Okay, to continue the thoughts on Rove’s speech from this blog post earlier
(which itself continued this one), here’s the
only way I can think of that Rove and Company can stop conservative
support from hemorrhaging in response to the outrageous federal
spending (which, by the way, I failed to note earlier, has also
been greatly worsened by the outlandishly expensive prescription
drug bill for Medicare):
First, rather than selectively (and misleadingly) using
cherry-picked but meaningless statistics to try to pretend that
Bush actually has been an effective budget disciplinarian, try a
little candor instead, and an apology. Conservatives can forgive
eight-plus straight years of over-spending (yes, it pre-dates Bush,
because the GOP Congress has been horrible at this since the fall
of 1998) a little more easily if they sense that the White House,
first, recognizes the problem and the legitimacy of conservative
complaints and, second, can believably claim to be making a
NEWfound commitment to fiscal sense rather than trying (without any
believability) to be merely continuing what the White House claims
is already a successful record of keeping spending in check. (It’s
worth noting that even Fred Barnes, whose recent book on the Bush
presidency is overwhelmingly positive, notes in the book and in
several columns that Bush just flat-out is not a “small government”
conservative and that he can make no real claim to fiscal
discipline.)
Second, make a strong case that no more foolishness will be
tolerated. Rove could/should try something like this:
“You know what? You’re right: Overall spending and the deficits
have not been kept within the bounds that we would have liked. And
it’s not all war-related. Congressional earmarks and budget
gimmicks are out of control. And while we have insisted,
successfully, that the growth rate of official measures for
non-security discretionary spending has declined each year, the
fact is that the overall size of government, even excluding the
military, has grown too much. It’s a problem that long pre-dated
this administration, but it’s one we have not fixed. The American
people see thousands of local pork earmarks and they see the
overall budget growing rapidly, and they have a right to be
concerned. And, frankly, this administration has had to choose its
fights; and while we are engaged in an important war against
terrorists and opposed for political reasons by the other party no
matter what we do, we have not chosen to fight Congress too hard on
the spending front because we need to keep everybody, and
especially every Republican (since the Democrats are so
obstructionist regardless) on board for the bigger, more important
battle against terrorists. Now we will argue forever that the
spending outlook isn’t anywhere near as bad as our critics would
assert — for instance, federal spending as a percentage of the
overall economy is lower than it was under four of the last five
presidents — but that doesn’t mean we don’t recognize that the
record could and should be better, and that our fiscal-conservative
allies have a point. THEREFORE, we are making a commitment to do
better than we so far have done, to hold Congress’ feet to the
fire, to use the presidential veto if need be, in order to make a
so-so record on spending discipline into a superb record in the
next three years.
“In short, WE HEAR YOUR COMPLAINTS, and we will respond
constructively to satisfy them.”
There: That’s far from perfect, but something like that.
Ronald Reagan proved that a leader can prosper by admitting
mistakes and believably pledging to do better. George W. Bush has
done enough right, by conservative lights, on other fronts, that if
he and his team show they accept conservative criticisms on this
front as legitimate and worth ameliorating, conservatives might
(and should) cut him some slack. To claim a bad record is good is
to stick a needle in conservatives’ eyes (because it belittles our
concerns); but to acknowledge a so-so/mediocre record and promising
to do better is to show both humility and magnaminity that can help
a team (the nationwide team of conservatives, as it were) come
together again in common cause.
Now, as for what Bush has done right by conservative lights,
Rove hit those points quite well at AEI, and that will be the
subject of my next blog entry.
