RALEIGH – When in doubt, follow your principles.
President George W. Bush has the reputation of doing so, yet he has brought a lot of problems on himself and his administration by failing to heed this admonition. For example, Bush ran for president in 2000 as a free trader and continues to speak about expanding world commerce. But bowing to political calculations, he imposed tariffs on steel that cost more jobs than they saved (because producers who use steel significantly outnumber those who produce steel).
Another example is the Medicare bill of 2003. The inclusion of a costly prescription-drug benefit – which added many billions of dollars to structural deficits that already existed in the troubled Medicare program – was supposed to give the Bush administration and the Republican Congress a big political boost in 2004 while paving the way for a fundamental restructuring of the program along private, competitive lines. But the drug program has proved confusing and of little political value. And the managed-competition provisions of the Medicare bill were limited to a few test locations and won’t kick in until later in the decade.
The final example is the McCain-Feingold law. As long as politics remains important, those with money will attempt to influence its outcomes. So anyone with foresight should have expected so-called “soft money” contributions, no longer available to political parties, to flow elsewhere after the passage of McCain-Feingold. But Bush attorneys have consistently sought to interrupt this flow, to block the now-famous 527 organizations from intervening in presidential and other races.
The effort has failed. Moreover, it should have failed, given that the core of the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech speaks precisely to the need for a vibrant and unfettered exchange of political views. Worst of all, reports U.S News & World Report in its Sept. 20 edition, Republican attempts to stifle 527s are a major reason why GOP-leaning committees haven’t collected nearly as much money for the 2004 election cycle as Democrat-leaning groups have. Some corporate givers were spooked by the GOP legal attack, worried that they might eventually be found to run afoul of the law, while labor unions and wealthy Democratic donors got reassurances from their party’s attorneys and poured in the cash.
So the Bush team was stuck with an inconsistent and unprincipled message and far less of an overall financial advantage post-McCain Feingold than they had anticipated, including a clear disadvantage in large-dollar gifts to 527s and other independent groups.
When in doubt, follow your principles.
It would be easy to say, “well, you should never be in doubt in the first place.” But we are repeatedly told that at the heart of politics lies the need for compromise, that politics is “the art of the possible,” and so on. Politicians are constantly urged not to be dogmatic, not to let ideology stand in the way of “finding solutions,” and not to demand more than half the loaf just because they did the baking.
Thus it is not surprising, or troubling, that well-intentioned politicians develop doubts. What matter is how they respond to them. On occasion, when in a weak position or lacking sufficient resources to make a real go of it, an orderly retreat or some kind of deal may be necessary. If this becomes the rule rather than the exception, however, leaders accomplish nothing and make things worse for themselves.
Bush has stuck to his stated principles on several big issues, tax cuts and the war in Iraq notably among them. He’d be much better off now, both politically and substantively, had such resolve been more common.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.