The Week - Column

National Review, Feb 11, 2002

-- Talk stopped. The buzz was.

-- Saudi Arabia is reportedly considering asking America to quit its bases there. The strategic calculations that made the U.S.-Saudi alliance important to both sides-as a way to balance the Soviet Union globally, and Iraq and Iran regionally-are becoming obsolete. As those considerations have vanished or receded, the Saudis' broad sympathy with Islamic militancy has come to the fore. If we are chased from Saudi Arabia, it will be a stinging blow to American prestige and provide a vindication of the Sept. 11 attacks, which were intended primarily to remove the U.S. from the Arabian peninsula. The House of Saud will have sided with the militants, and America will therefore have to do all it can to overthrow it. For years, the U.S. has maintained a presence in Saudi Arabia to prevent the massive oil fields there from being taken over by a hostile power. Too late.

-- President Bush's first State of the Union address will necessarily focus on the progress of the war against terrorism, and the challenges we face in defending ourselves against this threat. We hope Bush uses the opportunity to prepare the country for further exertions, especially in Iraq. But he should also serve notice that he is willing to use his political capital to advance his domestic agenda- specifically, to promote a freer market in energy, the true retirement security that individual investment can provide, the sanctity of life, and a patriotism that affirms our common identity as Americans. He should announce his intent not only to resist backsliding on welfare reform, but to build on reform's success. Finally, he should explicitly challenge Democrats on their obstruction of judicial nominees. This year, the Democrats will try to associate themselves with the president (as long as he remains popular) while undermining his domestic agenda. Every line of the State of the Union that keeps Democrats slouching glumly in their seats works against this strategy.

-- On the weekend of the 29th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, President Bush proclaimed a "National Sanctity of Human Life Day." The proclamation included a short, yet remarkably thoughtful and eloquent, case for protecting life in all its stages, from conception through old age-a case drawing on the thought of the Founders and the rhetoric of Lincoln. Daringly, Bush even alluded to September 11 in a way that implicitly answered the social liberals who have tried to use the attack to discredit religious conservatism, without making cheap partisan points himself: "On September 11, we saw clearly that evil exists in this world, and that it does not value life. The terrible events of that fateful day have given us, as a Nation, a greater understanding about the value and wonder of life. Every innocent life taken that day was the most important person on earth to somebody; and every death extinguished a world. Now we are engaged in a fight against evil and tyranny to preserve and protect life. In so doing, we are standing again for those core principles upon which our Nation was founded." Pro-lifers said that the weakness of Bush's father on abortion was that he was "all action and no talk." That can't be said of the son.

-- Conservatives who complain that Bush isn't getting anything in return for his chumminess with Ted Kennedy-most recently, the president praised Kennedy as an innovative reformer on education-just aren't paying attention. Kennedy has done Bush an enormous service by calling for the "delay" of tax cuts scheduled to occur in 2004 and 2006 in order to fund "new missions," i.e., more government spending for old programs including Medicare and Head Start. The senator has given the White House a nice fat-er, big-target. Fellow Democrats, even Terry McAuliffe, are already ducking out of sight. So far, the only Democrats willing to make the case for higher taxes are Kennedy, a senator-for- life and presidential has-been, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose political career is likely to replicate his (going from relative of a president, to senator from a liberal state, to spokesman for a dying creed whose ambitions live on only in conservative direct-mail letters). Republicans should press their advantage-in the first instance, by forcing a vote to make the tax cuts permanent.

-- Bush made two recess appointments: Otto Reich became assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, and Eugene Scalia became the chief lawyer at the Labor Department. Liberal editorialists are reveling in what they deem Republican hypocrisy, the GOP having howled when President Clinton bypassed the Senate to make Bill Lann Lee the civil-rights chief at the Justice Department. The charge is specious. Bush used his constitutional power to make recess appointments, which expire at the end of the congressional term in which they are made. Clinton made Lee an acting assistant attorney general so that he could stay in office indefinitely-in clear violation of a federal law, the Vacancies Act, that makes 120 days the longest an acting appointee can serve. Clinton himself admitted that his move was not "entirely constitutional." If there is a parallel here, it is in the behavior of Senate Democrats in both cases. They blocked a vote on Lee because they knew they would lose, and they blocked votes on Reich and Scalia for the same reason. Any attentive comparison of the cases tells entirely in the president's favor.