6/15/00 8:50 a.m.
The Right Candidate
Bush's real accomplishment.

By NR's Ramesh Ponnuru & John J. Miller, NR editors

he conventional explanation for why George W. Bush is doing well in the polls is that he has "moved to the center" after taking "a hard-right tack" in the primaries. The trouble with this formulation is that Bush's stump speech has barely changed through all the tumult of the last year. His real accomplishment is more impressive: overcoming the false dichotomy between the "right" and the "center." The two issues to which Bush has devoted the most time since winning the primaries are free-market reform of Social Security and missile defense. Both are conservative priorities, and both are bolder policies than previous Republican presidential candidates have advocated. Bush's speech on the working poor, another part of what Democrats mock as his "Bob Jones Redemption Tour," included a call to lift all restrictions on medical savings accounts. If this is centrism, let's have more of it.

It is true, of course, that Bush has taken some positions less pleasing to conservatives. But these have generally fallen in two categories: unimportant issues (mandatory trigger locks for handguns, subsidies for community health centers) and issues on which congressional Republicans have already capitulated (the Department of Education, racial preferences, HMO regulation). Bush has been reliably conservative on the issues that matter. His support for tax cuts and Social Security reform is more important than his spending initiatives — not least because if he succeeds on taxes and Social Security, it will be easier to limit government in the future. In recent weeks, Bush has also taken up the cause of changing the budget process in ways that will make conservative policies easier to enact. If under Bush's father conservatives got the rhetoric and liberals got the policies, under this Bush the reverse may be true.

Meanwhile, Gore is stumbling. He has not consolidated the base of his party: Bill Bradley was scoring double digits in the primaries long after he dropped out of the race, and Ralph Nader is actually registering in the polls. Gore has had to abandon the hysterically negative tone he adopted after the primaries, if only so that when he unloads again in the fall, the public won't tune him out.

Gore's latent strengths will make him a formidable candidate in the fall. (Don't forget that he was off-balance before the primaries, too.) Nor has Bush's campaign been perfect: For one thing, it is letting Gore and his liberal allies paint an unflattering picture of Texas. Bush would be mistaken to sit on his lead, or to take conservative voters for granted. But the campaign, for now, is going pretty well.

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NR editor Richard Lowry is looking for an executive assistant to handle correspondence, scheduling, and the like. Applicants should be organized, conservative, and enjoy life in New York City — including the opportunity to vote against Hillary. Send resumes to Dorothy McCartney…