10/18/00 1:45 p.m.
Bush on the Merits
Our judgement in the presidential race is reinforced by the issues.

By NR's Editors

ur judgment in the presidential race is reinforced by a consideration of the discrete issues it has engaged. Foremost among these, as always, is foreign policy. The Clinton administration's policy has been reckless, expanding our commitments promiscuously while undermining our ability to meet them. Its policy toward Iraq is a shambles. Its policy toward Israel has been based on chimeras. Relations with our European allies have deteriorated. The strategic threat posed by China has been underestimated. Gore might compile a better record in some of these areas. But Bush is likely to do better than Gore. The policies Bush has outlined are traditionally conservative, avoiding both the isolationist and adventurist tendencies within the Right.

Next in importance, given its self-aggrandizement over the last generation, is the Supreme Court. If Gore were able to appoint several justices, the probable results would include an end to promising experiments in educational freedom, the entrenchment of an absolutist ideology of abortion-on-demand, and a new lease on life for racial quotas. It is harder to predict how Bush appointees would judge. But by calling for "strict constructionist" judges who leave the task of legislating to the legislators, Bush has at least set forth the right criteria.

On domestic policy, Gore offers a grab bag of statist and balkanizing proposals that would weaken the country: several new entitlements, creeping price controls on drugs, full public financing of elections, complications in the tax code, a federal hate-crimes law, the extension of civil-rights protections to gays as a class, and harsh restrictions on energy use. A burgeoning surplus would give him a chance to expand the federal government as much as LBJ and Nixon did.

Bush's domestic platform is much more in keeping with the country's founding traditions. It includes missile defense, tax cuts, an investment-based reform of Social Security, modest moves toward school choice, and free trade. Worthwhile in themselves, these policies would also make it easier to achieve other conservative policy reforms down the road. Bush's Social Security proposal, for instance, would expand the new investor class and thus, potentially, the coalition for free markets. Tax cuts will make it easier to resist demands for new entitlement programs. And so on.

On some issues Bush has, of course, been disappointing. He has not advocated any substantial retrenchment of federal activity, and has made a lot of promises to spend tax money. He has been weak in confronting racial preferences, blind to the dangers of uncontrolled immigration and the flaws of bilingual education, and silent on the debate over the feminization of the military. But this is merely to say that Bush would not enact the entire conservative agenda; that his election would not obviate the need for further political action by conservatives. His election would, however, advance conservative aims.

And conservatives would still be able to prod Bush to the right when needed. When Bush's father was inaugurated, NR promised to be his foul-weather friend and his fair-weather critic. We have given the son the same treatment over the last year. We expect to keep doing so — for the next eight years, we hope.