"A TRANSFORMATIVE FIGURE IN THE HISTORY OF THE MODERN CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT."
(original title).
Here is a defense of the President's domestic program from inside the White House:
President Bush has had a profound influence on America's national security doctrine. He is not only prosecuting an unprecedented campaign to capture or kill terrorists and destroy terrorist organizations; the President has also said that any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. President Bush is the first President since John F. Kennedy to articulate the doctrine of preemption (President Kennedy did so in his October 22, 1962 speech on the Cuban Missile Crisis). And the President has broken with six decades of American foreign policy in pursuing a strategy to spread liberty to the Middle East. These acts constitute what The Economist magazine refers to as President Bush's "foreign policy revolution."
But these endeavors should not overshadow the President's enormously consequential domestic agenda. In the words of University of Virginia professor James Ceaser, "Bush has pushed a velvet revolution in Republican domestic policy..." Rather than recount here all that has been achieved in the last four years, let me briefly address what more President Bush intends to do. Because if he wins re-election, President Bush will make enormous contributions to modern conservatism.
In his September 2 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, President Bush made the case that many of our most fundamental systems -- the tax code, health care coverage, pension plans, and worker training -- were created for an era long since passed. The President is committed to transforming these systems so citizens are better equipped and better prepared to make their own choices and pursue their own dreams. "Whatever else it does," Business Week wrote, "Bush's throwing down the gauntlet will open one of the more striking debates of the campaign. That's because there's a philosophical gulf between liberals' evocations of social equity and the comfort of a government helping hand vs. conservatives' paeans to individualism and entrepreneurship."
The philosophical underpinning of what President Bush calls the "ownership society" is to provide Americans with a path to greater opportunity, more freedom, and more control over their own lives. This young century will be liberty's century, the President has said, and here at home we will extend the frontiers of freedom. And so the President has embraced the ideas of voluntary personal accounts in which younger workers may save some of their Social Security taxes in order to build a nest egg for retirement and strengthen Social Security; lifetime savings accounts that would allow every American to save as much as $7,500 a year and shield from taxation the investment returns on those savings; health savings accounts, tax-free accounts designed to help individuals save for health expenses; and tax credits for low-income families and individuals to purchase health insurance. The President has also pledged to reform the current tax code, which he calls "a complicated mess." The President wants a new tax code that is simpler, fairer, and more pro-growth. Homeownership in America is at an all-time high (so is minority homeownership) -- and the President will build on that achievement. And in almost every realm -- education, the federal civil service system, drug treatment programs, foreign aid, and much else -- the President is tying public spending to competition and accountability.
All of this is a sharp and necessary break with contemporary liberalism -- and it fundamentally recasts the domestic policy debate in a way that advances conservative principles. One of the core questions of political philosophy has to do with the habits that government encourages among the polity. Contemporary liberalism and the modern Democratic Party embraced policies that led to dependency and an entitlement mentality. The aim of the President's policies is to do the opposite: encourage self-reliance and provide greater opportunity. He believes government should promote market reforms and strengthen liberty -- and underlying all of this is the belief that government must begin with the proper conception of the individual. Government's default position should not be to view citizens as wards of the state, but rather as responsible and independent, self-sufficient and upright. The President's agenda is an extremely ambitious one -- but to once again quote The Economist, "Mr. Bush is nothing if not ambitious. If his new philosophy endures, he will be a transformative figure in the history of the modern conservative movement."
The closest analogue to what President Bush is attempting to do with his emphasis on an "ownership society" may be found in the policies of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In her remarkable 1992 book The Anatomy of Thatcherism, the political philosopher Shirley Robin Letwin wrote this:
"... the Thatcherite argues that being one's own master -- in the sense of owning one's own home or disposing of one's own property -- provides an incentive to think differently about the world... A Thatcherite, whilst not believing that patterns of ownership absolutely determine people's moral attitudes, nevertheless stresses that the two are connected, and sees in wider individual ownership a useful means of promoting the moral attitudes that Thatcherism seeks to cultivate [what Letwin called 'the vigorous virtues']. Nor is it only independence and self-sufficiency which the Thatcherite hopes to encourage by means of wider ownership. Personal energy and adventurousness, critical components of the vigorous virtues -- are also believed by the Thatcherite to be encouraged by wider ownership."
For everything there is a season. At some points in history, the role of conservatism has been to be reactive and to "stand athwart history yelling 'stop.'" At other times, the role of conservatism is to be pro-active, energetic, and optimistic -- to shape history rather than to impede it. This is clearly a history-shaping moment. Conservatism is the dominant political philosophy of this new century. President George W. Bush is making significant contributions to it -- and there is more to come.
Stay tuned.
