George W. Bush, Reformer?

IN THE BEGINNING was Compassionate Conservatism. That was last spring. Then there was Prosperity with a Purpose. And now, carrying his campaign’s passion for alliteration deep into the piney woods of South Carolina, there is a Reformer with Results. Or, more accurately, there is a conservative reformer who achieves compassionate results by injecting a purpose into prosperity. It sounds more complicated than it is.

But this is what happens when you blindside a Bush — you get a cornucopia of complication, a muddle of messages. (The alliteration is catching.) Earlier this month, George W. Bush was blindsided in New Hampshire by the self-described “reformer” John McCain. In 1992, students of American politics will recall, President Bush was likewise blindsided by self-described reformers, first Pat Buchanan and then Ross Perot. The elder Bush’s advisers responded in ways that will seem eerily familiar to the voters of South Carolina. The advisers back in 1992 decided that President Bush was a reformer too. They trolled the silty depths of the executive branch, dredged up a handful of policies that had languished there, and in a series of presidential speeches repackaged them as “President Bush’s Four Pillars of Reform.” For several weeks the president preached reform, incarnated reform, traveled the country to press his message of reform — PAC reform, education reform, health care reform, welfare reform. This election, the president said, was about reform, reform, reform. And then, just as quickly as they had appeared, the Four Pillars went poof! This election, the president said, was about trust.

Father and son have much in common. One difference between them is that the son can plausibly lay claim to having helped to reform segments of his state’s social and political life. “In New Hampshire,” the governor said, “I let others define me. That’s not going to happen again.” And so on the weekend following the New Hampshire debacle, Governor Bush huddled in Austin with his advisers and then emerged last week with a “retooled” campaign.

So here he is outside Greenville, in the common room at North Greenville College, surrounded by eager and enthusiastic and extremely Caucasian students. The format of this event has been dubbed “One on One with Governor Bush.” It is the same format as the town hall meetings John McCain used to such seductive effect in New Hampshire — where Bush, by contrast, mostly gave speeches, followed occasionally by a question or two from the audience. In New Hampshire John McCain didn’t use a podium. In South Carolina George Bush no longer uses a podium. McCain used a handheld mike and roamed a low-slung stage. Bush now uses a handheld mike and roams a low-slung stage. McCain gave brief introductory remarks, then took questions for an hour or more. Bush now gives brief introductory remarks, then takes questions for an hour or more. McCain always managed to work in a reference to Tom Brokaw’s book The Greatest Generation, and express shock that “12,000 brave men and women in uniform are on food stamps.” Bush too now recalls Brokaw’s book, and declares that when he gets “to Washington, you won’t have men and women in uniform getting food stamps.”

Most important, McCain used his time trying to convince his audiences that he was a Washington outsider, a genuine reformer. Bush stands before a large banner — “A Reformer with Results” — and tells his audiences that he is the genuine Washington outsider.

George W. Bush has let it be known: From now on, he will define himself. And apparently he has chosen to define himself as . . . John McCain.

But an even better John McCain — he’s the John McCain that John McCain claims to be. With the banner as backdrop, Bush told the students, somewhat redundantly: “I’m a reformer with results. I’ve got a record of reform. That means I don’t just talk the talk, I walk the walk. If people are happy with what’s going on in Washington, then they ought to nominate a person who’s from Washington — who’s been there long enough to become the chairman of a very powerful committee.” McCain, of course, is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.

“That’s Washington,” Bush went on, his accent thickening. “I’m governor of Texas. I come from outside Washington with a real record of reform.”

The appeal to outsiderdom is not merely literal. Bush understands that “outsider” is a spiritual designation, one for which McCain does not qualify. “There’s an old Washington habit of saying one thing and doing another. On the one hand, Chairman McCain” — it is always “Chairman McCain” now, never “Senator” — “he’s saying he’s going to reform the campaign finance and the special interests, and on the other hand he’s saying to the special interests, ‘Pass the plate.'”

The characterization of McCain as a double-talking insider is the crux of Bush’s television and radio advertising in South Carolina, and McCain has taken the same tack against Bush.

Both of them, of course, are absolutely correct. Even so, the “negative campaigning” has appalled the forces of righteousness and good government, who fail to notice that from stop to stop and speech to speech, Bush’s message is almost thoroughly “positive,” as the goo-goos define the term.

“I’m going to Washington with a reform agenda,” Bush told the Greenville students, “and it says to the establishment we’re not only going to reform welfare, we’re not only going to reform education, we’re going to rally the armies of compassion and people of faith all across America to perform their common-place miracles of renewal.” This is compassionate conservatism with a new reform gloss, and Bush can get admirably specific in trying the two themes together. Despite his reputation for vagueness and gaseous generalization, Bush the reformer speaks with a commanding fluency on the need for Independent Review Organizations as a component of HMO reform, for example, or on the long-term dangers of commingling income-tax revenue with the Social Security surplus, or on the proper dispersal of Title I funding to the states. The specificity — and the fluency — is in marked contrast to the charmingly untutored McCain.

There are other differences. McCain is accessible to the press, so in their retooling Bush’s advisers decided that their candidate too should be accessible. It hasn’t worked. McCain does everything short of bounce reporters on his lap. Bush stands uncomfortably in the aisle of the press section of his airplane, gazing over the reporters as if they were carrying a contagion. Moreover, Bush insists on keeping his sessions off the record. Many politicians do this, of course, when they are about to let drop some interesting piece of information. Bush’s off-the-record edict has an interesting twist: He doesn’t say anything worth quoting.

In public, though, Bush is much more voluble than McCain. Speaking to voters, McCain keeps his answers brief — for a “spontaneous” candidate he seems remarkably comfortable repeating one canned response after another. Bush, on the other hand, has developed a bad case of logorrhea. During an event at an old folk’s home last week he consumed an hour of Q&A time answering only four questions. One of those was about whether he thought the Yankees would “take it all” this season. He answered with eight minutes on defense policy. And he is not unwilling to contradict or challenge his audience. When one of the Greenville students asked him whether he was called by God to be president (Greenville is a Baptist college), Bush’s response was not so much an answer as a reprimand. “I don’t know what God’s will is,” he said. “And neither do you.” He eloquently defended immigration against a pair of hostile questioners. But all his answers share a common trait: They are very long. “I’m sorry to be so long-winded,” he often says. “But I get passionate talking about the things I believe in.”

Long-windedness is only part of his problem. In redefining himself, Bush is trying to run an old-fashioned campaign. He presents proposals, cites specific issues, against an opponent for whom issues and proposals are an irrelevancy. McCain’s allure is pre-rational; it is why he appeals to conservatives and moderates and liberals alike. McCain excites them with the hopped-up music of catchphrases — strings of words like “pork barrel” and “special interests” and “cleaning up government,” formulations that could mean anything his listeners wish.

It is a strange campaign that casts George W. Bush as the intellectual. But there he was, as last week drew to a close, hosting a roundtable in the town of Newberry and presenting an elaborate scheme to reform the civil justice system. It included an ingenious proposal to extend the “excess benefit” provisions of the federal tax code to private lawyers who bring cases on behalf of state governments. This, of course, is talking the talk of the policy wonk. And in the spring of 2000, it may very well be the talk of a loser.

Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.