In This Corner: Fireworks

A friend in the publishing biz has collected his own laws of political commentary, one of which is: Rod Dreher, while convincing, is always wrong. Dreher posted a rant in The Corner earlier today that drew a mild rebuke from K-Lo and a stronger one ("hysterical and unjust") from John Podhoretz. Dreher's been on an anti-Bush tear ever since Katrina: he's outraged at the Michael Brown appointment (although he failed to note in the rant I saw that Brown was already the 2nd-in-command at FEMA --hired by a successful FEMA director-- and having him step into the director's job was logical. Dreher, like the MSM, has been acting as if Bush appointed Brown sheerly on the strength of his Republican campaign donations.)

Now Dreher's apoplectic about Bush's Katrina spending plan. I have a certain sympathy with him. If you're a fiscal conservative, huge government spending has to make you at least itch, if not feel more uncomfortable. However, the words that stand out to me from Bush's speech remain "Gulf Opportunity Zone," and I am more inclined to take the Michael Barone line:

But despite the Great Society tone of his speech, he did not promise another Great Society. He proposed instead a Gulf Opportunity Zone -- presumably, a tax-free status to encourage investment. He called for Worker Recovery Accounts of up to $5,000 for job training, education and childcare. He proposed an Urban Homesteading Act on federal lands.

Mr. Bush's liberal critics have hoped the Katrina disaster would increase support for big government, and they have a point when they say there are some things only government must do and it -- or they: local, state, federal -- must do them well. Mr. Bush's proposals use government differently. Like the GI Bill of Rights and the no-down-payment Veterans Administration home mortgages of Franklin Roosevelt, Mr. Bush's Worker Recovery Accounts and Urban Homesteading would help people, but only those who in turn do something to lift themselves.

And his Opportunity Zone turns on its head the liberal notion that the most effective way to help the poor and helpless is to tax everyone else heavily and hand out money to those in need. Lower taxes and less bureaucracy, Mr. Bush is saying, will enable people in the private sector to build the kind of self-propelling economy that offers everyone a chance out of poverty.

As K-Lo put it in her post, the President has earned Conservative trust in any number of areas; no one need be his toady, but he's entitled to at least a "trust-but-verify" attitude instead of the easy assumption that he's sold us out. Prior to Katrina, I would have argued that it's not that Bush isn't a fiscal Conservative; it's that he's made a practical judgment that it's not possible to cut government in the current political climate. Reagan couldn't do it, though he made cutting government part of his platform. I read Bush to have thought about how to undermine the ennervating forces of the welfare state, and his conclusion is that if he can introduce elements of privatization and competition into all the existing programs, then markets and the entrepreneurial spirit can lead the way out of the Nanny State. Hence: private accounts, school competition, faith-based initiatives that offer more efficient and effective alternatives to bloated government programs. Of course there's a risk that this won't work and we'll end up with a monster worse than the one we started with. But it's a calculated risk, and the President has shown us over and again that he's not afraid of a calculated risk.