Peggy Noonan asks whether conservatives should have known in 2000 that Bush would be a big spender–whether, that is, spending was always integral to compassionate conservatism. My answer to this question has been a qualified yes. Remember that Bush in 1999 said that the budget should not be balanced on the backs of the poor. (He seems to think it shouldn’t be balanced on anyone else’s back, either.) He promised to create a new prescription drug benefit for the elderly, and he did not promise to end any programs. He repudiated Republicans’ former opposition to the Department of Education. Marvin Olasky, who had some claim to know what compassionate conservatism meant, told Dana Milbank in 1999, “Let’s throw away the budget cutters. I see that coming with Bush.” (I quote Olasky here.)

So we should have known that he would be a big spender. My qualification is that perhaps we can legitimately claim to be surprised at how much of a big spender he would be.

Noonan’s answer to her own question is that all we should have known is that he would not have any great zeal for cutting spending. There may not be a great deal of difference between these takes. Washington is set up–and the budget rules, in particular, are set up–so that spending will increase unless some powerful political actors have a lot of anti-spending zeal. (The Gingrich Republicans exhibited that type of zeal, but they were able to sustain it only for about two years.)