Ahead With Broad Political Agenda – New York Times
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: October 5, 2005
WASHINGTON, Oct. 4
– President Bush said Tuesday that he still had “plenty” of political capital and that he intended to spend it on
battles over government spending, energy policy, Social Security and other issues that have so far proven difficult for him. …
“I’m still a conservative, proudly so, proudly so,” Mr. Bush said in response to a question about whether he could
still claim that identity after presiding over a rapid increase in the size and cost of the government.
Right’s Dissed Intellectuals By Harold Meyerson
You could cut the disappointment with a knife. “This is the moment for which
the conservative legal movement has been waiting for two decades,” David Frum, the right-wing activist and former Bush speechwriter,
wrote on his blog a few moments after the president dashed conservative hopes by nominating Harriet Miers to succeed Sandra Day O’Connor
on the Supreme Court. …
In one fell swoop, Bush flouted both his supporters’ ideology and their sense of
meritocracy.
Worse, he bypassed the opportunity to demonstrate their intellectual seriousness — conservatism’s
intellectual seriousness. …
But the conservative intellectuals have misread their president and misread their country. Four and
a half years into the presidency of George W. Bush, how could they still entertain the idea that the president takes merit, much
less intellectual seriousness, seriously? The one in-house White House intellectual, John DiIulio, ran screaming from the
premises after a few months on the job. Bush has long since banished all those, such as Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who
accurately predicted the price of taking over Iraq. Yet Donald Rumsfeld — with Bush, the author of the Iraqi disaster — remains, as do
scores of lesser lights whose sole virtue has been a dogged loyalty to Bush and his blunders. Loyalty
and familiarity count for more with this president than brilliance (or even competence) and conviction.
Conservatism By Robert J. Samuelson
George W. Bush entered the White House preaching “compassionate conservatism,” but he may
leave known for cynical conservatism. … In practice, Bush has taken the most self-serving aspect of modern liberalism
(its instinct to buy public support with massive government handouts) and fused it with the most self-serving aspect of modern
conservatism (its instinct to buy support with massive tax cuts). …
Spend more, tax less. That’s a brazen political strategy,
not a serious governing philosophy. …
The outlook is for tokenism. Just what conservative values Bush’s approach embodies is
unclear. He has not tried to purge government of ineffective or unneeded programs. He has not laid a foundation for permanent tax
reductions. He has not been straightforward with the public. He has not shown a true regard for the future. He has mostly been expedient
or, more pointedly, cynical.
CNN.com – Bush military bird flu role slammed – Oct 5,
2005
A call by President George W. Bush for Congress to give him the power to use the military in law enforcement roles in the
event of a bird flu pandemic has been criticized as akin to introducing martial law….
Gene Healy, a senior
editor at the conservative Cato Institute, said Bush would risk undermining “a fundamental principle of American law” by
tinkering with the act, which does not hinder the military’s ability to respond to a crisis. …
Bush began discussing the
possibility of changing the law banning the military from participating in police-type activity last month, in the aftermath of the
government’s sluggish response to civil unrest following Hurricane Katrina.