[Mb-civic] An article for you from Michael Butler.

Sun Mar 19 14:27:12 PST 2006

- AN ARTICLE FOR YOU, FROM ECONOMIST.COM -

Dear civic,

Michael Butler (michael at intrafi.com) wants you to see this article on Economist.com.

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THE BUSH LEGACY
Mar 16th 2006  

It may last a lot longer than you think

GEORGE BUSH still has just over a thousand days left in the White
House--about as long as the Kennedy presidency. Yet as far as many
people are concerned he's halfway out of the door. Republicans in
Congress have started breaking ranks, most spectacularly over foreign
(ie, Arab) ownership of American ports; conservative intellectuals have
started lobbing hand grenades (the venerable William Buckley recently
branded the Iraq war a "failure"); and would-be successors have started
measuring the White House curtains. 

None of which is surprising. Mr Bush's poll numbers are dismal. The
White House staff is accident-prone (one recently departed domestic
adviser just got arrested for shoplifting). And presidential campaigns
have to start early when the entry ticket costs $100m. But anyone who
thinks that the Bush era is over should pick up a biography of Ronald
Reagan. 

In 1987 the NATIONAL JOURNAL--the bible of the Beltway crowd--ran the
headline "Reagan now viewed as an irrelevant president". The failure to
get Robert Bork onto the Supreme Court, the stockmarket crash, the
Iran-contra affair, Reagan's advanced age--all bespoke irrelevance. Yet
Reagan not only went on to regalvanise his presidency with a
foreign-policy coup (the end of the cold war, more or less); he also
became a "consequential president"--a man with a substantial legacy. Mr
Bush looks unlikely to pull off a coup of Reaganesque proportions. But
he is still shaping policy aggressively on all sorts of fronts--and his
legacy could be much bigger than people realise. 

This is partly because the White House is still doing a lot of
conservatism by stealth. The NEW YORK TIMES recently pointed out that,
behind the scenes, the administration is continuing to make steady
advances--particularly through its control over powerful executive
agencies. The Food and Drug Administration is holding up
over-the-counter sales of the "morning-after pill". The Environmental
Protection Agency is delaying green projects by insisting on
cost-benefit analyses. And the Bureau of Land Management is making it
easier to drill for oil and gas on public lands. Across the nation
feminists and greens are hopping mad, whilst oilmen are punching holes
in the virgin soil: what could be more conservative than that?

Looking at the broader picture, Mr Bush's critics tend to see his
legacy entirely in negative terms. They have a point. Whoever succeeds
him will have to clean up not just Iraq but the deficit. In fiscal
terms, moving into the White House in 2009 will be like inheriting a
mansion from a drunk uncle: it's a nice house, but the roof is falling
in and there's nothing in the bank. But if you can force yourself to
look beyond the administration's proven incompetence, Mr Bush has also
done more positive things to steer his successor's hand both at home
and abroad.

 Abroad, even allowing for the disaster in Iraq, something will surely
survive of the Bush doctrine. Future presidents may not want to rush
into pre-emptive attempts to democratise the Middle East. But America
will continue to be hyper-sensitive to the potential nexus between
terrorist groups and WMD. It will continue to engage in a complex
struggle with radical Islam. And it will continue to be the world's de
facto policeman. The biggest challenge facing Mr Bush's successors will
not be to junk his foreign policy but to tame it and implement it more
competently. 

At home, Mr Bush's legacy in domestic policy will be more than just red
ink. His No Child Left Behind Act, which tries to introduce
accountability in public education by measuring performance and
punishing failure, is likely to survive his departure, if only because
it draws on ideas with bipartisan support. Mr Bush has also helped
promote school vouchers. One scheme provides $70m to send 1,700
Washingtonians to private, mainly religious schools for the next five
years; Congress has also passed a $500m voucher scheme for the victims
of Hurricane Katrina. Any Democrat running for president will doubtless
criticise these programmes (to suck up to teachers' unions); but it
will be hard to axe them without a fuss from thousands of poor parents. 

Mr Bush has also changed the judiciary dramatically--not just by
appointing John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court but also
by filling about a quarter of the places on federal appeals courts with
conservatives. You can quibble with this achievement. Mr Bush had
plenty of help: the conservative movement has been minting little
Robertses and Alitos for 40 years. It is also true that he took an
unfortunate diversion, signposted Harriet Miers. And Messrs Roberts and
Alito may turn out to be less conservative than people think. But the
betting is that Mr Bush has reshaped the judiciary for a generation.

GEORGE AND KARL'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE
Finally, there is the political legacy. Mr Bush and his main political
adviser, Karl Rove, hit on a political formula that succeeded in
holding the right together while appealing to just enough moderates to
win elections. Small-government conservatives resent his spending, but
cutting middle-class entitlements (alas) guarantees electoral failure.
Fiscal conservatives resent his deficits, but middle Americans love
their tax cuts (the Democrats may condemn his tax cuts as being sops
for the rich, but they have also voted to prolong some of his
"temporary" cuts). Libertarians resent Mr Bush's social conservatism,
but libertarianism is a philosophy for the salons, not suburban living
rooms. Paleo-conservatives regard him as a wuss on immigration, but the
Republicans would be insane to alienate Latinos. None of this is
pretty, not much of it is principled, but it works.

The Bush formula will be picked apart over the next thousand
days--especially if the White House stumbles on from disaster to
disaster. But any Republican who wants to put together a ruling
government coalition will find that they have no choice but to put the
formula back together.

See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5636311

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