Editorial from the Charlotte Observer:
Posted on Sat, Oct. 16, 2004
A conservative case for Kerry
Traditionally, conservatives believe in fiscal responsibility, small government and individual rights. But does Bush?
CLYDE PRESTOWITZ
Knight Ridder/Tribune
As a former Reagan administration official, registered Republican, born-again Christian and traditional conservative, I am going to vote for John Kerry. So are many other old line Republicans. Here’s why.
While the Bush administration calls itself “conservative,” its use of the term is frankly Orwellian. It not only deprives the word of meaning, but presents the administration’s philosophy as the opposite of what it actually is.
Conservatives have always and everywhere believed in fiscal responsibility, in being sure you could pay your way and in providing for the future. Conservatives pay down debt rather than adding to it. This doesn’t necessarily mean balancing the budget every year, but at a minimum it means striving toward balance as a top-priority objective.
The Bush approach is completely at odds with such thinking. If any proof were needed, it was amply provided in the president’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention. With Congressional Budget Office projections by a very Republican former member of his own administration showing oceans of red ink for the indefinite future, President Bush promised more tax cuts. His audience cheered.
Conservatives are often well off, but they understand that the best way to preserve the society in which they are doing so well is to ensure that all its members can survive at a reasonable standard of living. It was the conservative Otto von Bismarck, after all, who first introduced social security programs in 19th-century Germany for just that reason.
Conservatives do not loot the Treasury or bet the future health of their society on the chance that the best-case scenario will actually materialize.
They provide for the worst case. So a conservative would have expected that the president’s tax cuts and promises of more to come would at least have been accompanied by plans for cutting expenditures. That expectation would have been disappointed, however, as the president promised about $1 trillion of new spending programs that, given his tax cuts, can be paid for only with red ink.
Which brings us to a second fundamental principle of conservatism — small government. From the founding of the Republic until now, conservatives have feared the threat to liberty posed by big government. Conservative icon Ronald Reagan came to power primarily by focusing on big government as the source of most of the country’s problems. But the Bush administration has presided over a steady increase in the size of government. Federal expenditure has risen as a percent of GDP after declining in the late 1990s.
Conservatives have never been enthusiastic about foreign adventures or about messianic undertakings. John Adams made the point early in our history when he emphasized that “America does not go abroad to slay dragons.” It was the liberal Democrats Woodrow Wilson and John Kennedy who committed the United States to making the world safe for democracy and to “bearing any burden and paying any price to assure the success of liberty.”
These are fine sounding words, but they are not the words of conservatives. Thus, when Bush promises to democratize the Middle East, conservatives cringe. So much so, in fact, that several former high ranking officials of the Reagan and first Bush administrations have told me recently that they are not supporting the president for re-election.
This is because they know that, administration rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, we are not safer today than we were three years ago. Far from destroying al-Qaida and cutting its alleged (but actually non-existent) links with Saddam Hussein, we have made Iraq into a magnet for terrorists.
Worse, there is a real possibility that Osama bin Laden could gain control of our ally Pakistan, with its nuclear weapons and operational long range missiles. Safe? Not on your life.
Nor are we freer.
Conservatives are nothing if not steadfast defenders of individual rights, rule of law and due process. Yet the Patriot Act and the procedures at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere have visibly infringed on all of these. It is ironic that even as it preaches about widening the circle of freedom abroad, the administration is reducing it at home.
Before the recent campaign, it might have been argued that at least in the area of affirming the importance of faith and respecting those who profess it, the administration had embraced traditional conservative views.
But in the wake of the Swift boat ads attacking John Kerry, even this argument can no longer be maintained. As an elder of the Presbyterian Church, it seemed to me that those ads were not at all in the Christian tradition. John McCain rightly condemned them as dishonest and dishonorable.
The president should have too. That he did not undermines his credibility on questions of faith. Some say it’s just politics. But that’s the whole point.
More is expected of people of faith than “just politics.”
The fact is that the Bush administration might better be called radical or romantic or adventurist than conservative. And that’s why real conservatives are leaning to Kerry.
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Clyde Prestowitz was counselor to the secretary of commerce in the Reagan administration and author of “Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions.” Write him at Economic Strategy Institute, 1401 H St. NW, Suite 560, Washington DC 20005, or presto@econstrat.org.