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# Posted 7:17 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

BUSH: BIG GOVERNMENT CONSERVATIVE? That's what Fred Barnes says, though I'm not buying it. Bush may behave according to the principles Barnes describes, but I get the sense that the President does so as a matter of political expediency.

Barnes also goes to great lengths to contrast Bush to Reagan, the supposed paradigm of small government conservatism. But Reagan did all the same things then that Bush is doing now, albeit with greater pangs of conscience. The bottom line is that Republicans maintain a rhetorical commitment to small government but tacitly admit that their cause is hopeless.

Finally, Barnes makes the untenable statement that "Neocons tend to be big government conservatives." While I can't speak as a neo-con, I think it's fair to say that many neocons have strong libertarian leanings which go against the foundational tenet of big government conservatism, i.e. that

"using what would normally be seen as liberal means--activist government--for conservative ends. And [being] willing to spend more and increase the size of government in the process.

In the final analysis, I think Barnes' essay falls into a well-known genre of opinion journalism, specifcally the attribution of a coherent political philosophy to officeholders who have strong instincts but are unable to articulate a coherent philosophy on their own.

In general, this genre tends to be considerably more popular among conservative journalists, since Democrats have a habit of nominating and electing egg-headed Presidents who can speak for themselves, whereas Republicans prefer men such as Reagan and George W. Bush. In fact, Barnes essay reminds one of the endless battles of the Reagan years in which conservatives spent as much time claiming the President's loyalty for their own Republican faction as they did responding to Democratic broadsides against the GOP as a whole.

You see, in a democracy it's entirely possible to be a 'C' student and a 'A+' president...as well as vice versa.

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