For the past few days, there’s been plenty of talk about the specific things Bush left out of his State of the Union address. There was no mention of Hurricane Katrina, his new Medicare prescription drug plan/debacle, or lobbying reform. Mars and steroids apparently didn’t make the cut either.
But the WaPo’s E. J. Dionne Jr. said the bigger problem wasn’t just the missing specifics, but the absence of new ideas altogether.
The president’s foreign policy rhetoric, like so much else on Tuesday, was predictable and familiar. Bush once dreamed of leading a political realignment. What his speech signaled is an opening for a realignment of ideas. His side is running out of them.
For months, Matt Yglesias has been running updates on what he calls the “Party of Ideas Watch,” challenging the conventional wisdom that Dems are the party committed to defending the status quo, while Republicans are the creative ones with innovative new ideas. Dems, the story goes, have no policy solutions and simply say no to Bush’s agenda, while the GOP offers creative ideas, which they honed while Dems were in power.
Like Dionne, I think Bush’s State of the Union should more or less put a stake through the heart of this meme. There were no new ideas. There was barely new rhetoric. An agenda made up of tax cuts, defense spending, privatization, and reexamining oil importation is a rehash of decades of Republican talking points. Either Bush has no new ideas or his speechwriters realize that the public won’t go for some of the more “creative” GOP proposals.
A piece Jonathan Chait wrote last summer seems particularly noteworthy now.
Ideas — the idea of ideas, anyway — have always held a lofty place in our political culture. But perhaps never before have they been imbued with such power as at this particular moment. Since last November, conservatives have been braying about their victory in the war of ideas, often with a whiff of Marxian assurance. “Conservatism is the ideology of the future,” gloated Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman. “Republicans are driving the course of history with new solutions.” A GOP operative, even while conceding President Bush’s recent difficulties, noted that things would be worse but for the fact that “the Democrats are really brain dead and have nothing positive to put on the table.”
If reality has any bearing on political discourse at all, these comments should disappear. Dems are producing meaningful policy agendas and progressive think tanks are offering serious proposals, especially on issues like health care.
Sure, Bush deserves some credit for creativity when it comes to “animal-human hybrids” — that’s outside-the-box thinking — but putting this aside, there’s not much in the way of innovation on the Republican side of the aisle. There is a “party of ideas,” but it’s not the one in power right now.