Abstract

EVEN CONSERVATIVES ARE WONDERING: IS BUSH ONE OF US?

The author discusses the attitudes of American conservatives towards the policies of President George W. Bush. Most Americans long ago stopped believing that George W. Bush is what he claimed to be during the 2000 presidential campaign: a compassionate conservative. But is George W. Bush a conservative at all? [W]hile few people would confuse George W. Bush for a liberal, whether the policies he's championed qualify as traditionally conservative is by no means clear. "Historically, conservatism in the United States has meant support for small government, balanced budgets, fiscal prudence and great skepticism about overseas adventures," notes Clyde Prestowitz, a former Reagan Administration official. "What I see now is an Administration that's not for any of these things." While there are plenty of Republicans who would take issue with Prestowitz's definition of the term, a growing number of conservative thinkers and policy-makers have begun to echo this view, as thumbing through the pages of the conservative press makes clear. At the root of their discomfort is a feeling not that the Bush Administration is too conservative but that it has forsaken the guiding principles of conservatism--prudence, caution, restraint--to pursue an agenda that is messianic and radical. Conservatives alienated from this expansive vision do not fall into a single ideological camp.