He can't help it

By John Burke
web posted April 8, 2002

Remember the parable of The Scorpion and The Frog? It's the
story of the venomous and inveterately aggressive arachnid who
asked the cautious and appropriately skeptical amphibian to give
him a ride across a river.

"But what if you sting me?" asked The Frog.

"Why would I want to do that? Since I cannot swim, then we
would both die," replied The Scorpion.

Reassured by The Scorpion's logic, The Frog agreed to give him
a ride. But at mid-passage across the river, The Frog felt the
deadly sting of The Scorpion's tail.

Before succumbing, The Frog asked, "Why did you sting me?"

The Scorpion replied "Ahh, because it's my nature. I am, after
all, a scorpion."

Many conservatives and libertarians may empathize with The
Frog, as they too are feeling the sting of several policy decisions
made by President George W. Bush, all antagonistic to their core
convictions.

In the hope of shoring up his political support in steel-producing
states such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia, President Bush
has imposed steel import tariffs. While saving few jobs, these
duties will raise prices of steel-intensive products used by all
Americans. Encouraging retaliatory actions by foreign
governments, the tariff also threatens to provoke an economically
destructive trade war. Bush's free-trade supporters are
predictably alienated.

For fear of being perceived as a shill for special interests, and in
the hope of stealing the thunder of his political nemesis John
McCain, Bush has reversed his earlier opposition to campaign
finance reform, and quietly signed the McCain-Feingold Bill. This
in spite of the bill's -- now the law's -- pernicious, and surely
unconstitutional, restrictions on both freedom of speech and
political competition

Eager to be seen "doing something" about a dysfunctional public
school system, Dubya sought the dubious backing of Senator
Kennedy for his education bill. The resulting compromise
sacrificed The President's already tepid commitment to
educational choice in exchange for legislation that spends still
more federal funds with only an uncertain promise that
"standards of accountability" will, somehow, bring about better
student attainments.

To all these recent breaches of faith must be added last year's
tax package. Seemingly designed only to allow the President to
lay claim to having "cut taxes", the resulting abatements were
trifling in their size, tardy in their enactment, anemic in their
economic effect, and, since they are only scheduled to last until
the end of 2010, ephemeral besides. The Bush tax cut is seen by
many conservatives and libertarians as a disappointment, if not a
travesty.

You may wonder: why the President would betray the principles
he professes to uphold, and, as a result, alienating a loyal base of
support he surely does need?

No need to wonder. The President can't help himself. It's his
nature. He is, after all, a Bush.

His father, the former President George H.W. Bush, engaged in
similar accommodations. There were his expansions in funding
for many domestic programs, such as Head Start. There were
his endorsements for meddlesome regulatory initiatives such as
the Americans with Disabilities Act. All this allowed The Elder
Bush to take a philanthropic pose, while doing little besides
increasing litigation, bureaucratic intrusiveness, and federal
spending. The resulting fiscal strains combined with a recession
and the war in the Persian Gulf to encourage the former
President in his most infamous betrayal of all: The breach of his
"no new taxes" pledge. This alienated him from his conservative
base, and, more than anything else, helped make him the failed,
one-term president he soon became.

But no matter. For it was in The Elder Bush's nature to regard
principles of minimalist government with embarrassment. After
all, ideological fealty interfered with what his New England
patrician upbringing told him was a more noble purpose he was
obliged to pursue: Cooperation with his politically more-
aggressive opponents, and their compassionate-sounding
agendas. His privileged birth made him too guilt-ridden, and too
conflict-adverse, to do otherwise.

The father seems to have raised his son, Dubya, to be similarly
dismissive of limited government precepts whenever these might
obstruct what-he-takes-to-be pragmatism. For the Younger
Bush and his team of political manipulators, pragmatism seems to
be defined by this strategy: (1) Hold onto the War On
Terrorism-induced near-universal popularity Dubya enjoys by
supporting positions which, though substantively flawed, are
superficially appealing to the broader, ideologically indifferent,
public; (2) Coerce those more politically-principled supporters
alienated by such adulterated expediencies with this threat: If you
are foolish enough to oppose this popular President, you will risk
either (a) embarrassing yourselves if you fail to unseat him, or,
(b) electing as President a Democrat even worse than he, should
you, perchance, succeed in deposing him.

In all this, The Younger Bush gambles that ideas have no
consequences: That by compromising or abandoning minimalist
political doctrines, he will do no discernable harm to either the
nation, or to himself. The President wagers his tariff will let him
take the credit for saving steel worker's jobs, while escaping the
blame for its inevitably upward pressure on steel prices, as well
as the possible trade war it might provoke. By not vetoing
McCain-Feingold, Bush hopes to be seen as as a courageous
champion of the public interest, while avoiding being recognized
as a political opportunist faithful neither to his own past position
on campaign finance reform nor to the Constitution he has sworn
to preserve, protect and defend. By abandoning school choice in
return for Ted Kennedy's endorsement of his education bill,
Dubya hopes to be praised for addressing the problems of the
public schools, while evading condemnation for his failure to
insist upon what is necessary to actually solve these problems.
By sponsoring a tax reduction so small, gradual, and temporary
that it functions more as a political token than as serious fiscal
policy, the President makes a bid at winning a reputation as a
tax-cutter -- a very stingy bid.

In making this wager that principles don't really matter in politics,
Bush the Younger also ignores the experience of his father. By
endorsing heedless spending and regulation, and then reneging on
his promise not to raise taxes in an attempt to bring down the
deficit, Bush the Elder became politically-blameworthy not only
for economic under-performance but also for political duplicity.
The broad, but shallow, political support he gained as a result of
successful prosecution of the Gulf War rapidly eroded.
Unbuoyed by his conservative and libertarian political base made
skeptical of the worth of his words, The Elder Bush's re-election
drowned in humiliating defeat.

By emulating his father's heedless abandonment of the precepts
of limited government while disregarding its disastrous outcome,
The Younger Bush seeks to be pragmatic, but risks failure
instead. By disregarding the simple truth that ideas indeed have
consequences, Dubya may well confront another truth:
Abandoning ideas whose faithful application will likely have
successful consequences merely for the sake of trying to be
popular is apt to result in failure, and failure is never popular.

But no matter. The President can't help himself. Unprincipled
accommodation is his nature. He is, after all, a Bush.

This is John Burke's (2privatus@attbi.com) first contribution to
Enter Stage Right.

Enter Stage Right - http://www.enterstageright.com