Yes, George W. Bush pursued a moderate domestic policy agenda

Ramesh Ponnuru responds to my column today by noting that some of George W. Bush?s domestic and economic policies also had Democratic origins. And he?s right! Not in all of his specific examples, but No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit were both ideas with Democratic lineages. They weren?t carried out in exactly the way that Democrats would?ve preferred, but there?s a reason that Ted Kennedy was involved in both efforts (though he voted against the version of Medicare Part D that emerged from the House-Senate conference committee). McCain-Feingold and Sarbanes-Oxley fit this pattern, too, though Bush?s support for them was more reluctant. As I?ve written many times before, this is an important fact about George W. Bush: His domestic agenda mostly consisted of liberal social policy initiatives and tax cuts.

Sadly, Ponnuru doesn?t actually interrogate the idea that you can find liberal antecedents for many of Bush?s domestic policies, and instead considers it so prima facie ridiculous that it?s sufficient to function as a refutation of my point. That?s a shame, because this is where things really get interesting: If you look at American politics through a policy lens, you can more clearly see the ways in which partisanship scrambles both policy preferences and issue-oriented coalitions. For instance: In 2005, the New Republic ran a cover story by Robert Gordon defending No Child Left Behind. Who is Robert Gordon? Well, he was Obama?s main budget guy for education, income security and labor, and now he?s one of Obama?s top budget guys, period. That?s interesting! And it says a lot about No Child Left Behind, Bush and the liberal reaction to both ? not to mention a lot about Gordon and Obama.

That?s the point of my column on Obama: We?ve gotten so caught up in the political arguments of the moment that we have trouble keeping perspective on the underlying policy arguments. It?s impossible to argue that the individual mandate and cap-and-trade didn?t begin life as Republican policies and enjoy substantial Republican support until Obama adopted them, which is perhaps why Ponnuru neglects to mention either of them in his post. But the decision Obama and the Democrats made to adopt policies that they thought Republicans would support was an important one, and the decision Republicans made to abandon policies they once supported was similarly important, and neither fact gets discussed enough because it?s easier to define ?left? and ?right? in terms of parties rather than policies.

Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=c6c54766b7897a9b6cb9bda4f8479479

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