FOUR MORE YEARS: The Bush administration faces challenges and dangers of a kind that few other administrations in all our history have ever had to face. But these historic challenges and dangers also represent historic opportunities. By Thomas Sowell.
Even during his first term, George W. Bush’s
long-run strategic view, exemplified by the war
on terrorism, contrasted sharply with former president Bill Clinton’s preoccupation with short-run political
tactics, though this contrast seemed to be little noticed in most of the
media.
What are the biggest long-run problems? The biggest is
of course national survival in an age when
international terrorist networks and rogue nations developing nuclear
weapons raise possibilities too chilling to contemplate. If the time ever
comes when this president, or any future president, has to hesitate in the
face of a mortal threat looming on the horizon because of fear of the word
“unilateral” and the howling of critics at home or abroad, this
great nation is lost. President John F. Kennedy said it all long ago:
“We dare not tempt them with weakness.” Already we have had
Osama bin Laden warning us that we had better
vote his way or face massive retaliation. When
Spain caved in to terrorism and changed governments in response to
terrorist violence, it opened a new and deadly chapter in international
politics.
Domestically, our biggest long-run challenge will be
to rescue the voting public’s right to
govern itself from activist judges who not only invalidate policies they don’t like
but even dictate new policies to elected officials. Vacancies on the
federal courts, including new vacancies expected on the aging Supreme
Court, offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to turn around the drift
toward judicial despotism.
Those who favor judicial activism have long
appreciated how high the stakes are with nominees to the federal bench in
general and the Supreme Court in particular. After the orchestrated
character assassinations of Judge Robert Bork and Judge Clarence Thomas,
there is no excuse for those who want to end judicial activism to be
unaware of what a brutal fight lies ahead if they mean to restore the rule
of law instead of the rule of judges.
Whatever the short-term solution to the problems
created by the Senate Judiciary Committee, a longer-term solution must put a stop to the
practice of publicly savaging nominees to the
courts. Vote against them if you don’t like
them, but do not make this a snake pit that high-quality people, who have many other options, will avoid. Within living memory,
judicial nominees did not even appear in person
before the Senate for confirmation. A system that
produced giants like Oliver Wendell Holmes is surely better than one that
has produced pygmies like David Souter.
Some institutional changes, such as getting the TV
cameras out of the committee hearings, or having nominees submit their
records without appearing in person, need to be explored and some solution
imposed despite the inevitable howling of the liberals and their media
allies.
Many other areas need institutional change for
long-run results. Even something as apparently innocuous as the Census
Bureau needs a broader focus than studies
incessantly comparing one group with another, featuring pie charts and “gaps”—and ignoring or
downplaying the great progress in material well-being of all Americans,
including those in the bottom 10 or 20 percent in income.
Census data on family and household income are grossly
misleading when families and households are getting smaller over the years.
When two working members of a household today earn as much as three working
members earned a generation ago, that is not a “stagnation” in
income—as the media love to report it—but a 50 percent increase
in per capita real income that has enabled one member to go set up another
household.
Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has made
devastating criticisms of these and other misleading Census studies over the years. But
despite many years of conservative
Republican administrations, neither he nor people who have his perspective
have replaced those in the Census Bureau whose liberal vision shapes the
way so many issues are presented in the media and in academia. That kind of
influence should not go by default to those with one political viewpoint.
The area in which many Americans feel most betrayed by
both political parties has been in those parties’ refusal to take
control of our borders. Fear of the Hispanic
vote is no doubt one factor and fear of media demonization is another. But the guys on Mount Rushmore didn’t get
there by ducking tough fights.
When you consider what a private citizen like Ron Unz
has done to get rid of so-called bilingual education in California, for
example, it must be clear that you can talk sense to both the general
public and the Hispanic population as well, if you make the effort and do
not let the political and media chorus
intimidate you. Not all Hispanics are thrilled at open borders, any more than they all were
dedicated to bilingual education. But the Republicans’ greatest failing on this and other issues, going back
through several administrations, has been an unwillingness to take their
case to the public. On Social Security, for example, they need to spell out
that privatization means more total investment, creating more future income
from which to pay future pensions.
Too often Republicans have been willing to make
backroom compromises with the Democrats,
instead of going to the public, as Ronald Reagan did. With the Democrats becoming ever more obstructionist, it is
long past time for Republicans to try Plan B.
This administration faces challenges and dangers
that few, if any, have had to face in our history. But these challenges and
dangers, at home and abroad, are also historic opportunities.
This essay appeared in the Wall Street Journal on January 7, 2005. Available from the Hoover Press is Controversial Essays, by Thomas Sowell. To order, call 800.935.2882 . Thomas Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. |
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