June 15, 2004

George Bush -- The Anti-Reagan. Jonah Goldberg has the goods. Quotable: "The first rule of politics is that you have to say what you believe before you do anything about it ..

.. Discussing the importance of dogma, William F. Buckley wrote in 1964, "If our society seriously wondered whether or not to denationalize the lighthouses, it would not wonder at all whether to nationalize the medical profession." Reagan's rhetoric and actions moved America closer to a country where we argue about denationalizing lighthouses. George W. Bush's rhetoric and actions are moving us in the opposite direction. Last Labor Day, George W. Bush told a crowd, "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." Reagan would never had said something like that ..

.. the first President Bush believed, as he put it in his first inaugural speech, that America had "more will than wallet." The current President Bush has lots of will and a wallet full of credit cards. On the domestic side, Bush has asserted that the federal government has a central role in education � once a local concern � and he's backed that up with a 60 percent increase in federal funding. He's created a new Cabinet agency, massively expanded entitlements in the form of a prescription drug benefit and asked for a major new commitment by the federal government to insert itself into everything from religious charities to marriage counseling ..

.. at minimum, Bush seems to have abandoned the rhetorical high ground. Reagan declared that government wasn't the solution, it was the problem. In countless ways, Bush has been saying the reverse. And once you concede that the "government has to move" every time "somebody" hurts, you've pretty much abandoned your dogma and picked up the opposition's. What makes things even worse is that while Bush may be good and decent and unfairly criticized for a host of things, he's a terrible spokesman for conservative principles. One cannot listen to four decades of Reagan speeches and off-the-cuff remarks and not be amazed by the man's ability to enunciate a coherent philosophy. Bush gives some excellent written remarks, but off the cuff he can make even sympathetic listeners cringe .. ". Posted by Greg Ransom | TrackBack