Don't Trust an Ideologue (9/25/05)

by Dean Hartwell

 

I ran into an ideologue the other day.  While I was sitting at a table promoting the Democratic Party, a man approached me and dropped a picture of a fetus in front of me.

 

He compared the Democratic Party’s traditional support of abortion rights to the Nazis and the slaveholders.  He talked about how our public schools do not teach the issue the way he sees it.  And he championed a California ballot initiative that would require abortion providers to notify parents of minors, saying he wanted to protect “my grandchild.”

 

So there it was in his own words.  The issue of abortion was all about him and his rights.  Not a word about the feelings or the rights of his daughter.

 

My participation in this one-sided discussion reminded me not to debate ideologues.  They are people who have all of the answers before they have the facts.  They never consider another point of view or change their position.

I listened to President Bush rule out a tax increase to cover the cost of Hurricane Katrina and Tropical Storm Rita, which could go into hundreds of billions of dollars.  I fear that he has become an ideologue as well.

We have a large deficit[1] and no consensus on where in the federal budget to cut spending (conservative columnist George Will once said that eighty percent of the federal budget is not debatable).  The only option besides cutting spending and raising taxes is to borrow money but that would force future generations to pay for our problems, an unethical solution.  Unfortunately, this option appears to be the one Bush will settle on.

 

Bush has exhibited stubbornness, a key ideologue trait, on this issue before.  Even after the surplus he inherited from President Clinton turned into a deficit, he continued to push for tax cuts.  His Vice-President, Richard Cheney, insisted that the Bush Administration had earned them because the GOP won the 2002 mid-term election.[2]

 

Then we went to war against Iraq.  Again, Bush nixed the idea of tax increases to pay for it.  Some estimates have the cost of the war as $5 billion per month.[3]  Now we find ourselves even further in debt.

 

This is the same president who, as a candidate, was reminded of his father’s broken pledge of “Read my lips, no new taxes.”  He responded by saying, “There will be tax cuts, so help me God.”  In fact, the tax cuts were one of his first priorities.

 

Why won’t Bush give in like his father did?

 

He saw his father take a tumble in opinion polls after his tax hike and saw him lose his bid for re-election in part because of it.  But the younger Bush has no re-election to be concerned about.  What should be his concern are the hundreds of thousands of people on the Gulf Coast left dead, injured or homeless and the future generations who will have to pay for the costs.

 

The president could learn a lesson from another Republican president who frequently threatened to veto tax hikes: Ronald Reagan.  President Reagan raised taxes several times during his time in office.[4]

Like the ideologue at my table who talked about “his” grandchild, Bush has his agenda and his legacy to be concerned about.  He shows little concern for the well-being of those who will someday stand in judgment of his presidency.

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