OxBlog

# Posted 12:58 AM by Ariel David Adesnik

IS BUSH NATURALLY RIGHT? John C. from Innocents Abroad highly recommends UVA prof Jim Ceaser's essay on George Bush's surprising embrace of a philosophy of natural right(s) long associated with progressive rather than conservative causes.

John points to Bush's speech today at the UN as a particularly good illustration of what the essay is talking about. I tend to agree, but with two important caveats. First of all, incumbent presidents almost always invoke America's founding principles to justify whatever policies they advocate, especially foreign interventions.

Second of all, the president's opponents almost always criticize such activism from a realist perspective. That is why, just five years ago, America had to confront that bizarre situation in which liberal Bill Clinton was bombing Yugoslavia while Trent Lott was suggesting that Clinton "give peace a chance".

Of course rhetoric does matter (as OxBlog itself often says). One of the ways it matters is by setting as expectations. Thus, Ceaser forecasts that if Bush is defeated, the Republican party will abandon his political philosophy:

But if a Bush loss in November will lead to internal party upheaval, a victory will not only solidify his mark on the party but on the country as well. A Bush victory will eclipse in its immediate impact the incumbent re-elections of Bill Clinton in 1996 or even of Ronald Reagan in 1984, when the campaign messages were broad and vague. Reagan’s “morning in America” and Clinton’s “a bridge to the twenty-first century” stood for little. In contrast, since Bush’s foreign
policy has been the decisive issue of the 2004 election, Democrats would find the meaning of his victory impossible to deny. It would also give the sanction of the majority to the president’s vision for the Republican party.

While Ceaser is 100% right about how specific Bush's re-election campaign has been, I still doubt whether a victory this November would transform a Republican Party that still harbors both numerous realists as well as small-government conservatives.

Even Bush's commitment to his own principles is less than robust. If the next Republican president is a realist or small-government conservative, Bush's precedent may not matter.

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