Impostor -- How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy by Bruce Bartlett, Doubleday, $26, 320 pages, ISBN #0-385-51827-7. Index, lengthy bibliography, source notes, unillustrated.
When the embattled President George W. Bush began to watch his poll numbers drop after his re-election, he could take comfort in the fact that at least he could count on his conservative base. But in recent months, it's become clear that hordes of GOP stalwarts have abandoned him too.
One of those is Bruce Bartlett, a disciple of President Ronald Reagan and author of the best-selling 1981 book, Reaganomics. Like many followers of the two-term president, he was cheered when George W. Bush let it be known that the template for his presidency would be that of Reagan rather than that of his father, George H. W. Bush. His new book is a screed against W for betraying the Reagan legacy of lowered taxes, smaller government and a strong defense.
Where did Bush 43 go wrong? He cut taxes, all right; Bartlett helped him design the tax cuts. But rather than combine this move with tightening the budget belt, he became as profligate a spender as the Democrats he criticized in his presidential campaign. In so doing, Bartlett contends he soiled the Reagan mantle by unmasking himself as "an unprincipled opportunist who will do whatever he or his advisers think is expedient to buy votes."
On top of this blunder, Bush created a Medicare drug entitlement in the mold of FDR and LBJ. Against the backdrop of already lowered taxes, Bartlett asks how will America ever pay for this megaprogram without a massive tax hike along the lines of the value-added tax adopted by European countries.
Ironically, this card-carrying conservative reserves his praise for President Bill Clinton, noting that he managed to cut spending, abolish the welfare entitlement and end his presidency with a budget surplus. Bartlett scathingly likens Bush to the discredited Richard Nixon, "an archconservative Republican, bitterly hated by liberals, who vainly tried to woo moderates by enacting big parts of the liberal program."
Having knocked Bush down for the count, Bartlett adds the coup de grace, to mix a metaphor, by drawing comparisons of Bush's presidency to the collapse of Enron: "Enron borrowed heavily, paid little in taxes, and made big profits in ways that were known to be contrary to sound business practices. But for a while, its system seemed to work, until its basic unsoundness caused it to collapse. I see this as a metaphor for Bush's policies because they are also based on a huge increase in debt, tax cuts, and an unsound increase in federal financial commitments at a time when such commitments should be been scaled back, rather than increased."
