No Ordinary Leader
In a memorable speech last night at Madison Square Garden, President Bush laid out the agenda for his second term. On the domestic policy front, the president mixed bold conservative ideas with some surprisingly liberal policies. On the conservative side, he promised a bipartisan effort to simplify the tax code - which he called a "complicated mess" - and replace it with something "simpler, fairer" and "pro-growth." He promised to "protect small business owners and workers from the explosion of frivolous lawsuits that threaten jobs across America." He promised to create personal savings accounts for younger workers as part of the Social Security system.
On the liberal side, Mr. Bush took a page from Democrat Bill Bradley's policy book and promised to open health clinics in poor counties. He promised to "double the number of people served by our principal job training program." Republicans have usually been skeptical of such programs, arguing that the best job-training program is an actual job, no matter how menial. It sounded more like President Clinton's labor secretary, Robert Reich, than a Republican president.
On cultural issues, Mr. Bush was more conservative than Ronald Reagan would have been. Reagan would have never attacked Hollywood the way Mr. Bush did when he said, "If you say the heart and soul of America is found in Hollywood, I'm afraid you are not the candidate of conservative values." He vaguely mentioned abortion. "We must make a place for the unborn child," he said, without specifying exactly how or what place.
A deep religiosity suffused the president's address. "Now, because we have made the hard journey, we can see the valley below," Mr. Bush began, sounding like Moses at Mount Nebo. "To everything we know there is a season - a time for sadness, a time for struggle, a time for rebuilding," he concluded, riffing on Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3. The president's faith seemed not just rhetorical dressing, but at the core of his argument. "I believe that America is called to lead the cause of freedom in a new century."
With wry humor Mr. Bush delivered a devastating critique of his opponent, mocking his sneering remarks about how our allies had been bribed to join us in the Battle of Iraq. He then went on to name the allies - Poland, Britain, Japan, Italy, and others - and thanked them and the soldiers of their armed forces who had stood with America, vowing never to forget them.
Late in his speech, the president expanded on his religious references, saying "we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom." He spoke of how future generations will look back and say we kept our faith and kept our word. Near the end of his speech he referred to "the resurrection of New York City." He said, "They will say: Here buildings fell, and here a nation rose." In case these references were too subtle, Mr. Bush explained himself explicitly: "I believe all these things because freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is the Almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world."
It was a risky speech. America is a religious nation, founded on a Declaration of Independence that explicitly referred to freedom as an endowment of by their Creator. Still, it took courage for an American politician in a skeptical age to make such a high-profile public profession of faith and to link it so closely to a war fought mainly against an extreme version of Islam. But the president comes from a tradition that goes back to Samuel Adams and eddies through our leadership as recently as Franklin Delani Roosevelt and Reagan. We share the reckoning Governor Pataki voiced when, in an allusion to FDR, he called Mr. Bush "no ordinary leader" in "no ordinary time."
