From the WSJ Opinion Archives
BOOKSHELF
The Insider as Outsider
Fred Barnes describes George W. Bush as an "insurgent president."
Soon after the 2004 election, Fred Barnes wrote a column for The Wall Street Journal characterizing George W. Bush as an "insurgent president" who plays by different rules. Now Mr. Barnes has expanded that theme into "Rebel-in-Chief," a compact and readable though surely debatable book.
Debatable because the Bush presidency is still only five-eighths done and because Mr. Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard, sometimes strains too hard to fit every action by Mr. Bush into his template. But Mr. Barnes does make a strong case that Mr. Bush plays by different rules--beginning with a distinct lack of interest in being loved by the Beltway establishment.
"President Bush operates in Washington like the head of a small occupying army of insurgents, an elected band of brothers (and quite a few sisters) on a mission," observes Mr. Barnes. "He's an alien in the realm of the governing class, given a green card by voters."
Mr. Bush clearly sees himself that way too. "It's easy to get sucked into the Washington mind-set and echo chamber," he told Mr. Barnes in an interview. Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, have avoided the capital's social whirl, not just because he likes to go to bed early (ducking out of a state dinner for the prime minister of India at 9:30 p.m.) and rise early (5:30 a.m.) but because, as he says, "I've got a lot to do." For relaxation, he heads not to the Kennedy Center but to Crawford, Texas.
In Mr. Barnes's view, this emotional distance makes it easier to break some furniture. And indeed, early in his first term, the president wrecked the equivalent of an entire living room. He abrogated the missile defense treaty. He cold-shouldered Al Gore's Kyoto accords. He insisted from the start that 9/11 was an act of war. He ignored the international community's insistence that the path to peace in the Middle East must involve the aging terrorist in chief Yasser Arafat. He committed the cardinal sin in Washington of explicitly campaigning to reform Social Security. And, read his lips, he cut taxes.
As a result, Mr. Barnes argues, Mr. Bush's "rebel in chief" style has brought Republicans to the political mountaintop. In 2004, Mr. Bush beat John Kerry 51% to 48% in an unusually large turnout--historically a sign that a political realignment may be at hand--and helped congressional Republicans achieve a majority as well. "Clinton got what he worked diligently for: personal popularity," sums up Mr. Barnes. "Bush was willing to surrender personal popularity to get what he sought: a transformation of American politics that made Republicans the majority party."
In the course of Mr. Barnes's narrative, we learn some interesting tidbits about the Bush White House. Mr. Bush, contrary to media hysteria on the subject, mentions Jesus Christ less often than Bill Clinton did. Speechwriter Michael Gerson has been a major policy force, one reason perhaps that Mr. Bush's set speeches have been especially effective. Mr. Gerson worked closely with the president on the pro-democracy themes that became the "Bush doctrine" in his Second Inaugural, although Mr. Gerson says that Mr. Bush himself came up with the most memorable line: that liberty is not America's contribution to the world but "God's gift to mankind."
A credentialed historian might naturally, and rightly, respond to Mr. Barnes's assertion of a transformational presidency by saying, in essence: We'll see. Mr. Bush's troubles of late--over Iraq, the huge new drug entitlement, the charges of a "culture of corruption" in Washington--could bring the ascendant GOP back down to earth next fall. Americans may have stood by their bold president in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they may be less than thrilled by a brand-new conflict with Iran and a return to $3-a-gallon gasoline or worse. And the "ownership society," which Mr. Barnes calls Mr. Bush's most radical vision, hasn't gotten much traction.
After pondering the labels that might capture Mr. Bush's philosophical leanings--compassionate conservative, new conservative, big-government conservative and so on--Mr. Barnes settles on "strong government conservative." Mr. Bush owes less to Thomas Jefferson--or the small-government Ronald Reagan--than to Alexander Hamilton, concludes Mr. Barnes approvingly.
That insight may help explain why, far from closing down the Department of Education, an early Reagan objective, Mr. Bush worked out a deal with Teddy Kennedy--Teddy Kennedy!--that plunged the federal government even more deeply into what had traditionally been a state and local concern. It may also explain why he joyfully signed into law a fantastically expensive Medicare entitlement for drugs.
But this deal-making impulse also undercuts Mr. Barnes's rebel-in-chief thesis. A "bold" president might have battled for real reform of Medicare. A man who was indifferent to causing controversy might have held Teddy Kennedy at bay while using the bully pulpit to focus on a truly transformational idea: school choice. In any case, boldness and a rebellious spirit may be necessary but not sufficient--great presidents must also have the political skills to get lasting things done.
Mr. Barnes recounts that, during his interview with Mr. Bush, the president referred to some books about George Washington that he had recently read. All of them, Mr. Barnes quotes Mr. Bush as saying, "analyze [Washington's] position in history. And I'm the forty-third guy, he's the first, and they're still analyzing the first."
Mr. Bush's point is still well taken, though at the very least Mr. Barnes has made a good rough cut at placing "43" in historical context--and has offered a useful corrective to critics who profess to see nothing good, much less historically important, about our current president.
Mr. Bray is a Detroit News columnist. You can buy "Rebel-in-Chief" from the OpinionJournal bookstore
