For Bush, New Emergencies Ushered in a New Agenda

By John F. Harris and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 22, 2001; Page A03

The twin demands of a sagging economy and an urgent new war on terrorism have transformed the philosophical heart of President Bush's agenda. A man who came to power offering himself as an ideological descendant of Ronald Reagan has emerged nine months later as something closer to an heir of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The modern conservative movement, which provided the base of this president's support in the 2000 election, had several pillars. They included a distrust of centralized authority, an unyielding faith in free markets and a conviction that individuals should be left to succeed or fail on their own without the protection of a welfare state.

But Bush's words in recent days -- and most powerfully in his speech to Congress on Thursday night -- suggest he has concluded that few of the old faiths that animated the conservative agenda before Sept. 11 have much relevance in the current emergency. Suspicion of a powerful national government gave way to a massive federal commitment to rebuild New York City. Devotion to free markets has yielded to an expensive promise to rescue the failing airline industry with government subsidies.

And although conservatives once boasted of their determination to get government "off the backs" of the American people, Bush warned that individual convenience must be balanced anew against the collective need for tighter security. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has proposed anti-terrorism measures that vastly increase the reach of the federal government into citizens' privacy -- ideas that have caused activists at both ends of the ideological spectrum to warn about encroachments on liberty.

At the same time, Bush is working on a large economic stimulus package to stave off recession. He said a weak economy needs its pump primed by government with a big infusion of money -- a basic precept of Keynesian economics that was at the heart of FDR's New Deal.

Finally, in a presidential debate last year, Bush warned that the critical point about the use of military force is that "the exit strategy needs to be well defined," and he said he was "concerned that we're overdeployed around the world." In his forceful vow to fight global terror Thursday night, Bush made clear there could be multiple venues for military action and set no clear definition of how he will gauge whether the mission is adequately accomplished.

Presidential scholars and political activists said the new Bush agenda represents an obvious need to meet a crisis -- and noted that most conservatives have always said that protecting national security is a legitimate role for government. Bush, they said, remains a conservative -- a believer in tax cuts and missile defense -- but is governing in radically changed circumstances.

"September 11 has changed everything," said Ed Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that celebrated the early months of Bush's term.

But he and other conservatives said they are concerned about the prospect that responding to terror will be a pretext for Washington -- Congress and the administration -- to expand government's role in ways they think unwise.

"Everybody's a bit paranoid on our side," said Fred Smith, head of the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute. "One of the tragedies is when market economies go to war they weaken their greatest strength -- the market."

Feulner objects to the airline bailout, the economic stimulus package and parts of the anti-terrorism package. "I thought we'd gotten past the point where you throw large pots of money at a problem," he said. "There seems to be a loss of focus; some cooler heads are saying make sure we don't throw out the baby while changing the bathwater."

"Wars are nasty things: They make governments grow," said Grover Norquist, an anti-tax activist who frequently defends the administration. "It's going to be our job as a center-right coalition to remind people to restore budget discipline."

Ever since he ran for president, Bush has tried to maintain a balance between policies and rhetoric that will keep his conservative base content and project a message of compassion and moderation to swing voters. In recent weeks, even before the attacks, there have been signs that the White House is altering its political calculations further away from a rigid conservative line.

The White House opted to drop its battle with Senate Democrats over two controversial nominees: Donald Schregardus, tapped to head pollution enforcement at the Environmental Protection Agency, and Mary Sheila Gall, chosen to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Bush's Office of Management and Budget, which earlier drew criticism for suspending Clinton administration regulations, urged the government to draft regulations of its own governing the label of "trans-fatty acids" in foods and promoting the availability of defibrillators in the workplace.

During the first nine months of his administration, Bush and his aides took pains to not offend their base of religious conservatives. But the president dispatched his spokesman to chide ministers Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell for "inappropriate" remarks when they said on television that liberal civil libertarians, gays and abortion rights supporters had incited God's anger and were partly responsible for the terrorist attacks. They later renounced their remarks.

Some of Bush's recent evolution reflects clear responses to terrorism, and some, such as the OMB decisions, may be coincidental. But there is also a hope among Bush friends and foes that the attacks, by strengthening Bush in public esteem, may give him more latitude to govern from the political middle.

"After eight months of pursuing a right-wing policy agenda, President Bush the past week has reached out in a genuine bipartisan manner," said Ralph G. Neas, head of the liberal People for the American Way. Though he objects to some of Bush's anti-terrorism proposals on civil liberties grounds, Neas expressed the hope that from now on "pragmatism and a more results-oriented approach will prevail over a more ideological agenda."

Some Bush allies said the image of Bush as an inflexible conservative was always a caricature. "I always thought it would be during a crisis that we'd see the full measure of the man," said Mark McKinnon, who was a Democratic consultant before joining with Bush in Texas. "A lot of people had a one-dimensional view of him. But there's a humanity about him that came through in the last week, a judgment that transcends ideology."

Presidential scholar Charles O. Jones, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, said what has happened in the past 10 days represents "the most dramatic agenda replacement" for a president "certainly since Pearl Harbor." But he said it is not just conservatives who find their old platforms unsuited to new circumstances. Favored Democratic items such as prescription drugs under Medicare, he said, hardly seem like urgent priorities.

The horror of the attacks -- and the uncertainty about how best to respond -- has made everyone's assumptions obsolete, Jones said: "Ideologies are based on long-standing understandings, and that's not the case here. There is no precedent for what has happened, so everyone is cut loose from their moorings."