The Fall of George W Bush

(1) George W Bush’s popularity is falling faster than the New England leaves.  His approval rating has just dropped below 40% and it’s still going down.  You can’t open a newspaper without sensing the hostility towards America’s 43rd President.  And it’s not the usual suspects that are most upset.  The left-of-centre MooreOn Tendency can always be relied upon to slate President Bush but today’s anger is coming from the religious conservatives, The Wall Street Journal and the Republican-controlled Senate.  How did this happen?

(2) Something seems to have gone wrong with the White House’s political antennae.  I spent a week in America at the end of September.  It was obvious that America's powerful conservative movement was already close to boiling point.  They were unhappy at incompetence in Iraq, at the Republican Congress’ failure to control spending, and the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina.  George W Bush was disappointing them but it appeared clear that he could stop the dam from bursting by appointing a constitutional conservative to America’s Supreme Court.  In replacing the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist with John Roberts – one conservative for another - the President had done as he had promised on the campaign trail.  But the person he would nominate to replace Justice O’Connor was always going to be more important.  Sandra Day O’Connor had been the Court’s swing vote on controversial cases.  Replacing her with a conservative could tip the Court away from the judicial activism that gave birth to the modern conservative movement.

(3) The modern conservative movement was born in the 1970s.  The Supreme Court's 1973 decision to legalise abortion in the infamous Roe Versus Wade decision shocked Christian America.  Pro-abortionists, who had failed to progress at the ballot box, had secured their goals by a back door ruling of America's nine most senior judges.  Since then judges have made other decisions on religious freedom, positive discrimination and gay rights that have angered and then mobilised conservatives.  A president's judicial appointments have become central to American politics.  Hopes of producing a more conservative and less activist Supreme Court helped bring the record number of evangelical and Catholic Christians to the polls last November, when George W Bush was re-elected.  A constitutionally-conservative Supreme Court nominee could guarantee the allegiance of the Republican Party's socially conservative base for a generation.  The wrong nomination could poison the relationship for at least as a long.  Enter Harriet Miers...         

(4) If Katrina, "a lady with no known politics", had ruined George W Bush's September - Harriet Miers, a lady with unknown legal credentials, has ruined his October.   The WSJ described her as the faith-based nominee: "when it comes to the judicial philosophy that she would bring to the Supreme Court, she is a blank public slate".  Ms Miers had become White House Counsel  because she worked closely with Governor Bush when they were both in Texas.  Ms Miers is one of a significant number of Texans who Bush took with him to Washington.  Some are more equipped for their posts than others but there has been almost universal agreement that Ms Miers appears unqualified for her nation's Supreme Court.  Faced with growing anger from religious conservatives that Mr Bush had promised to nominate justices in the tradition of Scalia and Thomas the White House responded by pointing to Ms Miers' evangelical faith.  This has proved a counterproductive strategy - undercutting "Republican claims to believe in process - rather than results-orientated jurispridence" (WSJ).

(5) George W Bush has also come under fire for his failure to deliver on his signature idea - compasssionate conservatism.  Senator Rick Santorum, the idea's leading Senate champion recently conceded: "Ironically, for all of the chatter about it during the last number of years it is still an emerging philosophy. It hasn’t ever been tried as a governing philosophy. From one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other, Republican passion for compassionate conservatism has waned as other “more pressing matters” took over. For some this lack of action has meant discouragement and for others it has meant cynicism."  My own reflection on George W Bush's record came in my November 2004 paper, 'Whatever happened to compassionate conservatism?'

(6) How can George W Bush reverse his fall from grace?  Daniel Henninger, used the pages of the Wall Street Journal (American conservatism's most important newspaper), to suggest a four point strategy to reverse President Bush's decline:

• First of all should be the withdrawal of Harriet Miers and her replacement with a nominee of impeccable legal credentials.
• Second should be a visit to Baghdad: "After 22 months served, these troops deserve a major visit from their commander in chief... By going to Iraq, Mr. Bush would revive the people who rallied to his cause--and who stayed with him--after his speech to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001. He would give heart and hope to incipient democrats in Iraq and across the Middle East. This can't happen from behind a desk at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."
• Third President Bush should replace Alan Greenspan with a supply-sider who shares the outgoing Fed Chairman's view that tax relief helps growth and jobs.
• Fourth President Bush must put a brake on federal spending.

(7) It would be easy to produce a much longer list than Mr Henninger's.  Mine would begin with the need for a much better communications strategy.  Many Republicans have never understood Mr Bush's positive embrace of government for conservative ends.  When he became the Republican nominee for President in 2000 his party was at a low ebb.  The Gingrich Republicans had been losing seats ever since 1994's Contract With America. The anti-government rhetoric of the 1994 revolutionaries had been rejected.  George W Bush promised to use government to "help people improve their lives, not run their lives".  He needs to do a much better job at explaining this philosophy as well as getting rid of the pork that has fattened government during the Tom DeLay years.  As Jonah Goldberg has written: "I have been critical of Bush's big-government conservatism for years. So I'm not entirely displeased by the venom being unleashed at that aspect of his presidency. However, Bush ran as a big-government conservative. And it's not fair to call our own buyer's remorse a betrayal by the seller."

(8) A crack-up in the conservative coalition has undoubtedly been hastened by Katrina and Harriet but some have known that it was always likely to come at some point.  Some small state fundamentalists want to starve government of resources; others want to use government for nation-building overseas and compassionate programmes at home.  Some homeland security conservatives want much less immigration; pro-business conservatives want the dynamism that comes from immigration.  Libertarian conservatives want to embrace social and cultural change; religious conservatives want policies towards abortion, pornography and the family that reflect their values.  The post-9/11 crisis united the once warring members of the conservative coalition.  It was always unlikely to be a permanent peace without bold and clear leadership.

(9) None of this means that America's 43rd President has failed overall.  Three achievements stand out: (1) His tax cuts restarted America's and the world's economy.  They helped to boost revenues.  The budget deficit has reflected a failure to even once veto congressional spending splurges.  (2) His compassionate conservatism has not enjoyed many legislative successes but his cultural (bully pulpit) leadership on the issue has reminded many feed-and-forget Americans of their personal responsibilities to the needy.   (3) His support for pre-emptive action against rogue nations has taught every despotic regime that support for terrorism will no longer be tolerated by the world's policeman.  As Quin Hillyer observes there is much to be proud of in today's Iraq.

(10) As we watch from Britain there are many lessons for us to learn.  The biggest lesson is, perhaps, to remember to 'dance with the one who brung ya'.  George W Bush has upset his previously most loyal supporters.  They are the infantrymen of the conservative infrastructure who get-out-the-vote and raise funds for the Republican Party.  GWB may not have to face the voters again but many other Republicans have a date with voters next November.   If nothing changes it's not looking pretty.

Comments

[Bruce]

The city of Washington, DC, is surrounded by a "Beltway" of expressways. The term "Beltway opinion" has come to mean opinion in the insular capital, isolated from the rest of the country, opinion heavily influence by the local newspaper (the hopelessly Liberal Washington Post) and by pundits looking for a headline. The above article is classic "Beltway" speak. In the real America, the 99% of America outside the Beltway, Republicans are (according to the latest polls) poised to take back the governorship of Virginia, and are close to an upset in the governor's race in heavily Democrat New Jersey. The Tory Party would kill to have such a "crackup".

[john]

Bruce,
True, but there is real anger over the issues above among the rank and file. Out here in the sticks, I do think that people are not entirely pleased with Republican leadership, and with Bush. With elections running as close as they are lately, I think that Bush would be wise to take action to shore up support particularly among fiscal conservatives and those concerned about immigration.