GEORGE W. BUSH is astoundingly popular with the American people. His approval ratings have hovered around the mid-60s or above for nearly two years--a phenomenon whose staying power cannot be explained by an initial reaction of support for the president after September 11. He has singlehandedly unified the Republican party--a party that seemed to be splitting at the seams before Bush's ascendance. He is even surprisingly popular in Democratic areas. In New Jersey he is more popular than the Democratic governor. In California he is winning support among Hispanics. In New York and Minnesota, he trounces likely Democratic rivals in early presidential surveys. These latter margins will obviously shrink closer to Election Day, but it is nonetheless true that George W. Bush has made a connection with a large swath of the American electorate (while driving his opponents into something of a frenzy).
There are many reasons Bush has made this connection. One of them is that since September 11 he has appealed to the optimism and idealism of the American people. Bush looked around the world, even amidst the horror of terrorism and the challenges of war, and saw a chance to help spread democracy across the Arab world. He seized the opportunity to liberate the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq. Last week, at the Coast Guard Academy, Bush declared:
The advance of freedom is more than an interest we pursue. It is a calling we follow. Our country was created in the name and cause of freedom. And if the
self-evident truths of our founding are true for us, they are true for all. As a people dedicated to civil rights, we are driven to defend the human rights of others. We are the nation that liberated continents and concentration camps. We are the nation of the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, and the Peace Corps. We are the nation that ended the oppression of Afghan women, and we are the nation that closed the torture chambers of Iraq.
With such soaring rhetoric, matched by bold but sensible policy, Bush has turned his opponents into churlish conservatives, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. They are the ones who oppose daring change. They are the ones who found themselves sourly defending the Iraqi status quo. They are the ones who ask the American people to walk away from the noblest elements of their creed.
The administration now has an opportunity to grab the mantle of optimism and idealism in domestic policy as well. It was not long ago that Republicans were fatalistic about domestic social issues. They emphasized the intractability of problems such as crime and welfare, and talked about the limits of social policy. But that began to change in the 1990s. Rudy Giuliani, who was then on the Republican fringe, set out to demonstrate that government could reduce crime, and he succeeded. Welfare reformers such as John Engler, Tommy Thompson, and Stephen Goldsmith set out to show that the underclass need not be an inevitable feature of modern life. They found allies at the neoconservative think tanks and foundations, and among many centrist Democrats, and the movement finally led to the welfare reform act of 1996.
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