[Mb-civic] George the compassionate Economist

Sun Oct 10 11:57:30 PDT 2004

 Lexington 

George the compassionate

Oct 7th 2004 
>From The Economist print edition

A familiar phrase could be the sleeper issue in this year's presidential
election

FEW political slogans have had such a chequered career as ³compassionate
conservatism². Four years ago, George Bush based his entire campaign on it.
Then he dropped it in the wake of the September 11th attacks. Now it may be
due for a second incarnation. Don't be surprised to see Mr Bush talking
almost as much about compassion as about terrorism as the TV debates turn to
domestic policy. And don't be surprised to see him squeezing some vital
votes out of the slogan.

 The first signs that compassion was making a comeback came at the
Republican National Convention. The speakers faithfully wove the word into
their discussion of everything from education to foreign policy. Compassion
even got an entire day to itself, with the delegates waving placards
proclaiming themselves ³people of compassion².

 This year's version of compassionate conservatism is rather different from
the 2000 model. Four years ago, Mr Bush tied the idea to ³faith-based²
initiatives (which were supposed to replace clumsy welfare bureaucracies
with religious charities). This year he is talking about an activist
government. He is campaigning on a number of policies that are supposed to
put the state on the side of the people, from building more community health
centres to updating job-training programmes. In 2000 Mr Bush used
compassionate conservatism to distinguish himself from the scowling
conservatism of his party's congressional wing; now he is trying to prove
that there is more to his administration than fighting terrorists abroad and
cutting taxes at home.

All of which ought to make compassionate conservatism a tough sell. After
all, the administration has devoted the bulk of its energy to terrorism and
tax cuts. But look at the opinion polls and you discover that compassion is
seeping through. Although Democrats generally do much better than
Republicans on the subject, Mr Bush is holding his own this time. A Pew poll
taken just after the first presidential debate found that John Kerry had
only a minuscule lead over Mr Bush on the question of which leader ³cares
about people like you² (43% to 41%). A Zogby poll found Mr Bush with a
significant lead on the question of who would stop and help you if your car
broke down (40% to 32%). Even on education‹one of the most Democratic and
³compassionate² issues‹some polls have shown Mr Bush ahead.

 The Republicans' success in closing the compassion gap is partly a matter
of personality. Mr Bush has a Clintonian ability to feel people's pain. Mr
Kerry is allergic to displaying his emotions in public. The Republicans are
using Mr Bush's heart-on-the-sleeve personality to fend off the idea that he
³rushed to war² in Iraq. In her convention speech Laura Bush said, ³I've
seen tears as he has hugged families who've lost loved ones.² Her husband's
best moment in the first presidential debate came when he talked about
comforting the widow of a man killed in Iraq (³We prayed and teared up and
laughed some²).

But the success is also a matter of relentless work over the past four
years. Mr Bush's education policy, particularly the huge, mawkishly named No
Child Left Behind Act, was designed to prove two things. The first is that
the Republicans care just as much about the achievement gap between
minorities and the rest of the population. The second is that they are
capable of using ³tough love² (testing and accountability) to close that
gap. The Democrats offer nothing but excuses for failure (³the soft bigotry
of low expectations²), the argument goes; the Republicans, on the other
hand, are willing to abandon their long-standing antipathy to government in
order to solve a pressing problem.

There are plenty of other examples of ³compassionate conservatism² made
flesh, from the provision of $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa to the
gargantuan prescription-drugs benefit. But to understand the full importance
of the slogan you need to look less at specific policies than at the
administration's general style.

Consider how the Bush dynasty has recently put a feminine face on a
male-dominated party. Mrs Bush justifies the Afghan war on the ground that
it means that little girls can now go to school; she defends tax cuts by
producing the example of bustling female entrepreneurs such as Carmella
Chaifos (³the only woman to own a tow-truck company in all of Iowa²). Or
listen to the way that Mr Bush weaves the language of Christian compassion
into most of his speeches.

 I feel your pain, now vote for me

There are plenty of grounds for attacking this. How can Mr Bush reconcile
his claim to be compassionate with tax cuts for the rich? Or with his
association with the likes of Jerry Falwell (who compassionately laid part
of the blame for September 11th on homosexuals and feminists)? Mr Kerry is
making hay at the moment with the charge that Mr Bush's opposition to
stem-cell research is as uncompassionate as it is unscientific. And Mr
Bush's dismal performance in the first presidential debate has complicated
his job. It is not just that his expression suggested that the real Mr Bush
is peevish rather than caring. It is also that he now has to devote as much
energy to re-energising his conservative base as he does to reaching out to
swing voters.

 For all that, compassionate conservatism is still the perfect complement to
Mr Bush's strongest suit‹the war on terrorism. It serves as both an
attractive slogan for swing voters and an effective shield against the
charge that he has nothing more to offer at home than tax cuts. This year,
women voters seem to be less firmly attached to the Democrats than they
usually are: a group which gave Al Gore 11 percentage points more than Mr
Bush in 2000 was divided down the middle before this year's first head-on
debate. Women have started to return to the Democratic fold since that
debate. The result of the 2004 election could well turn on Mr Bush's ability
to woo them back with a new dispensation of compassionate conservatism.