Bush on the Home Front

John D. Graham

Description

2011 AAUP Public and Secondary School Library Selection

Watch a video of author John Graham explaining the idea of a cross-partisan solution from his book.

Military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq consumed so much attention during his presidency that few people appreciated that George W. Bush was also an activist on the home front. Despite limited public support, and while confronting a deeply divided Congress, Bush engineered and implemented reforms of public policy on a wide range of issues: taxes, education, health care, energy, environment, and regulatory reform. In Bush on the Home Front, former Bush White House official and academic John D. Graham analyzes Bush's successes in these areas and setbacks in other areas such as Social Security and immigration reform. Graham provides valuable insights into how future presidents can shape U.S. domestic policy while facing continuing partisan polarization.

Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments

1. Ambiguous Mandate, Polarized Congress
2. Lower Taxes, More Spending
3. The Social Security Debacle
4. Making Sure Kids Learn
5. Drug Coverage for Seniors
6. Producing More Energy
7. Consuming Less Energy
8. Cleaner Air, Warmer Climate
9. Illegal Immigration: Punishment or Amnesty?
10. Tort and Regulatory Reform
11. Meltdown and Bailouts
12. Taking Stock, with Lessons for Future Presidents

Notes
Index

Sujets

• American Government
• Social Science
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• News
• Central government
• Public administration
• Federal government of the United States
• Social sciences
• Politics
• History of the Americas
• 21st Century
• Business
• Central
• United States
• National

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 30 mars 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253004130
• Langue: English

Extrait

Bush
on the Home Front
Bush
on the Home Front
Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks
John D. Graham
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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2010 by John D. Graham
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Graham, John D.
Bush on the home front : domestic policy triumphs and failures / John D. Graham.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-35436-5 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-22215-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Bush, George W. (George Walker), 1946- 2. United States-Politics and government-2001-2009. I. Title.
E902.G743 2010
973.931092-dc22
2009031619
1 2 3 4 5 15 14 13 12 11 10
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
1 Ambiguous Mandate, Polarized Congress
2 Lower Taxes, More Spending
3 The Social Security Debacle
4 Making Sure Kids Learn
5 Drug Coverage for Seniors
6 Producing More Energy
7 Consuming Less Energy
8 Cleaner Air, Warmer Climate
9 Illegal Immigration: Punishment or Amnesty?
10 Tort and Regulatory Reform
11 Meltdown and Bailouts
12 Taking Stock, with Lessons for Future Presidents
Notes
Index
Preface and Acknowledgments
This book has a dual purpose: to examine what George W. Bush accomplished in domestic policy, and to draw lessons from the Bush experience about how future presidents can be effective in an era of polarized politics. I offer this assessment as both a scholar of public policy and a former participant in the Bush White House.
From 1985 through 2000 I was a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, where I taught the analytic tools of policy analysis to physicians, nurses, and health policy students. In early 2001 I was asked to join the Bush White House. This invitation came somewhat as a surprise because I had not served on the campaign staff. In fact, I explained gingerly to the Bush-Cheney transition team why I had made an early financial contribution to Elizabeth Dole s short-lived 2000 presidential campaign. I was honored to receive the invitation to serve and eagerly agreed to do so.
From 2001 to early 2006 I served as regulatory czar in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a position that placed me at the nerve center of Bush s domestic policy-making apparatus. Technically, the position is called Administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, U.S. Office of Management and Budget, one of a handful of Senate-confirmed posts in OMB. In this capacity, I directed a staff of fifty career policy analysts as we oversaw the regulatory, statistical, and information policies of the federal government. I left OMB in early 2006 to become dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, the educational arm of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. Effective August 2008, I became dean of the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Bloomington and Indianapolis.
This book examines Bush s domestic agenda in a wide range of areas: taxes and Social Security, education, health care, energy, clean air, labor and immigration, and policy toward businesses. These particular issues were selected for several reasons: They were each personal priorities of President Bush, they were handled to various degrees by OMB (sometimes by my office), they typically were addressed through a mixture of legislative and executive actions, and they each illustrate, in success and failure, the challenges that a president faces when national politics is evenly divided and polarized on partisan lines. This is not a book about the inner workings of the Bush White House or the personalities of those who served in the Bush administration. Nor is it a book about the internal politics of the Bush administration. Others such as Karl Rove, Andy Card, or President Bush himself are in a better position to offer reflections about how the White House operated and who was most influential on various issues.
This is a book for readers who are interested in the domestic policies of the Bush administration. What did Bush propose to do in domestic policy? What was actually accomplished? Why did some initiatives fail? And how was the challenge of presidential leadership complicated by the partisan polarization in our nation s capital? The case studies presented here will be of special interest to supporters and critics of the Bush administration, reporters who cover the White House and Congress, participants in future presidential campaigns, party leaders, members of Congress and their staffs, governors and mayors, leaders of interest groups who lobby the White House and Congress, and faculty and students who study American politics.
I have drafted the book so that readers can form their own opinions about whether Bush s policies were good or bad for America. In that spirit, I have documented the arguments advanced by both the proponents and opponents of Bush s agenda. My own opinions, with regard to both political strategy and the merits of policy choice, are placed primarily in the introduction or conclusion of each chapter and in the final chapter of the book. In the interests of full disclosure, I note here the issues where I played a significant personal role in policy making: energy ( chapters 6 and 7 ), clean air and climate change ( chapter 8 ), and regulatory reform ( chapter 10 ). Perhaps my strongest influence was on the reform of federal mileage standards for new SUVs and light trucks ( chapter 8 ).
As the book manuscript progressed through numerous iterations, I received helpful comments and suggestions from a large number of thoughtful people: Brent Bradley, Lisa Branch, Christopher DeMuth, Jack Fleer, Jennifer Graham, Susan Graham, Al Hubbard, Charles Jones, Paul Noe, Andy Rich, Michael Rich, Justin Ross, Ronnye Stidvent, Jim Thomson, Elizabeth Vandersarl, James Q. Wilson, and Leo Woerner. The following doctoral fellows at RAND suggested improvements and provided excellent research assistance: Diana Epstein, Jay Griffin, Silvia Montoya, Sabrina Shi, Elizabeth Wilke, and Frank Zhang. Laura Cavagnaro of Indiana University helped perform the analysis of Senate voting in chapter 12 . Several peer reviewers commissioned by Indiana University Press also helped me improve the product in numerous ways. The source materials for the book are documented in the endnotes with two notable exceptions: (1) some discussions of White House strategy reflect my impressions based on what I experienced and heard from colleagues in the administration, and (2) the legislative details (including roll-call votes) in each chapter, unless noted otherwise, are drawn from accounts in the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report and Congressional Quarterly s annual Almanac . All errors and opinions are my responsibility.
I thank President Bush and my immediate supervisors at OMB, Mitch Daniels and Josh Bolten, for the opportunity to serve our country. I also thank the professional staff of OMB and my many colleagues throughout the federal government who educated me about the issues covered in this book. I wrote much of the book before joining RAND and have not relied on findings from any internal RAND studies, but I would also like to thank the RAND Corporation for supporting me during the later stages of writing and editing. My colleagues at Indiana University have also assisted me in the final stages of book production. Maggie Pearson provided invaluable assistance in preparing the manuscript for IU Press.
John D. Graham
Bush
on the Home Front
1
Ambiguous Mandate, Polarized Congress
As George W. Bush s last year in office came to a conclusion, critics declared that our forty-third president was a failure. There are certainly many difficulties to be cited: the prolonged military occupation of Iraq, the messy aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the burgeoning federal debt, rising fuel prices, a proliferation of home foreclosures, the painful recession that began in 2008, and concerns about health care and income inequality.
Polls indicate that Bush left office as one of the most unpopular presidents in modern history. In 2008 his Gallup Poll approval rating reached a sixty-year low: 28 percent. The previous record low was set by Harry Truman in the midst of the Korean War. Ironically, Bush also holds the record for the highest approval rating in history: 90 percent in the days after the attacks of September 11, 2001. 1 But for most of his presidency Bush struggled to achieve a 50 percent approval rating. Anti-Bush sentiment, coupled with a war-weary public and the scandals in Congress, contributed to the Democratic takeover of the House and Senate in November 2006. Given the public s mood, the Republican presidential candidates in 2008 all sought to emulate Ronald Reagan more than George W. Bush. 2 Obama s clear win at the polls in 2008 may have resulted in part fro