What Would Bill Clinton Do?

• Share

(2 of 2)

Actually, Bush has a long track record of Clintonian jujitsu. He took education--and a hoary liberal slogan--away from the Democrats with his "No Child Left Behind" act. The Department of Homeland Security was a Democratic idea, which he opposed, until he embraced it. If congressional Republicans can stop squabbling among themselves, Bush could well enter his re-election campaign having accomplished that most ancient and moldy of Democratic dreams, a new prescription-drug benefit for the elderly. His would be a fairly lousy benefit, but no one will notice because the program doesn't begin until 2006.

So why doesn't Bush take the plunge on taxes? A matter of honor, say those familiar with the President's thinking--who also acknowledge that if he did rescind some of the tax cuts, it would raise Bush's poll ratings, gut the opposition and perhaps even guarantee his re-election. But Bush won't do it, I am told, because it would undermine all the Republicans in Congress who voted for the tax cuts and because it is precisely the sort of thing Clinton would do--and did do in 1993 when he walked away from his BTU tax proposal after Democrats in the House had voted for it. "Next time the White House needed support on a tough vote," a Republican told me, "it might not be there."

Perhaps, but I can think of two other reasons. Tax cutting is a matter of Republican theology; it is as close to the heart of the G.O.P.'s Sun Belt base as abortion is to the Democrats' legions of secular feminists. There is also a bit of family history here. Another President Bush once, famously, promised no new taxes. George W. Bush has not only been assiduous about doing the opposite in office of what Bill Clinton did, but also the opposite of what George H.W. Bush did. On the tax issue, as on the Gulf War, Oedipus rules.