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Friday, January 16, 2009
Intervention in market stirs Bush debate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Grant George W. Bush this: “While there’s room for an honest and healthy debate about the decisions I made … there can be no debate about the results in keeping America safe.”
Even among Republicans and especially among fiscal conservatives, there is honest disagreement and healthy debate.
My greatest regret is not that he accepted a costly new entitlement in prescription drugs or that he expanded the federal role in K-12 education, a state and local responsibility. It’s that the necessary intervention to stem panic in the financial sector — and “necessary intervention” is an assertion much in dispute among conservatives — has given cover to the most frightening and consequential entanglement of government in the private sector in my lifetime. Pray tell, how do we get back out?
The cover provided by Bush has allowed Democrats in Congress to dust off every spending fantasy that ever struck their fancy or imagination. At most recent count, it adds up to $825 billion and will undoubtedly grow. It’s no wonder that state Sen. Emanuel Jones, a Decatur Democrat and automobile dealer, called a news conference Friday to urge the president-elect to “issue an executive order granting ethnic minority automobile dealers immediate financial assistance.” Line up. Big or small. Find an angle to demand a bailout.
For those fiscal conservatives who supported Bush’s initial action in dealing with the financial crisis — I am among them — the principled ground is washed away. Opposition to massive public engagement in the private sector is dismissed as partisan. It’s explained by persistent Bush critics on the left as merely an extension of the effort he started.
And as Libertarian Party spokesman Andrew Davis warned last month, “Government programs tend to linger with disastrous economic consequences.”
In his farewell address Thursday night, the president reiterated the irrefutable fact of his success in keeping the nation safe. “America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil,” he said.
He asserted, too, that “facing the prospect of a financial collapse, we took decisive measures to safeguard our economy. These are very tough times … but the tolls would be far worse if we had not acted.”
Granted, the first. Even his most vicious critics cannot refute the reality before our eyes. As commander-in-chief, he faced that crisis magnificently and never once betrayed the men and women in uniform who sacrificed for their country. History will be kind to him as a wartime leader.
On the domestic front, we’ll not know for perhaps another decade whether “the tolls would be far worse if we had not acted.”
While I would be perfectly willing to allow companies to fail whose corporate culture encouraged recklessness in lending or borrowing, the country could not tolerate the economic suffering that obviously would have been wrought by the failure to arrest the panic. In hindsight, the intervention put the government in the position of picking winners and losers while doing little to keep the free market from taking its course.
The makings of President Bush’s legacy were bookends to his presidency. He did not invite Sept. 11 and could not have avoided it. No action that he took caused or perhaps could have prevented Wall Street’s meltdown. He inherited a culture created by post-Reagan politicians who cleverly sought to hide in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the social programs they lacked the courage or cover to create outright. Ultimately, that system evolved into one where, top to bottom, nobody suffered the consequences of irresponsible behaviors. Not lenders. Not borrowers. Not investors.
The pass-the-risk, borrow-to-get-rich culture collapsed on Bush’s watch. He responded as any president would: Put out the fire and worry about the drought tomorrow.
On keeping America safe, an A-plus.
On legislating conservative ideas, such as health savings accounts or education choice and accountability, a D. Congressional Democrats will rip those out before the next election. No lasting accomplishment.
On Supreme Court appointments, an A-plus. On responding to economic crisis, an incomplete.
Pray tell, how do we get back out? We won’t.
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