This or That
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

To govern is to choose. For President Bush, the moment of choosing is at hand. During the election campaign, the president spelled out an ambitious list of wants. Among them: tax reform, Social Security reform, the democratization of Iraq and the consequent transformation of Middle East politics, and a Supreme Court that looks more like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
More recently, Mr. Bush has declared that he is willing to spend “political capital” in pursuit of a bold agenda.
Second terms don’t have a great record of legislative success. And to achieve any one of Mr. Bush’s goals may require the expenditure of all the political capital at his command. Yes, Ronald Reagan managed to get a major tax reform through Congress after his reelection, but it involved so many compromises – including a disastrous hike in the actual rate of taxation on capital gains – that one questions whether it really amounted to a victory.
Bush is known as a stubborn man. And he has some definite views about where he wants to take the country. The stunning dis-election of Minority Leader Tom Daschle was a strong signal to Democrats that their policy of obstructionism, particularly on judicial appointments, has limited appeal. And just as the Soviet Union unraveled on Reagan’s second-term watch, so the insurgency in Iraq may peter out under the twin pressures of elections and aggressive military action that deprives the terrorists of their urban sanctuaries.
But meaningful reform of the tax code and Social Security may be bridges too far.
Simplifying the tax code has a lot of support in the abstract. But when you get down to the particulars, which Mr. Bush carefully has avoided doing so far, every loophole will be defended to the death by some special interest. It’s also less than clear that Americans are quite as upset about the complexities of Form 1040 as they once were. Cheap and easily accessible computer programs already have taken much of the complexity out of doing one’s taxes.
And while there is a good case to be made for shifting more towards a consumption tax – a sales tax, essentially – from an income tax, this is gradually happening anyway as rates of taxation on dividends, capital gains, and savings are gradually whittled down.
Likewise, Social Security reform has lots of support in the abstract. But through the agency of IRAs and 401-Ks, Social Security already is on its way to being basically irrelevant for the vast majority of middle-class Americans. And while such investment vehicles disprove the argument that Americans are too dumb to manage their Social Security funds for themselves, political realities dictate that any reform is quite likely to be accompanied by strict federal monitoring – and control – of their investments.
This would be a big step towards collectivizing- and potentially destroying – the golden goose of Wall Street. As on taxes, Mr. Bush might be better advised to let well enough alone.
Thus, Mr. Bush’s real agenda should be to extricate America from Iraq on favorable terms and make permanent the tax cuts he wangled out of Congress in his first term. The latter would go far towards perpetuating the economic recovery and thus push back the day when the Social Security system goes bust. At home, he should focus on the judicial fights to come, which will determine for a generation to come whether the American vision of limited government, the rule of law, and individual responsibility still endures.
It’s not a bad idea for a president to set an ambitious agenda. It gives a president more chips to play with. And in politics, if you’re not playing offense, you soon find yourself playing defense. The opposition will set the agenda. Reagan’s second term, after a landslide re-election no less, is a case in point. Lacking a serious agenda, Reagan soon found the front pages dominated by the Iran-contra scandal. Much the same thing was true for Bill Clinton.
But amid all the bold rhetoric, a wise president will be ready to make choices: this or that, but rarely this and that.
Mr. Bray is a Detroit News columnist.