Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America
and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy
by Bruce Bartlett
(Doubleday, 310 pages, $26)
So many books devoted to disparaging President Bush have been
published over the last five years that these screeds may now
qualify as their own literary genre. Two things set Bruce
Bartlett's recently released Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America
and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy apart. The first is that the
author is a bona fide conservative
Republican and self-described Reaganite. The second is that
Bartlett actually
gave up a $172,000-a-year job to write it.
Bartlett doesn't see Bush as the crazed right-wing ideologue of
liberal fantasy, although he does share the left's supposition that
the Oval Office is located dangerously outside the reality-based community. Instead the veteran of
two Republican administrations sets out to make the case that the
current president is no conservative at all.
In a political culture that files everyone into neat little red
and blue boxes, this might seem farfetched. Yet however one may
describe the creation of the largest new entitlement program since
the Great Society, an expanded federal role in education, the
transformation of record surpluses into budget deficits, and
discretionary spending binges that break records set under Lyndon Johnson, "conservative"
is not the adjective that first comes to mind.
To Bartlett, this budget-busting isn't merely a blemish on
Bush's record to be weighed against tax cuts or the partial-birth
abortion ban. Instead he argues that these deviations from
conservative orthodoxy are central to the Bush administration's
approach to governing, indicating that the president is a "pretend
conservative" who "often looks first to government to solve
societal problems without considering other options."
Throughout Impostor Bush is compared to his
predecessors, and the results are seldom flattering. The chapter
titles ask whether Bush has pursued the worst trade policies since
Herbert Hoover and if he is another Richard Nixon. "On the budget,"
Bartlett writes, "Clinton was better." It stings but he has a point
-- discretionary spending has grown twice as fast under Bush as
during Bill Clinton's presidency.
But the Nixon analogy is a larger component of Bartlett's
conservative case against Bush. The 37th president's supporters
were foreign-policy hawks and silent majority moral
traditionalists, but Nixon's domestic record was often
breathtakingly liberal: wage and price controls, Social Security
cost-of-living adjustments that ballooned government spending, the
Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, and expanded affirmative action.
Nixon was nevertheless despised by his liberal contemporaries
and beloved by many people whose conservatism was more cultural
than ideological. Bartlett describes him as "a man who used the
right to pursue his agenda, but was never really part of it," and
puts Bush in the same category. Most conservatives are not likely
to go that far, but they increasingly share many of the concerns
that animate Impostor.
Federal spending is up, not just on national defense and
homeland security but in almost every category. Real non-defense
discretionary spending has surged 27.9 percent without a single
Bush veto. The No Child Left Behind Act has helped drive a 137
percent increase in education spending. Unreformed entitlement
programs continue to grow, now consuming 10.8 percent of GDP. The
Medicare prescription drug benefit -- which Bartlett decries as the
"worst legislation in history" and is clearly one of the major
reasons Impostor was written -- added another $18 trillion
to the system's $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
Any conservative who ever believed Bush was going to enlist in
small-government causes, however, simply wasn't paying attention.
He did not run as a budget-cutter in 2000. Instead he proposed new
programs and criticized Gingrich-style Republicans for trying to
"balance the budget on the backs of the poor." Bush has only railed
against big government while in the process of criticizing
Democratic general-election opponents.
Most conservatives were willing to overlook Bush's softness on
spending (among other issues) in the hopes that he would deliver on
taxes, free-market entitlement reform, and judicial nominations.
After 9/11, national security through the war on terror was added
to that list.
It's always been an uneasy bargain, which is why conservatives
have been outraged at times when Bush appeared to fall short. Think
of the right's response to Harriet Miers (a sign of wobbliness on
judges) and the Dubai Ports World Deal (perceived wobbliness on
national security).
Bartlett dabbles in criticism of Bush on many fronts, ranging
from Iraq to the president's management style, with varying degrees
of effectiveness. But he is strongest when he argues that the Bush
bargain hasn't paid off for economic conservatives. Social Security
reform is stalled; Medicare's financial picture has been worsened;
even the tax cuts are in danger if spending levels continue their
dizzying ascent.
We have been here before. The failure to curb federal spending
during the 1980s eroded public support for the Reagan tax cuts and
contributed to their partial reversal. The problem is even more
acute today since Bush's tax cuts are scheduled to expire unless
Congress acts to extend them.
The book is not without flaws. As George Will wrote in the New York Times, "Bartlett
is angry as a hornet but, like a hornet, he stings
indiscriminately." Pointing out that the tax cuts could have been
better crafted with fewer credits and deeper marginal rate
reduction, he fails to acknowledge evidence that the cuts have
nonetheless had some salutary economic effects. Congress is
criticized but doesn't receive its fair share of blame for
Washington's spendthrift ways. And the chapter promoting the
value-added tax complicates Bartlett's brief against big-government
conservatism.
But big-government conservatism, as much as George W. Bush, is
Bartlett's real target. Indulging in fiscal recklessness has made
the rest of the Republican domestic agenda, from tax cuts to Social
Security reform, less tenable. Which is the third thing that sets
Impostor apart from the average anti-Bush book --
conservatives would do well to read it.
topics:
Taxes, Education, Trade, Bill Clinton, Social Security, Abortion, Environment, Books, Law, Iraq, Conservatism, Medicare
