It's his party

By David Frum ~ From The New York Times

WASHINGTON -- When George W. Bush took the oath of office two years ago, many people doubted that he would ever be able to govern effectively. During the campaign, an unprophetic pundit observed on TV, "One thing George Bush is going to have trouble asserting when he gets to office is that he's got a mandate for government." That unprophetic pundit was me. In the 24 months since Inauguration Day, Mr. Bush has made his own mandate. Today, Mr. Bush is more than a strong president: He dominates his own party in a way that few modern presidents ever have.

Unlike Lyndon B. Johnson (who was never trusted by Democratic liberals) or Dwight D. Eisenhower (who was only grudgingly tolerated by Republican conservatives), Mr. Bush has been accepted by all important Republican factions without so much as a squeak of public dissent. And while even Franklin D. Roosevelt was humiliated when he tried to get rid of some disobedient Democratic senators in the 1938 primaries, Mr. Bush pretty much fired the Senate majority leader without suffering so much as a bruise or a scratch himself.

This power enables Mr. Bush to do much more than just lead his party. It has enabled him to change it.

For those of us who believed in the more radical conservatism espoused by Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, Mr. Bush's softer Republicanism can often be difficult to adjust to. "Compassionate conservatism" sounded less like a philosophy than a marketing slogan: "The same ideological taste you love -- now with less controversy." But it was also true that with every passing election, Reagan-Gingrich conservatism seemed to be appealing less and less to the American people. The old conservative rhetoric was getting stale. Voters wanted something new. And at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000, something new was exactly what Mr. Bush promised to provide.

Halfway through his term, we can see what this new kind of Republicanism has turned out to be.

George Bush's party is less economically libertarian than the Republican Party of the 1980s and 1990s. Mr. Bush's tax cut, for example, was only one-third as large as Ronald Reagan's, relative to the size of the U.S. economy. And while Mr. Reagan's cut took effect in only three years, Mr. Bush's won't be complete for 10.

Similarly, Mr. Reagan's tax cut allowed all Americans to keep more of what they earned. By contrast, Mr. Bush's tax cut metes out its rewards according to family status rather than economic activity. For most middle-class Americans, the $500 increase in the per-child tax credit will be far more lucrative than the comparatively modest reduction in their income-tax rates.

There is no more talk of radical tax simplification and tax reform -- instead, the tax code continues to bulk up with benefits meant to encourage government-preferred activities like installing solar heating or attending community college. And there is not much talk of a deregulation agenda. After Enron, deregulation went out of style.

Ronald Reagan fought an unending, and ultimately unsuccessful, struggle against the growth of entitlements. Mr. Bush is presiding over the expansion of Medicaid into something that is coming to look more and more like a universal health insurance program. He uncomplainingly signed the biggest farm bill in history, jettisoned school vouchers to win his education bill and let his Social Security reform commission quietly expire.

The Bush administration remains largely a pro-growth, pro-free-enterprise administration. But just as Bill Clinton declared an end to the era of big government, so George W. Bush has put an end to the era of antigovernment. In the fight against government growth, he makes no promises to do more than hold the line.

If Mr. Bush has been much more cautious than Mr. Reagan on the economy, however, he has been far bolder on social issues.

In the months from his first State of the Union address until Sept. 11, Mr. Bush gave only one televised speech to the nation. It was his speech to explain his decision to ban most stem-cell research.

Stem-cell research contemplates the cloning -- and destruction -- of human embryos. For religious conservatives, it represents a horrifying industrialization of abortion. At the same time, stem-cell research offers correspondingly large benefits: The possibility of treatments for horrific diseases, replacements for damaged human organs, conceivably even the halting of the aging process.

Many Republicans offer the pro-life movement rhetorical tributes. Mr. Bush has brought the concerns of religious conservatives in from the periphery of American politics to its center. His stem-cell policy is the biggest political victory the pro-life movement has had in years. More significantly, he delivered that victory without alienating or frightening those Americans who are not pro-life.

Mr. Bush has found a new language on social issues, one that stresses the commonalities between the religious and the secular. He has kept his distance from anything that might seem censorious, avoiding mention, for example, of the debate over civil unions for gay couples and carefully inserting the words "and of none" after his references to "good people of all faiths." In the 19th century, the Republican Party was defined by region. It was the North against the South. In the 20th century, it became a party defined by class -- the white-collar middle class as opposed to the poor and the metropolitan rich. Under George W. Bush, the party in the 21st century is on its way to becoming a party defined by faith. In 2000, Mr. Bush beat Vice President Al Gore among people who attend church at least once a week by a margin of 57 percent to 40 percent. The margin was 25 percent larger than his margin of victory among those who earn more than $100,000 a year.

Yet of all the ways that Mr. Bush is changing his party, none is as profound or as surprising as the change he has made in its foreign policy. Republicans returned to office in 2000 fed up with the random do-goodery of the Clinton years. As a candidate, Mr. Bush promised a "humble" foreign policy. Today, a quarter of a million American and allied troops are unhumbly poised to topple the Iraqi regime.

Critics of the president's Iraq policy warn that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein could destabilize the entire Arab world, including allies like Saudi Arabia. That, presumably, is an outcome Mr. Bush would wish to avoid. But on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush pledged to defeat not just the terrorist organizations that had attacked the United States, but also the states that sponsor and shelter terrorists. That commitment has drawn him toward conflict with many of those same Arab allies.

It sometimes seemed to me, as I watched the debate between the administration's hawks and doves from the inside, that I was witnessing a reprise of the great strategic debates of the Civil War. Back then, official Washington was divided between the realists, who wanted to fight the smallest possible war in order (as they said) to save the Union as it was, and the idealists, who sought the biggest possible victory, even if it meant smashing the old order in the South forever. Today's realists, like their 19th-century counterparts, are more frightened of change than they are of defeat.

At every step, President Bush has opted for the course that offers the hope of a bigger victory -- even at the price of a wider war. Surprisingly, the Republican Party has followed. And so the president who once talked of scaling back America's overseas commitments now finds himself crusading for democracy not only in Iraq, but also for the entire Arab world.

Republicans usually like to see themselves as steely realists. Foreign-policy realism is the tradition from which President Bush and his top foreign-policy advisers have come. But under the pressure of war, Mr. Bush has found what the great American presidents have believed: that American principles are as "real" as ships and armies and wealth. It's not just Mr. Bush's party that is changing. It is Mr. Bush himself.

David Frum, a presidential speech writer from 2001 to 2002, is author of the forthcoming "The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush."