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“Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And
change has its enemies.” - RFK


OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
No Deficit of Courage
By JON MEACHAM
Published: December 8, 2010
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IS it, in fact, 1994-95 all over again? The atmospherics are certainly
familiar. We have a Democratic president who appears to be tacking to
the center to work with Republicans after being battered in the
midterms. Jilted liberals, meanwhile, are left wondering how they
could have been so blind about the man they had fallen for so hard.

The Clinton comparison has been much in the air after President
Obama’s deal to extend the George W. Bush-era tax cuts. But a more apt
analogy for the present lies in 1990, not in 1994, and with George
Herbert Walker Bush, not with William Jefferson Clinton.

It was in 1990 that Mr. Bush broke one of the most celebrated promises
in modern American politics —“Read my lips: no new taxes,” as he put
it in 1988 — in order to control federal spending. In the same way
that Mr. Obama struck his deal to secure lower tax rates for the
middle-class and win an extension of unemployment benefits, Mr. Bush
gave on tax rates to get “pay as you go” rules — meaning that no
further spending could be approved without compensating budget cuts or
revenue increases. It was the beginning of the fiscal discipline that
helped create the budget surpluses of the 1990s.

While Mr. Obama’s immediate concern is stimulus and Mr. Bush’s was
deficit-reduction, both gave way on issues critical to the true
believers within their parties. For Mr. Bush, it was political death.
He had never been fully trusted by a Reaganite Republican base. Like
Mr. Obama — who is unhappy with his “sanctimonious” left wing — Mr.
Bush was no ideologue.

“I’m not going to be held up by campaign rhetoric,” he wrote in his
diary early in his term. “If the facts change, I hope I’m smart enough
to change, too.” Mr. Bush privately said that he had no intention of
being “off in some ideological corner falling on my sword and keeping
the country from moving forward.”

He knew that doing what he believed was in the country’s best interest
could cost him his job in 1992. “Nobody is particularly happy with
me,” he said during the 1990 negotiations. “The budget is a loser.”

But in real time, aware of the consequences, he made the best of the
world as he found it. After his election loss to Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush
wrote to Nicholas Brady, his Treasury secretary, that the budget deal
would have helped him if the economy had strongly recovered. “It
didn’t,” Mr. Bush added, “and I was the ‘read my lips’ liar — over and
over and over again. I heard it — it killed us.” With the base angry
and so many others believing the economy was not getting better, Mr.
Bush faced a primary challenge from the right by Patrick Buchanan and
ultimately could not prevail against the combination of Bill Clinton
and Ross Perot.

If you play out the 1990 analogy, Mr. Obama, like Mr. Bush, may be a
one-term president. Mr. Clinton won re-election because of his
political gifts and the improving economy and because he was fortunate
in his Congressional foes. Mr. Bush did not have these advantages.

It is too soon to tell what will confront Mr. Obama. If his bill, with
its middle-class tax benefits, stimulates the economy, then his
compromise on a liberal article of faith may one day rank with Mr.
Bush’s courage under conservative fire.

There are worse things than losing re-election yet winning the good
opinion of history. Don’t be surprised if Mr. Obama makes that very
point when he presents the Presidential Medals of Freedom next year.
Among those the president has chosen to honor at the White House: a
man from Houston, George Herbert Walker Bush.


Jon Meacham, the author, most recently, of “American Lion: Andrew
Jackson in the White House,” is at work on a biography of George H. W.
Bush.