How sad; how small. Bush had used the line in his eminently forgettable State of the Union Message last January, but his speechwriters had filched it from a slew of Democrats who’d been trying to sell a similar rationale right after the gulf war. “A lot of people were saying it,” said David Dreyer, press secretary to House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt. “The message was: why can’t we have a domestic Desert Storm and address the problems of this country? Bush wasn’t interested.”
The president had an unparalleled opportunity after the war: he could have demanded anything from the Congress-a capital-gains tax cut, a real deficit-reduction plan, anything–and gotten his wish. But he asked only for a highway bill and a crime bill (and vetoed the latter, for negligible cause). The fact is, George Bush didn’t talk about “changing America” until he got into political trouble last winter-and then only for political effect. His lack of conviction is manifest. Even Bush allies emerge from the Oval Office shaking their heads over his lack of purpose. “I asked about his plans for a second term,” says one. “He said,‘I’ll handle whatever comes up. . .’”
And, as the White House scrambled purposefully into crisis mode to deal with Saddam’s latest intransigence last weekend, it’s worth noting how rarely any of the nation’s glacial domestic travails has inspired similar action. The Los Angeles riots gave birth to a tiny, peripheral urban-aid bill. For weeks, Sen. Bob Dole has privately been pressing the president to embrace a more profitable idea: a civilian conservation corps, run by the Defense Department, providing work, training, education and discipline for tens of thousands of poor kids from places like South-Central Los Angeles. Bush has balked, largely at the urging of budget director Richard Darman-who reportedly said it would cost too much and have little al benefit since it couldn’t really get going until next summer.
“This administration has two faces,” says Congressman Rob Andrews, a New Jersey Democrat. “There’s the campaign face-the new ideas like school choice and marketbased incentives-and the real face that’s only interested in negotiating around the edges. We propose $4 billion for this program; they counter with $3.7 billion.”
Bush was out flogging school choice in Philadelphia last week. He makes a strong case: the GI Bill of Rights, which gave World War II veterans a voucher to attend the college of their choice, worked brilliantly, strengthening public and private institutions alike. Why not try the same principle on the elementary- and high-school levels-why not, at least, experiment with it in a few cities? The president, rightly, blames the sorry Democratic hacks in Congress carrying water for the teachers’ unions for blocking the plan. But that’s not the whole story: Sen. Bill Bradley, one of three Democrats who voted for the Bush-proposed schoolchoice experiment, says there was no evidence of presidential interest when it came up in the Senate last winter no arm-twisting or even awareness that a vote was imminent. The proposal was trounced. “It either means the president is totally ineffective,” Bradley says, “or that he’s not committed to his own program.”
And that is precisely the point: George Bush has never shown any sustained interest in the issues that will decide this election–conomic growth, education, the federal deficit: the future. He has shown a willingness to mix it up, to “do anything” (by which he really means say anything) to get elected. Bush was straining at the leash last week, anxious to “go negative” on Clinton and AI Gore (whom Marlin Fitzwater-who writes his stuff?–called “Mr. Sellout America”). It may work. It worked on Dukakis. It worked on Perot. Then again, one reason this year seems so weird-Bush’s word-is that the usual sludge hasn’t been quite as effective. The public may be looking for something different, a politician who can, credibly, “go positive.” If so, Bush faces unfamiliar terrain-and the most daunting challenge imaginable, after all these years of walking small.
