David Broder: Does Bush Need a Second Term to Be a Great President?

David Broder, in the Wash Post (Aug. 29, 2004):

... The uncertainty about his legacy is mirrored in the wide range of judgments on whether Bush has burnished or tarnished the GOP's reputation. Lee Edwards, a veteran conservative writer and a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, places Bush squarely in the Goldwater-Reagan tradition, with echoes of even earlier party heroes such as Robert A. Taft. "Tax cuts, a strong defense and an emphasis on traditional values have been at the core of the Republican Party," Edwards said in an interview. "When Bush speaks of Social Security reform, he is echoing what Goldwater said in New Hampshire 40 years ago."

But Edwards is not ready to enshrine Bush as a peer of Taft, Goldwater, Reagan or Gingrich, architect of the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994. "The attack on 9/11 was a defining moment for him," Edwards said, one that changed the course of the Bush administration.

Like every other wartime president, Bush has presided over the growth of government. According to the Office of Management and Budget, discretionary budget authority -- the amount the president proposes and Congress passes each year -- grew from $644 billion in President Bill Clinton's final year to $873 billion last year. That is a 35 percent increase in three years.

That has been a bitter disappointment to the libertarian wing of the GOP, reflected in the strenuous opposition to Bush's Medicare expansion and his No Child Left Behind Act from a minority of Republicans. John Samples, a senior official at the Cato Institute, said that the victory Gingrich led in 1994 "opened the window to a reduction of government or at least its radical reform, but Bush has shut it."

From his libertarian perspective, Samples said, Bush's expansion of domestic programs and aggressive promotion of democracy abroad makes him "a combination of Lyndon Johnson and Woodrow Wilson. . . . There is an argument that a Bush defeat would not be the worst thing for the libertarian side of the party."

Few Republicans share that view; instead, they voice a widespread belief that Bush needs a second term to lock in his changes -- and to tackle such unfulfilled promises as the remaking of the Social Security system.

Gingrich, a historian by avocation, says that James K. Polk, who fought the Mexican War and annexed Texas and the Southwest, was one of the few one-term presidents to leave a large legacy. "It's the momentum of eight straight years in one direction and the fact that the American people have reaffirmed that direction" by reelecting a president that elevates him to a place in history.

The former House speaker says Bush is "as good a strategic decision maker as Reagan was -- and a better manager. But he does not have the same ability to bring it all together in a compelling case and to stick to that case."

Deaver, who helped shape Reagan's image, thinks that Bush has been underestimated. "When you look at Republican strength in Congress and the states, it's the highest in history," Deaver said. "Bush's persistence on issues such as the [gay] marriage issue has solidified the Republican base. That may well allow him to win a second term."

Other conservatives say that Bush's understandable preoccupation with the international agenda after Sept. 11 has kept him from accomplishing the full measure of what many of them had hoped to see. But a second term might allow him to take another run at those targets. ...