The scene could have come right from a “Doonesbury” comic strip: Bush, the caring patrician, standing beside his “evil twin, Skippy.” Bush has come under heavy criticism for squandering the political capital he piled up by winning the gulf war. Instead of ambitious programs to save the inner cities or solve the health-care crisis, critics argue, Bush offered an anticrime bill that may please conservative voters but is not likely to do much about crime. On one day last week The New York Times carried three articles criticizing the president’s domestic agenda, including a stinging editorial that described Bush as “petulant” and his proposals as “shallow.”
It is easy to look at Bush’s call for a “thousand points of light” and dismiss it as a speechwriter’s cynical ploy, an excuse for government inaction. But it is a reflection of Bush’s true beliefs. Although he comes across as a moderate Republican, Bush is in many ways profoundly conservative. Like Ronald Reagan, he is a foe of Big Government. Unlike Reagan, however, Bush doesn’t see the free market as a panacea. He doesn’t think massive tax cuts or supply-side economics will magically create wealth. Rather, friends say, he thinks that society and the economy will work out their problems, or not; in any case, there isn’t much that government can do about them, at least on a grand scale.
Bush has an almost 19th-century approach to social ills. The answer is not government, but the kindness of individuals willing to lend a hand. He has seen the failed promise of the Great Society and the often unintended consequences of social reform. His preference for private charity over public policy is evident in ways large and small. Instead of looking to his cabinet members for sweeping new government programs, he has asked them to start volunteer efforts for their employees. Department of Energy staffers receive time off to help students with math and science; Justice Department lawyers can take unpaid leave to help the needy with legal problems. Bush spends hours each week hand writing thank-you notes to individual “points of light.”
Bush has been advised by campaign strategists that a modest domestic agenda can be good politics. Let the Democrats moan and groan about the sorry state of the country, his handlers tell him. They’ll be seen as the doomsayers. Better for Bush to focus on foreign policy, where he can have an impact and not get bogged down in tedious wrangles with Congress. Insofar as Bush needs to deal with domestic problems, he can focus on “wedge issues” aimed at stirring up voters, particularly those on the right. Lately, Bush’s rhetoric has been particularly strident. He has persistently bashed the Democrats’ civil-rights legislation as a “quota bill” that would force employers to discriminate against whites in order to avoid discrimination suits. (Bush carefully ignores the fact that the civil-rights bill proposed by the White House would have much the same effect.) And he has courted the powerful gun lobby by threatening to veto the so-called Brady bill, which would require a seven-day waiting period on the purchase of handguns.
It may well be that a grandiose government plan to save the cities or rescue the schools would fail. Bush’s caution can be regarded as prudent. But the president has been unwilling to risk his political capital on other, more achievable goals. The federal government runs a massive deficit in part because Congress and the White House will not take on heavily subsidized special interests, like the farm lobby or the real-estate industry. Without raising taxes, Bush could substantially reduce the deficit - but only if he is willing to cut precious middle-class entitlements.
That would be politically dangerous, of course. White House staffers are now debating which of the two Georges to play up in 1992. Campaign strategist Robert Teeter is urging a “kinder, gentler” campaign, while chief of staff John Sununu is pushing for a more hard-edged assault on the Democrats. There does not appear to be much discussion of stressing a third theme: presidential leadership.
