W. Isn't For Wobbly

The clack of the keyboard from parts of the Right has been registered. George Bush has gone squishy and turned bipartisan.

O ye of little faith – and understanding.

True, a constitutional counter-revolution will not sweep the land come 2001. After eight years of Bill, his shills and flacks in the press, and the caliber of what public education is turning out, I’m thankful, if not amazed, that any Republican could be elected president in these dark days. There’s room for hope when the Man from Hope’s appointed successor is looking for a job and W. is preparing to step into the Oval Office.

That W doesn’t stand for wobbly. Bush has demonstrated a much stiffer backbone than I’ve come to expect from many GOP politicians during the Clinton regime.

Bush has faced the hostility of the media from day one, but he didn’t cave. The media despise him so much that they gave legs to the John McCain presidential bid. They said over and over that Bush, the hand-picked candidate of the GOP establishment, couldn’t beat this political maverick of the people who attracted Democrat and Independent voters, who reached out beyond the Republican base. Bush didn’t panic. He stayed the course and won.

As for the campaign against Gore, I have only one complaint. A national TV campaign should have been aired from sea to shining sea citing chapter and verse what Al Gore wrote in Earth in the Balance and that Gore said he stood by every word of it. While I wish Bush would have stuck the knife in the Alpha Male’s political side and given it a few turns for good measure, I was struck time and again about how resilient Bush was in the face of the media and Gore’s attacks. Bush stood his ground, and he didn’t think he could make either the media or the Gore campaign like him or say nice things about him. He had their number. A bunch of major league . . .

My respect for Bush, already high, grew after the November election and Gore commenced his coup attempt. So many Republican conservatives and libertarians despaired that Gore was going to steal the election and that Bush wouldn’t be able to find a way to stop him. After eight years when Clinton, seemingly in preternatural fashion, emerged unscathed from scandal after scandal and scored high public approval marks in the process, many on the Right came to think it couldn’t win against Bill’s gang.

Bush didn’t buy this defeatist attitude. The Democrats, especially the Gore camp, thought the governor would fold like the Senate when it faced Clinton’s impeachment. Instead, he dispatched his advisers and didn’t go wobbly. The Democrats believed they could steal the election through the courts and canvassing boards. Understanding that politics the way the Democrats conduct it is akin to war, Bush took the legal fight to the US Supreme Court twice-even in the wake of what the media threw at him on a daily basis. When the high court ruled that night I thought Dan Rather was going to lose it. It was a beautiful moment I won’t soon forget.

Since his speech in the chamber of the Texas House of Representatives, Bush has used the word bipartisanship with great frequency. He’s promised to reach out and work with the Democrats. All this talk makes many on the Right nervous. I, for one, never have liked the smell of the word bipartisan. But Bush can go on and on about it for a simple reason: he won and the GOP controls, however slimly, the House and the Senate. He understands the word is like a bucket and can be filled with anything-including his conservative agenda. For years the Democrats have called for bipartisanship, which always means adopting their plans. The tables are about to be turned. He’ll reach out to the more moderate Democrats, but it will be to invite and entice them down his road.

Some GOP leaders in the House (Speaker Dennis Hastert and Rep. Mark Foley, for instance) have said publicly Bush shouldn’t push for his tax cut package as one big item. Bush has let them know the tax cut is not negotiable and that it will come up for a vote.

Granted, the president-elect is no, say, Goldwater from the days before AuH2O’s political ham radio started picking up echoes. But on so many issues, Bush is on the side of the angels. Taxes is one them. Tax cuts provide a telling fault line of American politics between the tax eaters and the wealth creators. Whose money is it? The State’s? Or the citizens who earned it? That’s why the very mention of tax cuts makes statists in the press and the halls of power hyperventilate. Not responsible. Not necessary. No one wants them. Translation: the serfs might awake if this keeps up.

The pressure on Bush is immense. So is the temptation-especially considering some GOP comment in the Congress. The media would smile on him and the Democrats would make pleasant noises, if he were to give up his tax cut package in a fit of bipartisanship (as they define that term). Bush realizes it’s a trap. He must remember that his presidential father took the bait and went back on his no-new-taxes pledge. It was no time before the liberals set the hook and reeled him in, thus allowing the bottom-feeder from Arkansas to swim into the top spot.

W.’s backbone is in fine shape. Leftists won’t run roughshod over his administration. They’re going to take some hits.

December 23, 2000

R. Andrew Newman is a writer whose work has appeared in such places as Modern Age and The Social Critic.