A moral for George Bush

National Review, Oct 5, 1992 by John O'Sullivan

* "I don't think the old words 'liberal' and 'conservative,' 'left' and 'right' have much descriptive meaning any more," said Derek Shearer, an advisor to Mr. Clinton, in a recent interview.

I at once concluded that Mr. Shearer was a "liberal," and probably a "left" one at that. Sure enough, a few paragraphs later he was advocating "activist" government and an "industrial policy," the current camouflage for statist economic planning.

No complex reasoning was needed to detect Mr. Shearer's ideological leanings. Anyone who can't quite fathom what "liberal" or "conservative" means either is half-witted--unlikely in Mr. Shearers case-or is not being candid. He is hiding something--namely, views which the public distrusts. In this case, "liberal" or "left" views.

So watch out for candidates who are baffled by a word like "taxes." It means they want to raise them.

* Mr. Bush, on the other hand, suffers from exactly the opposite flaw. He seems genuinely not to know what he thinks in any large general sense. But he has been told that he has to be "conservative" to win the election. So he makes "conservative" noises.

Sometimes quite effective noises. His Detroit speech, outlining the economic differences between his "conservatism" and Mr. Clinton's "liberalism," was well worked out, even eloquent. But it bore almost no relation to anything he did in his first term, and so planted the suspicion that it will have little influence on his second.

That suspicion is nourished when Mr. Bush embraces contrary policies. He halts his own regulations; he attacks the spendthrift Congress and announces new pork-barrel programs; he denounces protectionism and subsidizes wheat exports.

Inconsistency on this scale suggests insincerity. And insincere avowals of principle are doomed to sterility. A man who does not believe in, say, family values will be unconvincing in his advocacy of them. He will be bowled over by simple objections (since he will privately share them), and he will advance only the crudest justifications (since he cannot imagine more persuasive or sophisticated ones).

A rhetorical genius like George Bernard Shaw might amuse himself by giving the cleverest arguments to his capitalist villains like Undershaft in Major Barbara. But among lesser mortals, sincerity is vital to propaganda.

Cynical campaigns end up discrediting the themes they are designed to exploit, as indeed the Republican campaign has transformed "family values" into seedy hints of adultery against Governor Clinton. William Bennett defended them without sounding either puritanical or Pecksniffian.

Moral: Mr. Bush should not so much adopt conservative themes (using tongs and protective clothing against long-term contagion) as become a conservative. He still has seven weeks.

* Whatever Mr. Bush says, however, will have to withstand scrutiny by media determined to enforce "fairness," at least on conservatives.

When Republicans, citing Daniel Wattenberg's fine article in The American Spectator, alleged that Hillary Clinton wanted to invest children with rights against their parents, news reporters "corrected" this charge. Mrs. Clinton, they said, wanted such rights only in extreme cases such as incest.

But here is what Mrs. Clinton actually wrote: "Decisions about motherhood and abortion, schooling, cosmetic surgery, treatment of venereal disease, or employment, and others where the decision or lack of one will significantly affect the child's future, should not be made unilaterally by parents. Children should have a right to be permitted to decide their own future if they are competent."

Reporters who cite this column in their apologies should begin any reference: "Experts say..." shielding us and our friends against this menace is more compelling than ever.

* A grand jury refused to indict Michael O'Keefe, the New York City police officer who shot and killed Jose Garcia, a 23-year-old Dominican, last July. The shooting touched off days of rioting among Dominicans in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, and Mayor David Dinkins took extraordinary steps--visiting Garcia's family, paying for his funeral--to prevent the city from becoming Los Angeles East. The grand jury, however, found that Garcia was a drug user who worked for a drug ring; it also believed O'Keefe's testimony that Garcia had drawn a gun on him. Can the mayor get back the funeral money? Dinkins has defended the respect he paid the memory of a foot-soldier of the criminal class by arguing that it was his first duty, as mayor, to keep the peace. It is true that the modern American city harbors numbers of people who will take violent offense at legitimate acts of public authority, or at nothing at all. But surely one reason they do so is their belief that the authorities will respond to their violence, not with force, but with blandishments. David Dinkins did his bit to reinforce that belief.

* New York City Schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez has proposed special schools for students who are violent or criminal, though he would make attendance voluntary. Just think of it as a liberal version of school choice.