Bush Strives to Join Fraternity of Frustrated Two-Termers

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-outlook30aug30.story

Bush Strives to Join Fraternity of Frustrated Two-Termers
Ronald Brownstein

August 30, 2004

WASHINGTON — Like second marriages, second presidential terms represent the triumph of hope over experience. Every incumbent since Herbert Hoover has sought four more years. And yet, after the experience of their predecessors, it is easy to wonder why they bother.<snip>

In truth, the huge budget deficits produced largely by Bush's repeated tax cuts leave little room for new initiatives. The most important domestic proposal Bush has endorsed so far is to make his tax cuts permanent. "This is a fairly shallow pool of ideas Republicans have right now," says Stephen Moore, president of the conservative Club for Growth.

The exceptions are the ideas so big they could expose Bush to the opposite risk of overreaching. In his acceptance speech Thursday, Bush plans to center his domestic agenda on the theme of reform. He's likely to call again for allowing workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market and to set as a second-term priority fundamental tax reform that would move the nation toward a flatter income tax or, less likely, a national sales tax.

All of these ideas can be structured to minimize short-term costs. And all would excite Bush's base.

But there's a reason Republicans are still talking about these changes so long after conservatives first proposed them. Whatever their merits, they face political obstacles so formidable that no one has seriously sought to implement them. As the foundation of a policy agenda, they always may be more attractive in prospect than in practice. They recall the arch observation by former Sen. Sam Nunn, a Georgia Democrat, that Bill Clinton was a promising young man in three different decades.<snip>