yesthattom | Bush the Flip-Flopper

As John Harris points out in today’s Washington Post, the incumbent’s record doesn’t really bear out the relentless GOP claim that George W. Bush is a towering figure of certainty and resolve who never changes his mind about anything. Indeed, when compared to other politicians, what’s distinctive about Bush is that he never admits he’s been wrong before, during, or after a change of position.

Here’s a brief list of the president’s most egregious flip-flops:

In the 2000 campaign, Bush consistently criticizing the Clinton administration for an excessively interventionist approach to problems that did not immediately threaten our national security, and of shirking our traditional allies, especially in Europe. Bush also promised to display more “humility” in foreign policy. But now he has embraced a radical “unilateral preemption” doctrine, while treating alliances and international institutions as relics of the Cold War period, and retroactively accusing his predecessor of an insufficient aggressiveness towards meeting potential threats to our interests.
In the 2000 campaign, Bush’s main credential as a pro-environmental candidate was his support for mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions, the most important “greenhouse gas” that scientists believe is contributing to global climate change. Immediately upon taking office, Bush abandoned that proposal. On the underlying issue of global warming, the president has waffled back and forth between denying it exists, calling for more research, claiming that action to deal with it is incompatible with economic growth, and, most recently, suggesting it can be dealt with voluntarily by the private sector.
Also in the 2000 campaign, Bush opposed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation. When it passed Congress, he abruptly decided to sign it, while expressing concerns about the bill’s effort to restrict independent groups from running campaign ads. Then just a few weeks ago, he called for much tougher restrictions on independent groups than anything contained in McCain-Feingold.
In yet another repudiation of his campaign platform, Bush abandoned his pledge to “keep the government from raiding the Social Security surplus” and proposed $1.4 trillion in borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund over 10 years, largely to finance his tax cut agenda.
For seven months after 9/11, Bush opposed Democratic proposals for a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. Then he abruptly reversed his position, claimed it was his own idea, and then began attacking Democrats for disagreeing with him on the details.
For two-and-a-half years after 9/11, Bush opposed repeated calls from both parties to look into the intelligence lapses that led to 9/11, or to reform our intelligence system to address obvious gaps in counter-terrorism efforts and coordination of data. When pressure mounted earlier this year for the appointment of an independent 9/11 commission, the president opposed the idea, then accepted it; opposed public administration testimony before the commission, then allowed it; opposed establishment of a new national intelligence director, then went along with it; and finally, opposed giving this director genuine authority over intelligence agencies, and then proposed the same step.
In the initial run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the president and his advisers strongly argued that they did not need congressional authorization to use military force to topple Saddam Hussein, and did not intend to go to the United Nations to seek international support. Almost overnight, the administration abandoned both of these positions, without explanation.
After campaigning as a champion of free trade, Bush suddenly imposed tariffs on imported steel amidst much chortling by his political advisors that the step would nail down several battleground states in 2004. 21 months later, Bush reversed course and abandoned the tariffs.

Even when the president has not flip-flopped, he’s often been willing to dramatically change his rationale for specific policies, tacking to the winds of political fashion. His tax cut agenda, for example, was first proposed as a way to dispose of excess federal revenues at a time of large budget surpluses. Then he argued the tax cuts were a temporary measure to stimulate the U.S. economy out of a short-term recession. And more recently, the president has argued for making those tax cuts permanent on grounds that rescinding them would represent a tax increase that could endanger long-term growth.

Similarly, the president’s rationale for invading Iraq has shifted with every breeze, from exaggerated and ultimately erroneous reports that Saddam had acquired WMD, to purely fictional claims of direct Iraqi involvement in al Qaeda and 9/11, to the opportunity to build a model democracy in the Middle East. Most recently, at the GOP Convention, Republicans shifted course entirely, and treated the decision to invade Iraq as part of the immediate U.S. response to 9/11, and as an effort to “strike the terrorists on their home turf.”

All in all, Bush’s record of consistency, in policy and in rhetoric, hardly gives him standing to criticize anybody else as a “flip- flopper.” We’re reminded of a statement made by former Vice President Alben Barkley during the Eisenhower administration: “People kept telling me they want me to stand with the president. I’d be happy to, if only he’d stand in one place.”