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Instead, as he had done in the case of Social Security reform, the President named a bipartisan commission to study tax overhaul. The course it would take was made clear by the dominance on the commission of Democrat John Breaux, a former senator from Louisiana who seldom gave the Republicans a vote when it counted. The commission's report, incredibly, called for a more progressive tax structure. The report's publication sounded the death knell of Bush's tax reform, of which nothing more has been heard.

In the interests of mobilizing his conservative base, Bush's legislative record consists of one home run and two strikeouts. The success was his deep tax reduction that has created a sunny economic environment and outlook. The failures were what Bush political adviser Karl Rove considered this administration's major political accomplishments: the federal education expansion ("No Child Left Behind") and the prescription drug subsidy under Medicare.

The education plan and prescription drug benefits, opposed from the start by many backbench Republicans in Congress, constituted an audacious political venture by Rove. Assuming the Republican base was rock-solid, these proposals were intended to enlarge the Republican constituency. Under ferocious Democratic assault from the moment that they were introduced, they did not achieve their intent of Republican encroachment on the school and health care votes. The Republican fear is that they have depressed the Republican base.

This is less a failure of Bush's "compassionate conservatism" than confirmation of the ineffectiveness of "big-government conservatism," which may succeed only in a totalitarian environment. The election returns of 2006 may not confirm this, but expanding the government in the interest of supposedly conservative goals does not nourish conservative voter morale.

IT IS NOT JUST A FRINGE of right-wing extremists in Congress that bemoans the course taken by President Bush. The education and Medicare bills passed only because of intense pressure on Republican legislators, and they now see those bills as the possible cause of their own demise.

That attitude contributes to the second-term desire of congressional Republicans to separate themselves from the re-elected President. "Welcome to the second term, Mr. President!" declared a member of the House Republican leadership less than a month after Bush's re-election in 2004. He actually was speaking not to the President, but to me, to explain Bush's defeat on intelligence reform just a month after his re-election victory had made him an instant lame duck under the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.

The Republican members of Congress are also reluctant to answer for their own contribution to their party's malaise. During the past eleven years, the Republicans controlling the legislative branch have come to look more and more like the Democrats who sat in those chairs over the previous four decades. Hard to believe though it is, the Republicans are in some ways worse, as in the use of earmarks and the growth of lobbyists' power. They will not admit it, but the Republicans in Congress have made their own bed for this year's election.

Like the children of biblical Israel who so enjoyed the "flesh pots" of Egypt, Republicans derive too much pleasure from the joys of majority status in Congress. Far from being a reason to re-elect them, their attitude toward living the good life in Washington may be reason for their defeat.

topics:
Taxes, Education, Health Care, Nancy Pelosi, Earmarks, Social Security, Environment, Constitution, Law, Iraq, Israel, NATO, Conservatism, Medicare