George W. Bush - Big-government conservative

Rush Limbaugh complained that George W. Bush's economic policy "may be compassionate, but it is not conservatism," while Republican John McCain accused the president of "spending money like a drunken sailor."

Although their constituents are different, Bush's economic policy has more in common with the administration of Lyndon Baines Johnson than Ronald Reagan. The Cato Institute reports that in the last 40 budget years, only LBJ's 1966 and 1967 budgets increased government spending at a rate faster than Bush's 2002, 2003 and 2004 budgets.

Since Bush inherited a budget surplus, his deficits represent the largest fiscal deterioration in modern history. The administration blames 9-11 for the fiscal hemorrhage, but close inspection reveals that the terror excuse doesn't hold water. Unlike the cost of the Iraq War and homeland security, the Vietnam War was a much larger percentage of the total budget in the late 1960s.

The conservative British magazine The Economist has dubbed Bush a "Big Government Conservative" as opposed to a "Big Government Liberal." It is a label that traditional conservatives consider an oxymoron and suggests that the economic policy of the respective parties differs only in regard to whose constituents are promised the largest share of federal pork.

Like LBJ, Bush married a gracious southern lady, fathered two beautiful daughters and dramatically expanded the reach and power of the federal government. The Republican president from Texas has his own vision of a Great Society. The president is willing to impose tariffs when politically expedient and to sponsor corporate welfare that benefits special-interest friends in the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries.

The Bush Medicare bill is expected to cost in excess of $2 trillion in its second decade, the largest single expansion of the program since it was created by LBJ in 1966.

Fortunately, the president appears to have simply forgotten his proposal to finance a manned space flight to Mars.

Thanks to No Child Left Behind, the administration has opened the door for even greater federal meddling in the most sacred of locally produced government services, public education. At least the Patriot Act, which substantially increased government surveillance power, was voted on by the Congress.

Edicts by the Bush Justice Department have consistently dismissed states rights while providing new guidelines that dramatically curtail access to government records under the Freedom of Information Act.

Many traditional conservatives who oppose gay marriage resent the president's use of the Constitution as a political pawn in the culture wars.

President Bush also resembles LBJ in matters of foreign policy. Both presidents expanded wars on the basis of erroneous information: in Vietnam it was the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and in Iraq it was weapons of mass destruction.

If LBJ relied on the remnants of JFK's best and brightest for foreign policy advice, Bush listens to the neoconservatives. The best and brightest believed that if Vietnam fell, then all of Asia would succumb to the monolithic communist threat. The neoconservatives preach the same doctrine in reverse: if Iraq has elections, then other dictatorships in the Middle East are expected to topple like dominoes before the onslaught of Western-style democracy.

Despite 9-11, it is hard to imagine Barry Goldwater, Reagan or even Bush Senior waging the same war on terror as Bush Junior. In matters of government, traditional conservatives harbor modest expectations. They might hope for a free Iraq, but they understand that government has a difficult time fixing potholes and making Amtrak run on time, much less imposing a Jeffersonian democracy on a Muslim region fragmented by centuries of religious and ethnic strife.

Administration predictions of cheering crowds throwing flowers at U.S. soldiers and a reconstruction self-financed with Iraqi oil revenue now appear incredibly naïve. One need not be a traditional conservative to regard the neoconservative vision as borderline Utopian.

John Quincy Adams said, "America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own." The Founding Fathers believed in foreign wars as a last resort precisely because war erodes freedom at home. The erosion in liberty can take the form of wage and price controls, rationing or the nationalization of some industries.

During World War II, the government interned some Japanese Americans. And throughout the Vietnam era, the FBI used national-security concerns as justification for the illegal surveillance of elected officials and private citizens.

War gave us the Patriot Act, the first draft, the first federal income tax and a powerful Internal Revenue Service to enforce it. War contributes to a phenomenon conservative historians call the "ratchet effect" whereby after each major crisis the size of government never recedes to its pre-crisis level.

When not fighting a specific country, the United States has waged Cold War, War on Poverty, War on Drugs and now War on Terror. James Madison speculated that "no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." Terrorism is a continual war that never results in conventional victory. We win by containing and killing terrorists in a concerted international effort. The terrorists win by instilling so much fear in the populace that they willingly relinquish freedom in the name of security and order.

LBJ's experiment in Vietnam was a repeat of the French failure. If President Bush succeeds in establishing a legitimate, secular democracy in Iraq, it will be a major foreign-policy achievement. However, the current Iraqi insurgency is eerily similar to the last days of French colonial rule in Algeria during the early 1960s. For old-fashioned liberals and big-government conservatives alike, nation building can be a bloody and expensive enterprise.

LBJ's policy of providing both more guns and butter contributed to the 1970s stagflation and helped transform the word "liberal" into a pejorative. George W. Bush's affinity for big government has irrevocably altered what it means to be conservative and Republican.

Somewhere, LBJ is smiling.

Mike Devaney is a professor of finance in the department of economics and finance at Southeast Missouri State University.