather, he's a big government conservative. This isn't a description he or other prominent conservatives willingly embrace. It makes them sound as if they aren't conservatives at all. But they are. They simply believe in using what would normally be seen as liberal means--activist government--for conservative ends. And they're willing to spend more and increase the size of government in the process.

Being a big government conservative doesn't bring Mr. Bush close to being a moderate, much less a liberal. On most issues, his position is standard conservative: a pro-lifer who expects to sign a ban on partial birth abortion, he's against stem-cell research and gun control, and has drawn the line at gay marriage. His judicial nominees are so uniformly conservative that liberals are furious.

On taxes, Mr. Bush is a supply-sider. He's gotten large tax cuts that would have slashed even deeper if a few moderate Republicans hadn't balked. His interventionist foreign policy has near unanimous support among conservatives. His backing of tough internal measures against potential terrorists has riled civil libertarians but pleased most conservatives.

This is another nail in the coffin of the standard "Left <--- Centrist ---> Right" model of politics, which has grown progressively useless over time. But only in the current sense of the phrase. A much deeper reading that I use places people on a line, with authoritarianism and collectivism on the left and individual freedom on the right. Using this scale, the desired outcome of government policy is practially irrelevant: it's the means used to achieve it that matter. And with increasing irritation and depression, I've come to realize the vast majority of people prefer the left end of the scale. Bush is no different, he's just more to the right than most. It's a question of relative value.

The essence of Mr. Bush's big government conservatism is a trade-off. To gain free-market reforms and expand individual choice, he's willing to broaden programs and increase spending. Thus his aim in proposing to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare is to reform the entire health-care system for seniors. True, the drug benefit would be the biggest new entitlement in 40 years. But if paired with reforms that lure seniors away from Medicare and into private health insurance, Mr. Bush sees the benefit as an affordable (and very popular) price to pay. Mr. Bush earlier wanted to go further, requiring seniors to switch to private health insurance to be eligible for the drug benefit. He dropped the requirement when queasy congressional Republicans balked. Now it's uncertain whether Congress will pass a Medicare bill with sufficient market incentives to justify Mr. Bush's approval. Should he sign a measure without significant reforms, he won't be acting as a big government conservative.

It's all just so unintegrated it's annoying. The principle, as Mr. Barnes reveals in this passage

When I coined the phrase "big government conservative" years ago, I had certain traits in mind. Mr. Bush has all of them. First, he's realistic. He understands why Mr. Reagan failed to reduce the size of the federal government and why Newt Gingrich and the GOP revolutionaries failed as well. The reason: People like big government so long as it's not a huge drag on the economy. So Mr. Bush abandoned the all-but-hopeless fight that Mr. Reagan and conservatives on Capitol Hill had waged to jettison the Department of Education. Instead, he's opted to infuse the department with conservative goals.

...is ultimately a form of utilitarianism, the principle without principles. Then again, it's hard to assume Bush was every much of a limited government type anyway. His social stances certainly don't convey that image.

Link from the comments in a post on The Light of Reason by Chris Sciabarra.

Posted by Drizzten at August 18, 2003 09:28 PM