Bush is easily the most radical president since LBJ
■"'Bushism': This president has remade the politics of the right," op-ed by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, Wall Street Journal, 27 October 2004, p. A16.
This is a book-hawking op-ed from those two great Economist writers ("The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America"), and it's a good one (they are both brilliant analysts).
They call Bush's first administration the equivalent of most presidents' two administrations: not only did he remake American policy, he remade American conservatism. That feat is far more than Reagan's impact, because Reagan fulfilled a movement's promise begun by Goldwater and abetted by the Scoop Jacksons of the Democratic Party. What Bush did he did largely on his own, based on really no good precedent within the GOP save for Abraham Lincoln himself. What Bush has done to national policy is equivalent to Truman setting us on the course for the Cold War, but how he revolutionizing the right is something more on par with Johnson (messing with the internal rule set while steering a very aggressive course on the external one at the same time—something no other modern president has tried).
I know many will say—yet again—that I dis Reagan, but Reagan did his domestic rule set change in the first administration, and then pushed his legacy-oriented peace efforts with Gorby in the second administration (his first administration's hot air regarding the Sovs simply continued the Carter build-up in defense [and no, I don't count Star Wars as anything but a sink hole and a technological mirage] and took the clever-but-cheap route of supporting rebels against Moscow's countries of socialist orientation inside the Gap).
Compared to other presidents, Bush goes down as a huge radical who completely turned the GOP from what the authors call the "big government conservatism" of the Goldwater-Reaganites and Gingrich crew to a new goal: turning the government "into an agent of conservative values." Their point: Reagan carefully balanced the anti-gov libertarian wing of the GOP (very West-oriented) with the social conservative wing of the GOP (very South-oriented), whereas Bush has gone whole-hog in his support of the latter, which dovetails nicely with his war on terror, because—frankly—much of our military elite hail from the South.
On foreign policy, Micklethwait and Wooldridge do compare Bush to Reagan, but again say he goes way beyond Reagan in his ambition: it's one thing to free Eastern Europe from the Russian's grip, it's quite another to transform a feudal Middle East (basically the difference between rehabbing Nazi Germany after WWII (easy) and constructing a modern society out of feudal imperial Japan (far harder for MacArthur, who was a genius at doing it)).
Here's the interesting conclusion on foreign policy from these two: they see the neocons as being a spent force, so the real question for Bush II is who rules the roost: the social conservatives or the anti-gov types?
My point is this: either way it goes, this administration will be sorely restricted in its ability to continue this global war on terrorism. That's why I know Kerry will do better: not just the change in his tone, but the leeway offered within his party.