Posted by
Bruce Bartlett on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 9:55:46 AM
As some readers of this blog may know, I published a book last year titled,
Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. In it, I cited a wide number of actions and policies by George W. Bush that were at least unconservative, if not necessarily liberal. There were many liberals and conservatives who thought I was crazy for trying to argue that Bush was not among the most conservative presidents in history.
Today, there are many fewer conservatives willing to argue that Bush is one of them. The immigration bill was the final straw, forcing them finally to wake up to the reality I wrote about in my book. Interestingly, liberals are starting to come to the same conclusion--that Bush is no conservative. In this morning's
Washington Post, its most liberal columnist, Richard Cohen, cogently argues that Bush is in fact a neoliberal. Writes Cohen:
Years ago, someone coined the term "neoliberal." I was never sure what it meant, and it has since fallen into disuse, but whatever the case, I'd like to revive (and mangle) the term and apply it -- brace yourself -- to George W. Bush. He's more liberal than you might think.
You recoil, I know. After all, the conventional wisdom is that Bush is the most conservative of all presidents, an advocate of limited government, minimal taxes and, when it comes to the quintessentially liberal concern with civil liberties, the man who gave us the twin black eyes of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. It's an appalling record.
But consider this: An overriding principle of conservatism is to limit the role and influence of the federal government. Nowhere is this truer than in education. For instance, there was a time when no group of Republicans could convene without passing a resolution calling for the abolition of the Education Department and turning the building -- I am extrapolating here -- into a museum of creationism.
Now, though, not only are such calls no longer heard, but Bush has extended the department's reach in a manner that Democrats could not have envisaged. I am referring, of course, to the 2001 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, better known as No Child Left Behind. I will spare you the act's details, but it pretty much tells the states to shape up or face a loss of federal funds. It is precisely the sort of law that conservatives predicted Washington would someday seek -- and it did.
Read the whole column here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/28/AR2007052801053.html
Addendum:
Writing on National Review's blog today , Jonah Golberg says:
Richard Cohen discovers something some of us on the right have been saying for a while: if you hold your head just so and look at Bush from the right angle, he looks an awful lot like a liberal.