This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can sign up here to receive the newsletter each weekday.
One of the clichés of modern journalism is the faux-gotcha story about Republicans and fiscal conservatism. Such stories contrast the Republican Party’s reputation for caring about the budget with some action — like the Trump tax cut — that adds to the deficit.
The problem is, journalists have now been writing these gotchas for almost 40 years, because Republicans have not been fiscal conservatives for a very long time. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both caused the deficit to rise. More recent Republican leaders — like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell — have also been profligate with taxpayer dollars. They pass huge tax cuts, mostly for the rich, and don’t particularly care about the effect on the federal budget.
But there is still one major modern Republican who deserves the label of fiscal conservative: George H.W. Bush.
In 1990, he famously reneged on his own campaign promise not to raise taxes and agreed to a deficit-reduction compromise with Congress. The bill was mostly spending cuts, but included a tax increase on high earners.
The deal was a turning point. It was the first step to eliminating the Reagan-era deficits. Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress took the next step, in 1993, and by the late 1990s the federal government was running a surplus. The turnaround played a significant (if unknowably large) role in creating the 1990s economic boom — which remains the only period of broad-based income gains over the past 40 years.
Bush, of course, paid a political price for the 1990 budget deal. Many conservatives never forgave him. Their criticisms weakened Bush politically and helped lead to the 1992 primary challenge from Pat Buchanan, which weakened Bush further.
I think it’s worth remembering that Bush was the true conservative in this whole matter. His skilled leadership during the collapse of the Soviet Union was obviously his greatest accomplishment as president. But his fiscal conservatism deserves to rank second.
For more on the 41st president, on the day of his funeral:
Alec MacGillis points out a different area where history is likely to be less kind to Bush’s presidency: climate change. Bush considered himself an environmentalist and did sign an expansion of the Clean Air Act. Yet his administration ultimately rejected the advice of scientists and refused to take climate change seriously, as Nathaniel Rich's definitive Times Magazine story detailed.
In The Washington Post, Michael Gerson has a fond and lovely remembrance: “Bush’s life provides assurance that sometimes things go gloriously right.”
My colleague Frank Bruni notes that it should be possible to consider both Bush’s strengths and weaknesses: “Too many of us tend to interpret events, political figures and issues in all-or-nothing, allies-or-enemies, black-and-white terms, blind to shades of gray.”
If this week’s reflections on Bush have made you want to read more about him or his era, there are several good books. The masterpiece is “What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s portrait of the 1988 campaign. More recently, the historian Jeffrey Engel has told the story of Bush's Cold War triumphs, in “When the World Seemed New.”
Anti-democracy watch. Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature worked through the night on their plan to strip power from the governor and attorney general, following election victories by Democrats last month.
Emily Mills, the editor of a Wisconsin-based magazine, points out that Republicans are in a position to execute this power grab because of gerrymandering. After the 2010 census, the party redrew the state’s legislative district in a way designed to keep Democrats from winning elections. Since then, Republicans have “seen their representation in the legislature steadily grow over the past four elections, despite a fairly even split in party support statewide,” she writes for the NBC News website.
Attacks on democracy breed attacks on democracy.
You can join me on Twitter (@DLeonhardt) and Facebook. I am also writing a daily email newsletter and invite you to subscribe.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion).
David Leonhardt is a former Washington bureau chief for the Times, and was the founding editor of The Upshot and head of The 2020 Project, on the future of the Times newsroom. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, for columns on the financial crisis. @DLeonhardt • Facebook
Source: Read Full Article
Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | George Bush’s 2nd Greatest Accomplishment
Opinion | George Bush’s 2nd Greatest Accomplishment
This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can sign up here to receive the newsletter each weekday.
One of the clichés of modern journalism is the faux-gotcha story about Republicans and fiscal conservatism. Such stories contrast the Republican Party’s reputation for caring about the budget with some action — like the Trump tax cut — that adds to the deficit.
The problem is, journalists have now been writing these gotchas for almost 40 years, because Republicans have not been fiscal conservatives for a very long time. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both caused the deficit to rise. More recent Republican leaders — like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell — have also been profligate with taxpayer dollars. They pass huge tax cuts, mostly for the rich, and don’t particularly care about the effect on the federal budget.
But there is still one major modern Republican who deserves the label of fiscal conservative: George H.W. Bush.
In 1990, he famously reneged on his own campaign promise not to raise taxes and agreed to a deficit-reduction compromise with Congress. The bill was mostly spending cuts, but included a tax increase on high earners.
The deal was a turning point. It was the first step to eliminating the Reagan-era deficits. Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress took the next step, in 1993, and by the late 1990s the federal government was running a surplus. The turnaround played a significant (if unknowably large) role in creating the 1990s economic boom — which remains the only period of broad-based income gains over the past 40 years.
Bush, of course, paid a political price for the 1990 budget deal. Many conservatives never forgave him. Their criticisms weakened Bush politically and helped lead to the 1992 primary challenge from Pat Buchanan, which weakened Bush further.
I think it’s worth remembering that Bush was the true conservative in this whole matter. His skilled leadership during the collapse of the Soviet Union was obviously his greatest accomplishment as president. But his fiscal conservatism deserves to rank second.
For more on the 41st president, on the day of his funeral:
Alec MacGillis points out a different area where history is likely to be less kind to Bush’s presidency: climate change. Bush considered himself an environmentalist and did sign an expansion of the Clean Air Act. Yet his administration ultimately rejected the advice of scientists and refused to take climate change seriously, as Nathaniel Rich's definitive Times Magazine story detailed.
In The Washington Post, Michael Gerson has a fond and lovely remembrance: “Bush’s life provides assurance that sometimes things go gloriously right.”
My colleague Frank Bruni notes that it should be possible to consider both Bush’s strengths and weaknesses: “Too many of us tend to interpret events, political figures and issues in all-or-nothing, allies-or-enemies, black-and-white terms, blind to shades of gray.”
If this week’s reflections on Bush have made you want to read more about him or his era, there are several good books. The masterpiece is “What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s portrait of the 1988 campaign. More recently, the historian Jeffrey Engel has told the story of Bush's Cold War triumphs, in “When the World Seemed New.”
Anti-democracy watch. Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature worked through the night on their plan to strip power from the governor and attorney general, following election victories by Democrats last month.
Emily Mills, the editor of a Wisconsin-based magazine, points out that Republicans are in a position to execute this power grab because of gerrymandering. After the 2010 census, the party redrew the state’s legislative district in a way designed to keep Democrats from winning elections. Since then, Republicans have “seen their representation in the legislature steadily grow over the past four elections, despite a fairly even split in party support statewide,” she writes for the NBC News website.
Attacks on democracy breed attacks on democracy.
You can join me on Twitter (@DLeonhardt) and Facebook. I am also writing a daily email newsletter and invite you to subscribe.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion).
David Leonhardt is a former Washington bureau chief for the Times, and was the founding editor of The Upshot and head of The 2020 Project, on the future of the Times newsroom. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, for columns on the financial crisis. @DLeonhardt • Facebook
Source: Read Full Article