Double or Nothing

The Weekly Standard

Bush's high-stakes second term
by Fred Barnes

PRESIDENT BUSH COULD HAVE OPTED for an easy route to modest success in the White House. After overthrowing the Taliban and routing al Qaeda in Afghanistan, he could have stopped there and not ordered an invasion of Iraq. In his first inaugural address, he advocated "a balance of power that favors freedom." Even after 9/11, he could have continued with such modest rhetoric and ambitions. He did not have to embrace a worldwide crusade for democracy in his second inaugural.

He won congressional approval of three tax cuts in his first term. He could have rejected the idea of major tax reform as a second-term goal. Bush promoted Social Security reform in his 2000 and 2004 campaigns. He could have settled for small individual investment accounts, using payroll taxes, and passed the task of restraining the growth of benefits to his successors. Had he taken the easy route, he'd have won reelection in a breeze and he'd be wildly popular today.

President Bush has chosen the hard route. The lessons he seems to have learned from his first term are: set the bar very high, don't do things halfway, forget opinion polls, use every bit of political capital and personal influence you have to achieve your goals, never play small ball, and be ready to take chances. So, instead of relaxing and savoring the achievements of his first term, Bush has laid out a formidable agenda for the next four years: the democratization of Iraq, the spread of freedom around the world, the passage of sweeping tax reform, and making Social Security solvent and sustainable for the rest of this century. For Bush, this could lead to spectacular success. Or, if things don't work out, he could end up relegated to the bitter ranks of failed presidents.

Why is Bush doing this? One explanation is he hates to fool around with small measures. They bore him. Another explanation, offered half-seriously by a White House aide, is that he's a Texan. For Texans, the aide says, the bigger the project, the better. In addition, the president regards himself as a problem-solver. "If there is a problem . . . I have responsibility to lay out potential solutions," he told the Wall Street Journal. When you combine an inclination to take on problems with a penchant for grand proposals, "you get George W. Bush," the aide says.

Oddly, the president's conservatism is not a brake on his desire to change institutions and countries. While he is philosophically conservative, he is anything but temperamentally conservative. Peter Wehner, a deputy to Bush political adviser Karl Rove, noted in a recent speech that "a conservative temperament can be counterproductive." At times, "the role of conservatism has been to be reactive," Wehner said. "At other times, the role of conservatism is to be proactive, bold, energetic, and optimistic--to shape history rather than impede it. We live in a history-shaping moment." Bush wants to do the shaping.

It's amazing how much the president has expanded his agenda from his initial days in office. His 2001 inaugural address took 14 minutes. His speech last week was 21 minutes long. In 2001, Bush said, "America remains engaged in the world by history and by choice, shaping a balance of power that favors freedom." In 2005, he upped the ante dramatically. "America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof," he declared at the end of his second inaugural speech. "Renewed in our strength--tested, but not weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."

On taxes, Bush's take in 2001 reflected a faith in conventional conservatism. "We will reduce taxes," he said, "to recover the momentum of our economy and reward the effort and enterprise of working Americans." But in his speech last September at the Republican convention, he outlined a new and bigger tax agenda. The tax code, he said, was "created for the world of yesterday, not tomorrow." It's a "complicated mess, filled with special interest loopholes, saddling our people with more than six billion hours of paperwork and headache every year," Bush said. "The American people deserve--and our economic future demands--a simpler, fairer, pro-growth system. In a new term, I will lead a bipartisan effort to reform and simplify the federal tax code."

Again in 2001, the president said he would "reform Social Security and Medicare, sparing our children from struggles we have the power to prevent." That was the extent of his comments on Social Security. At the 2004 convention, he brought up two specific issues on Social Security, one expected, the other new. Bush's support for individual accounts ("a nest egg you can call your own") was expected. His mention of the sustainability of Social Security wasn't. "Many of our children and grandchildren understandably worry whether Social Security will be there when they need it," he said. Now Bush has decided personal accounts aren't enough. The solvency of Social Security must be guaranteed for decades to come. That is a far bigger task.

In Bush's case, major policy issues can be divided into ones he's obliged to deal with and those that are optional. Given his campaign promises in 2000, he was required to work for education reform, which resulted in No Child Left Behind. And he was obliged to cut taxes and produce a Medicare prescription drug benefit for seniors. Since he talked up the faith-based approach to social problems, he needed to pursue that idea as well, and he has with partial success. After the 9/11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan became a necessity in the war on terrorism.

But it's the optional issues--Iraq, democracy, tax reform, Social Security solvency--that will define the Bush presidency. Bush could have ignored these issues with political impunity. He chose not to. They are not issues on which events dictate the solution. They are ones where Bush wants to shape the solution. Rather than a caretaker president like his father, he's become a risk-taker, a conservative with the disposition of a radical. And a rather unusual president.