1/18/01 4:30 p.m.
Squandered Treasury
A legal reporter smears the A.G. nominee.

By NR’s John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

reasury Choice Varies from Bush on Tax Outlook” is the headline of the New York Times’s lead story today. Much as we wish it were otherwise, the story is a fair summary of Paul O’Neill’s confirmation testimony before the Senate. O’Neill said, “I’m not going to make a huge case that [a tax cut] is the investment we need to make sure we don't go into a recession. But if we are going to do it anyway” — i.e., cut taxes — “the sooner the better.” O’Neill also told Trent Lott that a capital-gains tax cut would not do much to stimulate the economy and said that monetary policy rather than tax policy would be the “first line of action” against a recession.

This last point has become something of a talking point for liberals. But there are reasons to doubt it. In the first place, the notion that the Federal Reserve is so good at getting the timing of counter-cyclical policy right that nobody else can do a better job has everything going for it except the empirical evidence. (As Alan Reynolds sourly notes in today’s Washington Times, “Just look at the expedient way the Fed prevented the 1990 recession by cutting interest rates in half during 1992-93.”) Second, while the Fed can prevent a deflation by loosening money, it can’t improve incentives to work, save, or invest.

But the fact that O’Neill has revealed himself to be no supply-sider is less important than his subversion of the president-elect’s agenda. Bush has made the argument that tax cuts are an insurance policy against recession for over a year now. He needs spokesmen who will make that case in order to win over a skeptical Washington. One might have thought he would pick a Treasury secretary who would be such a spokesman.

Clinton Forever
President Clinton is supposed to deliver a short “farewell address” on national television tonight. But this is one final lie from the Oval Office. Clinton will never willingly exit the public stage. When he utters his goodbye line, look for a wink.

Clinton has spent the last eight years tarnishing the presidency, most recently by calling into question the legitimacy of George W. Bush’s election. (For a complete rundown on what he said, see last Thursday’s Washington Bulletin)Even this address is unusual. His predecessor, the elder George Bush, did not give one. President Reagan did, but he had the sense to deliver it nine days before leaving office — not less than 48 hours before departure and in the midst of his successor’s inaugural celebration.

There’s every reason to think Clinton now will go about tarnishing the ex-presidency, too. “It’s not that he’ll speak out on every issue that George Bush is dealing with,” former chief of staff Leon Panetta told USA Today. “But I think on the big issues, whether it’s foreign affairs or the economy, that are really important to Bill Clinton, he is going to let the American people know what he thinks.”

In the last few days, we’ve gotten a taste of what’s to come: Clinton called for D.C. statehood, demanded an end to racial profiling by the police, and insisted on a federal law restoring voting rights to ex-cons who live in states that disenfranchise felons. Clinton did not push for any of these things while he was president, when he and Al Gore were still accountable to voters. These are the sorts of liberal causes he largely avoided while running for the White House and then sitting in it. As this New Democrat ages, he’ll start to look more like an Old Democrat. And at the tender age of 54 — the youngest ex-president in nearly a century — he’ll have plenty of time to get grumpy.

Ashcroft Concedes
Yesterday, NRO ran a commentary by one of us criticizing John Ashcroft’s Senate testimony both for its substance and the underlying political strategy it reflects. A few additional thoughts:

1. Ashcroft left himself some wiggle room on abortion, though it seems doubtful that intended to. He said that he would not instruct his Solicitor General to ask the Supreme Court to take up abortion cases in order to overrule the Roe and Casey decisions. But he left open the possibility that his Solicitor General might ask the Court to rule that way if it took up an abortion case of its own accord. In that case, Ashcroft’s peculiar argument that it would undermine the SG’s office to ask the Court to take up issues it considers settled would no longer apply.

2. For the last twenty years, anti-abortionists have not been able to maintain much political momentum behind any position to the right of a Republican president or presidential candidate. When George Bush won the nomination in 1988 with an anti-abortion position admitting exceptions for cases of rape and incest, that became the prevailing anti-abortion position. Ashcroft’s concession could mean that the anti-abortion position will be more watered down, with nervous anti-abortion candidates coming out against partial-birth abortion and subsidized abortion but making peace with Roe v. Wade. Already, they point to the Supreme Court to reassure voters who favor legal abortion that they can’t do much on the issue even if they wanted to. Anti-abortionists can accept that line because it simply acknowledges reality. But disavowing the overturn of Roe as a goal is another thing. Anti-abortionists will be looking to the National Right to Life Committee, which is tight with Bush, to stop this erosion.

3. The strategy behind Ashcroft’s defensiveness on abortion and also on guns remains baffling. If that defensiveness is designed to win over Democratic senators, it reflects a misunderstanding of what the Democrats are up to — which is purely and simply to weaken on the new administration. If it is designed to assuage public opinion, it reflects a misunderstanding of that. There is no credible evidence that the abortion or gun issues hurt Bush in November, and no reason to think that swing voters will even remember this episode four years from now.