June 28, 2004: Headlines: USA Freedom Corps: Cleveland Plain Delaer: "There's no question that the compassionate agenda will be a big part of President Bush's legacy," says John Bridgeland, the former director of Bush's USA Freedom Corps

Peace Corps Online: Peace Corps News: Peace Corps Library: USA Freedom Corps: June 28, 2004: Headlines: USA Freedom Corps: Cleveland Plain Delaer: "There's no question that the compassionate agenda will be a big part of President Bush's legacy," says John Bridgeland, the former director of Bush's USA Freedom Corps

By Admin1 (admin) (141.157.22.73) on Saturday, July 03, 2004 - 4:43 pm: Edit Post

"There's no question that the compassionate agenda will be a big part of President Bush's legacy," says John Bridgeland, the former director of Bush's USA Freedom Corps

There's no question that the compassionate agenda will be a big part of President Bush's legacy, says John Bridgeland, the former director of Bush's USA Freedom Corps

"There's no question that the compassionate agenda will be a big part of President Bush's legacy," says John Bridgeland, the former director of Bush's USA Freedom Corps

With Bush's compassion agenda stalled, some lose faith
Monday, June 28, 2004
Elizabeth Auster
Plain Dealer Bureau

Washington

Jim Wallis couldn't believe it.

A day after George W. Bush nailed down the 2000 election, his aides were on the phone, inviting Wallis to Austin, Texas, to meet with the president-elect about a key element of his compassionate conservative agenda.

"The president knew I didn't vote for him, I'm sure," says Wallis, a minister who edits the liberal Christian magazine Sojourners and heads a federation devoted to fighting poverty. "Yet, they were reaching out to a broad cross-section of leaders who they knew didn't support them. I thought that was a good sign."

Nearly four years later, Wallis is one of many disappointed in what has become of Bush's much-touted 2000 campaign promise to bring a new Republican approach to efforts to help the poor.

They say Bush's compassionate conservative agenda has fallen short of their expectations - succumbing to obstacles ranging from war and terrorism, to resistance in Congress, to budget pressures that have left little money for the poor.

"It's a shame because I think a compassionate conservative, a Republican, could have done some important things on poverty, and this administration has not," Wallis says. "His heart may be in the right place, but the policy failed."

Bush's compassionate conservative image has receded markedly into the background as war and terrorism have increasingly dominated his time. Though Bush continues to sound the theme at events like his visit last week to a social-services agency in Cincinnati, the slogan hasn't been nearly as prominent as it was four years ago.

"The president is running less this year as a compassionate conservative than as a war leader," says John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. "Many of the people who were persuaded [to vote for Bush] by the compassionate conservative image in 2000 are probably disappointed."

One of the major frustrations for people like Wallis is Bush's failure to persuade Congress to enact the centerpiece of his compassion agenda - a bill that would have made it easier for faith-based groups to compete for billions of federal dollars to run programs to help the poor. The legislation ran into resistance from Democrats and some Republicans concerned about the separation of church and state. A stripped-down version of the bill that avoided those issues is still stuck in Congress.

Bush also has failed to get Congress to enact another top item on his agenda - a rewrite of the landmark 1996 welfare-reform law. Bush has tried for years to get Congress to revamp the law with changes including new programs to promote marriage and responsible fatherhood, but the legislation is tied up over disputes about money for child care and Bush's proposals for tougher work requirements for welfare recipients.

Despite those setbacks, Bush has shown his commitment to the compassionate conservative agenda in other ways:

When Congress failed to enact faith-based legislation, he signed a series of executive orders making it easier for religious groups to get government money to help the needy.

He has gotten Congress to approve new programs that offer money to poor people for down payments on homes, vouchers to addicts for drug treatment and mentors to children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

He has promoted volunteerism drives that have helped to boost the number of Americans volunteering from 59.8 million in the year after the Sept. 11 attacks to 63.8 million.

 John Bridgeland

"There's no question that the compassionate agenda will be a big part of President Bush's legacy," says John Bridgeland, the former director of Bush's Domestic Policy Council.

"We certainly see progress," says Margaret Spellings, Bush's domestic policy adviser.

Spellings, who has worked for Bush since he ran for governor in Texas, says he has "talked about being a different kind of Republican" throughout his political career. "The old-style Republicans don't talk about the poor and the needy. . . . The president has had a longstanding record on that."

Outside the administration, political and policy analysts generally agree that Bush's compassionate conservative agenda has a mixed record. Among the people who express disappointment are conservatives who once hailed Bush's promise to tackle poverty with a conservative approach that emphasized working with religious and grass-roots community groups.

Stanley Carlson-Thies, a former associate director of Bush's White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, credits Bush with using executive orders to make major changes in the federal government's attitude toward working with religious groups. But he says the administration's failure to persuade Congress to enact faith-based legislation is unfortunate.

That failure means that Bush has yet to win approval of a tax break designed to spur donations to charities. Second, it means a new president could undo Bush's changes simply by revoking his executive orders. That prospect makes some religious groups wary of applying for federal money, he says.

"I think it's kind of tragic," says Carlson-Thies, who cites the Sept. 11 attacks as the main factor that hurt Bush's compassionate conservative agenda because it "just swamped so many things that were under way."

Douglas Besharov, a social welfare scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, says he would describe Bush's record on compassionate conservatism as "modest." He mostly blames Senate Democrats, who have been able to block many bills even though Republicans hold a narrow majority.

"This stuff would have happened, I'm quite sure, if the Democrats had been a little more cooperative," Besharov says. "This is politics. They don't want to give him any victories."

Democrats, meanwhile, fault Bush for refusing to address their concerns.

William Galston, a former domestic policy official in the Clinton administration, says he took seriously Bush's campaign promise to come to Washington as a uniter, not a divider.

"When Bush ran as a compassionate conservative, I thought he was sending a signal that . . . his mindset was more generous, more bipartisan," Galston says. "But from day one, that's not what he did."

Margy Waller, a former domestic policy aide in the Clinton administration, says Bush alienated Democrats not only with his tone but also with a series of proposals that threatened spending cuts in social programs such as Head Start, Medicaid, welfare and low-income housing.

The Kerry campaign dismisses compassionate conservatism entirely. "It was a political slogan," says Robert Gordon, the campaign's domestic policy director. "He [Bush] has at every turn walked away from people who are working hard, trying to do the right thing, but still need a hand."

Green, of the University of Akron, says he expects compassionate conservatism will end up like the "New Covenant" slogan Bill Clinton used when he first ran for president in 1992.

For Clinton, it was a way of reassuring swing voters that he would take a more hard-headed approach to antipoverty programs than Democrats had in the past - that he would help the poor, but only in ways that were effective and demanded some responsibility from the participants. The slogan helped Clinton win, Green says, but quickly faded from view, partly because many Democrats never warmed to it.

"Bush had the same problem," Green says. "There were a significant number of people in the Republican Party who thought that compassionate conservatism was sort of silly, and still do."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

eauster@plaind.com, 216-999-4212


© 2004 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.




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Story Source: Cleveland Plain Delaer

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