EDITOR’S NOTE: This article will appear in the August 9, 2004, issue of National Review.
The negative side of the Bush campaign seems to be shaping up reasonably well. Republicans seem to be reaching the conclusion that they should attack Kerry less as a flip-flopper than as a liberal: Nobody is scared of flip-floppers’ winning high office. They seem also to see that they can call Kerry’s values into question by attacking his policies rather than his character. Republicans will criticize Kerry as a man who will make it harder to fight terrorism, will raise taxes, and will happily stand by as the courts deform marriage. We would change the negative strategy at the margins. The critique of Kerry on the war will not work, in our judgment, unless it becomes a critique of his entire party. But the fundamentals of the campaign against Kerry are sound.
Where, meanwhile, is the positive, substantive side of the campaign? People are noticing that the president has not presented an agenda for his second term should he be re-elected. He is being advised to unveil such an agenda on the theory that it could be attractive to voters. That is true. But it is also true that the president owes voters an explanation of what he wants to do in his second term before he asks us to support him. How does he intend to advance conservative goals during the next four years? Presumably he does not want his administration to drift the way second terms often do. But if he does not campaign on a conservative agenda now, what chance does he have of successfully acting on it later?
According to reports, Bush may announce some initiatives imminently. We will measure the scope of his ambition by whether he addresses Social Security. Nowhere is presidential leadership more needed. Reform is going to be extremely difficult, and the president needs a mandate for it. It could also provide him with a campaign theme: securing the future. The president’s conservative policies, from winning the peace in Iraq to promoting health savings accounts, all fit under that rubric. It is the most attractive overarching theme he has available. Reforming Social Security so that all Americans can own wealth fits naturally with that theme. It is, indeed, the indispensable domestic centerpiece of a campaign based on it. But if the president ducks the issue, entitlements will continue to threaten to swallow the budget, and the future will not be secure.
So far, the president has been ducking it. His instincts on the issue are sound, and he showed political courage in raising the issue during the 2000 campaign. But he has let House Republican leaders wallow for too long in their misplaced fears. They are fine men, but they have shown no practical interest in long-term strategies to expand the conservative base of their party. Social Security reform is such a strategy. It has been left to backbench conservatives like Jeff Flake, Sam Johnson, Paul Ryan, and Pat Toomey to advance bills on the subject. It is they who deserve presidential support.
And there is another reason for Bush to act. Many conservatives are dismayed at the way the federal government has expanded under him. This magazine has long urged conservatives to support the president anyway. We believed that he would advance other conservative goals, such as strengthening national security. We also hoped that he would implement policies that would change American politics in a way that made it easier to limit government in the future. Reforming Social Security to create a society of investors is foremost among those policies. If the president does not follow through on it, the case that people who want a smaller government should back him becomes a lot harder to make.
We would prefer that the president start talking about Social Security as soon as possible, and no later than his convention speech. It has been more than a year since the president addressed the American public in an effective way. A lot is going to be riding on that speech.
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