'Compassionate' slight-of-hand

The New York Times has an editorial today that looks at whether Bush's alleged "compassionate" conservatism may end up being more of a liability in 2004 than a benefit. It lays out several of the ways in which Bush's "compassion" agenda has been more hat than cattle:

• During the tax debate over the $400-per-child tax credit, Bush initially demanded Congress expand the credit to poor families, but fell strangly silent when Tom DeLay made it clear he would not support any such thing.



• Bush's much lauded support for increased funding for global AIDS research. Even as he was promoting legislation he'd signed that authorized $15 billion spread over 5 years, the White House only asked for $2 billion this year - 2/3 of what he was boasting had been authorized by the legislation.



• Bush's "faith-based" charity initiative had to be modified from giving federal money to religious charities to handle various social services to a plan that mainly offers tax breaks for charitable giving.
  
  Now, personally, I was glad to see this one fail. I firmly believe that his goal would have violated the First Amendment and could have created a situation in which non-Christians could have found it difficult to seek out assistance if they ended up having to go through a Christian organization - and I seriously doubt the plan would have allowed minority faiths such as Paganism to establish social programs and make use of federal funds for them. In overall terms, though, the "faith-based" initiative was one of the keystones of Bush's "compassionate conservatism" program, and it's failure is one that may hurt him with some of his Christian base come 2004.

  ...some religious supporters of Mr. Bush say they feel betrayed by promises he made as a candidate and now, they maintain, has broken as president.

  "After three years, he's failed the test," said one prominent early supporter, the Rev. Jim Wallis, leader of Call to Renewal, a network of churches that fights poverty.

  Mr. Wallis said Mr. Bush had told him as president-elect that "I don't understand how poor people think," and appealed to him for help by calling himself "a white Republican guy who doesn't get it, but I'd like to." Now, Mr. Wallis said, "his policy has not come even close to matching his words." [Emphasis mine]

• Bush's "No Child Left Behind" legislation authorized $18 billion in funding for this year, but the White House again only requested 2/3 of it - $12 billion.



• Bush has verbally promoted AmeriCorps heavily, but said and did nothing when the House rejected the programs request for an emergency $100 million in funding, putting the future of the program itself into question.

Joshua B. Bolten, White House budget director has defended Bush, saying ""Even the president is not omnipotent. Would that he were. He often says that life would be a lot easier if it were a dictatorship. But it's not, and he's glad it's a democracy." The comment was made specifically in response to criticism of the AmeriCorps funding debacle, but I suspect they'd try to use the same defense for any of these complaints. (By the way, how stupid do you have to be to remind people that a President who has overseen the rollback of civil rights and cultivated an atmosphere in which speaking out in opposition to his beliefs or desires is considered borderline "treasonous", thinks things would be "easier" if this country were a dictatorship?)

The White House is promising we'll see more progress on the "compassionate" part of Bush's agenda when he returns to work in September, but I'll be surprised if the progress is anything more than just talk followed by no action as has been the pattern thus far. The President seems to think its enough to make big, splashy, photo-op announcement about what he intends to do, it doesn't matter if it doesn't ever quite work out the way he promised.

Bush's phony compassion is yet another point that needs to be hammered home in order to get people who really are compassionate out to the polls and vote him out of office next November.

Posted by thorswitch at August 26, 2003 05:57 PM | TrackBack