Are We All "Compassionate Conservatives" Now?

June 7, 2001

Transcript prepared from a tape recording

3:45 p.m.	Registration
4:00	Panelists:	Douglas J. Besharov, AEI
		Hon. David Bonior, U.S. House of Representatives
		Karlyn Bowman, AEI
		William Galston, Former Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy
	Moderator:	Christopher DeMuth, AEI
5:30	Reception

Proceedings:

MR. DeMUTH: [in progress] and welcome to this AEI conference, titled, "Are we all compassionate conservatives now?" The proceeding will be, to begin with, a talk by Doug Besharov of AEI and the University of Maryland, followed by commentary by Karlyn Bowman of AEI, Bill Galston of the University of Maryland, Stuart Butler of The Heritage Foundation, all of this capped off by remarks by David Bonior, Democratic Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives, who has our deepest gratitude for being here for this session. These will be introduced, more fully, by Doug Besharov, as the conference proceeds, all of it devoted to the issues raised by the embrace of a doctrine called "compassionate conservative" by President George Bush, and several of the initiatives in social welfare policy that he and members of Congress have proposed during the current session.

This session is the inaugural of the Joseph J. and Violet Jacobs Chair in Social Welfare Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and the formal announcement of the appointment to that chair of Doug Besharov. In a way, however, it is a post-inaugural event. Joe and Vi Jacobs are very long-time friends of many of AEI's "leading lights," including William Baroody, Sr., who was our effective founder and great intellectual entrepreneur from the '50s through his death in 1980. Michael Novak, Irving Kristol, Bea Himmelfarb, and others.

Joe is also a long-time and very generous financial supporter of the Institute, and a sometime author appearing in AEI publications.

Doug Besharov is also a long-time fixture of AEI research, publications, and conferences, since 1983, when we first lured him away from the Brookings Institution, and he was in fact named to a new chair at AEI in Social Welfare Studies last fall, a chair that Joe and Vi have permitted us to name in their honor.

Joe, who is with us this afternoon, is one of the great American success stories of the past half century. A immigrant from Lebanon, he founded the initial version of what is now Jacobs Engineering Group in Pasadena, as a one-man consulting firm in 1947. Over the decades, he built it into one of the largest and most respected engineering firms on the planet, with revenues well in excess of $3 billion per year. Many would say the premier engineering firm on the planet. In 1984, he came out of his first highly premature retirement to oversee what was one of the first and most successful major corporate restructurings of the 1980's, which laid the groundwork for further heights of success for his firm in subsequent years.

His business has only been one of his many contributions. He is a long-time friend and intellectual partner of politicians from across the spectrum, all the way from Ronald Reagan to, well, to David Bonior.

He is one of the nation's leading philanthropists, having been a major donor of Cal-Tech and other academic institutions, but most of all, in providing a real structure to his thoughts on issues of social welfare through support for a wide variety of welfare projects, as well as research on social welfare issues as organizations such as AEI.

Finally, he has been a prolific author. He wrote a wonderful book about his career, "Anatomy of An Entrepreneur," and several years ago, published a book, "The Compassionate Conservative: Assuming Responsibility and Respecting Human Dignity," widely regarded as having been cribbed by Candidate Bush when he began his campaign. The candidate says here, on the cover, "great phrase, great ideas."

You might think that Joe Jacobs and Doug Besharov would have little in common, as Joe is an engineer and Doug a lawyer. However, it is almost impossible to imagine a greater congruence of interest than between these two men. Doug attended Queens College in New York and received a JD and master's degree from New York University Law School.

After initial work in the civil rights movement and a variety of positions in New York City government and in the state government in Albany, mainly concerned with child abuse and child welfare issues, he became the first director of the U.S. National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect in 1975, and administered that important agency for four years.

As I mentioned, he was at the Brookings Institution, has been here since the mid 1980's, during which time he has become one of the nation's leading authorities on child and family welfare, on a variety of federal and state welfare programs, including Headstart, child support programs, nutrition programs, the subject of a recent book, and he has been the author of fourteen, author or editor of 14 books, and the author of hundreds of articles in such journals as the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Public Interest.

He is currently working on several new books, many focusing on issues of post-welfare reform, child and family welfare, and a major book on the status and prospects of the American family.

I'd like to ask you to join me in thanking Joe for his wonderful work, which has inspired not just this conference but much of AEI's work, and Doug Besharov on his appointment to the Jacobs chair.

[Applause]

MR. DeMUTH: But for all of that, Doug has to go to work now, and I will therefore turn the podium and the proceedings, following his talk, over to Doug Besharov.

MR. BESHAROV: Chris, thank you very much. I usually get to say, when someone, sometimes people introduce me as glowingly as that, I always say something like I wish my wife was here to hear that. She is. So double thanks.

[Laughter.]

MR. BESHAROV: The stage whisper over here was, "But does she believe it?" Thank you, my friend. You can see what faculty meetings are like at the University of Maryland.

First, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Joe and Vi Jacobs for creating the Jacobs Chair, and for Chris DeMuth for naming me to it. I'll do everything I can to deserve you vote of confidence.

This is a topic that's particularly close to my heart, not just because Joe wrote the marvelous book, "The Compassionate Conservative," but because so many of my friends and relatives really don't seem to understand how someone can be, quote, conservative, and also care about people.

I remember one prominent, liberal academic saying to me once: Doug, I guess you really don't want to hurt children.

[Laughter.]

MR. BESHAROV: Let me tell you, there's really no polite response to a statement like that. I suppose I could have lowered my head and said thank you, but I just stood there, wondering, you know, where discourse has gone in our country.

Today's topic, as Chris mentioned, is, Are we all compassionate conservatives now? That's not a backhanded way of asking whether we are all, now, supporters of George W. Bush. If that were the case, we'd have a surprising panel on our hands right now, with Mr. Bonior maybe making an important announce--no; no. No; no.

[Laughter.]

MR. DeMUTH: Not in your dreams.

MR. BESHAROV: Not in my dreams.

[Laughter.]

MR. BESHAROV: And in fact in many important ways, what George Bush calls compassionate conservatism looks a lot like Bill Clinton's "New Democrat" ideas, although I'm sure that Bill Galston and David Bonior will have something to say about that in a moment.

So the question we seek to explore today is not whether George Bush has made us all compassionate conservatives, but, rather, whether the ideas subsumed under that phrase enjoy wide political and academic support among Democrats as well as Republicans.

Here's the plan for the day. I'll start with a general description of what I think compassionate conservatism is. Karlyn Bowman will describe what poll data tell us about the subject, and then Bill Galston, Stuart Butler, and David Bonior will tell us what they think.

So my assignment: What is a compassionate conservative? I've reviewed all the President's major statements on the subject and as far as I can tell, he has yet to lay out a full description of what he has in mind. That's probably just as well. He's a politician who has to make compromises, and I don't think he'd want someone to say, "Well, on page three, paragraph six, this seems to be contrary to what you have described as compassionate conservatism."

So I'm therefore free to say what I think compassionate conservatism is, again, borrowing, in large measure, from Joe's book. I have the hard copy, hard cover copy.

First of all, compassionate conservatives want to help their fellow human beings. They don't want unnecessary suffering. They want an end to racial discrimination and they want to see greater equality of opportunity, and they do recognize the vital role of government in addressing these and other social problems.

Actually, when I showed an early draft of this, my talk to conservative friends, they asked why good intentions were limited to, quote, compassionate conservatives, as if all other conservatives might not care about their fellow human beings, might not care about racial equality, and so forth.

So I think we're safe to consider the phrase a political signal from George Bush. One can be a conservative and still a social activist.

Despite what most journalists seem to think, a compassionate conservative is not someone who is a friend of big business, but otherwise ought to support all of Ted Kennedy's legislative agenda. For compared to liberals, even the most compassionate conservatives are more ready to recognize the limits of government in addressing these problems, and that, in turn, affects how they seek to address social problems.

Notice that I said "more ready," for intensity is really the point. It's not that most liberals don't share the same concerns about the size of government and the efficacy of government action. They just feel them somewhat less strongly, or they feel the need to aid the disadvantaged, more strongly.

So with that relativity in mind, let me briefly sketch what I think is the compassionate conservative approach to social problems. I'm going to make six points. One, a preference for a limited government. Two, a desired means test or otherwise target government benefits. Three, a concern about behavioral consequences of assistance. Four, deference to mediating institutions. Five, faith in private choice, often in the form of markets. And six, a humility bred from uncertainty.

First, a preference for limited government. Compassionate conservatives are prepared to use government to further important social goals, but only if there are no viable private solutions. That's because they expect government programs to be less efficient, less effective, and more likely to have unforeseen and even harmful consequences, and to be many times more difficult to terminate, if we ever do kill a government program. I'm not sure about that.

This preference for limited government is often seen as nothing more than a selfish desire to avoid higher taxes. But from a broader perspective, conservatives see big government as stifling creativity and enterprise, and as a danger to individual freedom, in small ways, if not large.

No one really knows how much government is too much government. So conservatives are wary about an unchecked upward spiral. The larger the government is, the more voters are dependent on it for benefits, subsidies, and jobs, which means that politics is even more about the distribution of government benefits, which, in turn, creates pressure for yet higher taxes and yet more government.

Two. A desire to means-test or otherwise target government benefits. This is the corollary of limited government and low taxes. Compared to universal social welfare programs like Social Security and Medicare, targeted ones, means-tested ones are much less expensive, and if properly focused, can do as much good, and perhaps more good.

Programs designed to catch the middle class do not always do a good job serving the poor, Pell grants being a very good example. The argument in favor of universal programs and against means-testing is, crudely, that if the middle class is hooked on the program, there will be sufficient political support for it. Perhaps. But this is one of those widely-repeated axioms with ambiguous evidence in its favor.

In any event, the big government argument turns out to be politically convenient. Universal entitlements do hook the middle class, which is then more likely to vote for those who promise yet even more government.

My third point. A concern about the behavioral consequences of assistance. We all want to help the unemployed, the disabled, the single mother struggling to keep her family together, and so forth. But the fact is that no-strings-attached assistance to these, and other disadvantaged groups, has proven, often, to be a catastrophe, creating even more dependency and a fertile ground for all sorts of social problems.

Again, it's not that liberals are insensitive to such concerns, but they are more worried about leaving someone out than they are about increasing levels of dependence.

Thus, conservatives are happy with the tough strictures of the 1996 welfare reform law, but when the law is up for reauthorization next year, expect liberals to push for various exemptions form its work requirements, and five-year time limit.

Fourth. A deference to mediating institutions. Edmund Burke called them "society's little platoons." We, at AEI, tend to call them mediating institutions. These are the voluntary associations that are the glue of society. These days, everyone seems eager to harness the energies and legitimacy of family, neighborhood, church, and other societal groupings for this or that social priority. But the key word, it seems to me, is deference. Too many people on the right, as well as the left, want to use mediating institutions to further government's objectives in government's way.

I remember having a conversation with a past-head of Catholic Charities, and he said to me, he said, "Government funding doesn't help us to do what we want to do. It just gets us to add our money to what the government wants to do, and then they tell us how to do it."

Well, deference means letting mediating institutions do it their way, in programming, in staffing, in the tendency to be judgmental, and even in the reliance on religious faith.

Now I have to jump in and say, here, that of course there's a limit to what private institutions should be allowed to do with public funds, but my point is that compassionate conservatism starts with a great initial deference to the institution's own way of doing things.

After all, we like mediating institutions for what they seem to accomplish, as is.

Fifth. A faith in private choice, which is often expressed in the form of markets. Just as compassionate conservatives have a greater faith, or at least a deference to the ability of mediating institutions to do the right thing, so, too, do they have a greater faith in the ability of most individuals, even most of the poor, to make sound decisions about their lives.

How many times have I heard, for example, that poor mothers, all mothers, actually, can't be trusted to choose good child care for their children. That's why it's explained, we need heavy regulation, and so forth.

Well, child care vouchers, a federal guarantee since 1992, have proven that dim view of parental judgment very wrong. Parental choice is a value in itself, but it does much more. When properly channeled, the hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of choices individuals make about government services, translate into market forces, many times more efficient and much less political than the top-down decision making we have today.

Notice that I have said nothing about school vouchers, and that's because, like a true conservative, I'd like to see a lot more experimentation before we take the final plunge. And that brings me to my final point.

Humility bred from uncertainty, and the likelihood of unexpected consequences. Here the lines get every more blurry. Many political conservatives are anything about humble about their social policy ideas, while many liberals, it seems to me, display a healthy skepticism about over-ambitious program designs.

So here, my comments are about conservatives, are about conservatives with a very small c. The plain fact is that contemporary social welfare efforts are strewn with governmental failures, unexpected consequences, and just plain damage to individuals, to neighborhoods, and, yes, even to whole cities. That's why I think a humility of purpose and design should permeate all social planning.

Sometimes it seems that when a problem seems bad enough, people just want to do something about it, no matter how unproven or unlikely to work. Being a compassionate conservative I think means seeing a problem and thinking that no matter how bad it is, there may be nothing to do about it, at least not now.

But that's the end of the inquiry. For being a compassionate conservative also means being willing to engage in broad experimentation, even with ideas with which one does not agree, coupled with rigorous and honest evaluation and assessment.

One additional point about experimentation. In our constitutional system, humility of design includes a general but rebuttable preference for state action over federal action. It's simply easier to correct past mistakes in the state capital than it is in Washington.

California's energy crunch may be an exception to that rule, but perhaps the problem is that California is so large, that it's really a country, not a state.

I have labeled these six principles compassionate conservatism, but, actually, I believe they're relevant to sound social policy making from the left or the right. One does not have to be a Republican to be a compassionate conservatism. In fact one does not even have to be a conservative.

Remember the tough liberals of the Kennedy administration? True compassion, liberal or conservative, means wanting programs that stand the best chance of working. The title of today's session is a play on the comment, "We are all Keynesians now," widely attributed to President Richard Nixon in 1971, although there's some question about whether he actually said that.

Either way, that was probably the high point of that social theory.

So, 30 years from now, or maybe even 17 months from now, after the next congressional election, we may look back and smile at what was only a transitory political slogan, or George Bush may succeed in using the still-developing concept of compassionate conservatism to shape his domestic program and to build support for it.

Let's see what the rest of the panel thinks. First is Karlyn Bowman, a resident fellow at AEI, and senior editor of the American Enterprise. Karlyn is a frequent television and radio commentator and writes regularly for Roll Call. Her recent books include, "What's Wrong? A Survey of American Satisfaction and Complaint," and "Public Opinion and Economic Inequality."

Karlyn.

MS. BOWMAN: Thank you very much, Doug, and thank you, Dr. Jacobs, for endowing this chair in Doug's name. Doug is a wonderful and stimulating colleague, and your generous gift is going to make it possible for him to have more latitude in his many and varied pursuits.

I'd like to begin today by taking you back to 1979, a little over 20 years ago, to an essay written by a prominent political scientist for a journal published by the Republican National Committee. The title was, "Why We Don't Become Republicans."

The essay described the troubles of the National Democratic Party and the debate between what the author described as traditional liberals and the new liberals who had won control of the party in 1972.

The political scientists could find no potential Democratic candidate who shared the views of the traditional liberals in the party. But still this person said traditional Democrats did not want to become Republicans.

The writer gave two reasons for sticking with the Democratic Party. First, that party identification was then a real identification, and to change parties was like denying part of one's self or one's heritage. But the second reason, the writer said, was one of a stereotype based on style.

Republicans, the writer said, remind us of corporate boardrooms and country clubs, the less inclusive, more privileged Republican style is not unrelated to the party's history during the last half century and it reinforces the doubt that most traditional Democrats and many Independents harbor about the GOP, a doubt that the Republicans care enough about the whole, including those who are, for one reason for another, unable to look out for themselves.

Since the New Deal, the writer said, it was almost always the Democrats who moved first to provide economic aid and social status, and political rights to the deprived members of our society. Almost always, she said it was the Republicans who complained.

Jeane Kirkpatrick, in that essay, went on to say that the GOP's problem was that it had failed to articulate any inclusive vision of the public good that reflects concern for the well-being of the whole community.

Poll data from that time showed that many Americans shared Jeane's assessment of the Republican Party's compassion deficit. Many people still do. In 1997, before compassionate conservatism became part of the vocabulary of Washington, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal posed this question.

I'm going to read you some qualities that people think are important in a political party. For each one, please tell me whether you think it describes the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, both parties, or neither party.

Forty-one percent said that compassion described the Democratic Party, and only 9 percent the Republicans. Seventeen percent said that it described both parties, and 29 percent neither.

I do not think that George W. Bush could have done as well as he did in the 2000 election, if he and his advisers had not taken the criticism voiced by then-Democrat Jeane Kirkpatrick, and many others, to heart. From the earliest days of the 2000 campaign, and first impressions are very important in politics, the Bush team worked to describe Bush as a different kind of Republican, a compassionate conservative.

It is impossible to read many of his speeches from the campaign and from the early days of the presidency, and not believe that Bush has developed a well-developed inclusive vision of the public good, though as Doug suggested, we do not know how that's going to translate into policy prescriptions.

His commencement speech at Notre Dame, in which he talked about the successes of the War on Poverty, and the distance that the nation still has to go, is only the most recent example. There is evidence in the polls, from the campaign, that Bush made progress in convincing Americans that he cares about all Americans.

For at least the last 25 years, pollsters have been asking people a question about whether candidates care about people like you and me, or care about the average American.

In 1996, in the Clinton-Dole contest, majorities or near-majorities generally said that Bill Clinton cared a lot about people like them. A variant of that question was asked more than 17 times during the peak phase of the 1996 campaign, and no more than a third ever said that that term applied to Bob Dole.

The responses to these kinds of questions from the 2000 campaign were quite different. In some polls, Bush actually led Gore as the candidate who cared more about people like them. In most cases they were viewed similarly. This represents enormous progress for the Republicans. Not all of it, however, was Bush's doing.

For just as the GOP has had some serious weaknesses in public opinion, so have the Democrats Over the years, more and more Americans have become skeptical that the Democrats' version of top-down, big government compassion was truly compassionate. One needs only to look at the voting patterns in David Bonior's district in Michigan, at the analysis that Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg did of Macomb County, Michigan, to see what I mean. Sixty-three percent of voters there supported John F. Kennedy in 1960. But from 1976 to 1992, no Democratic presidential candidate received more than 40 percent of the vote there. Bill Clinton won a plurality of the voters in Macomb County in 1996.

Although well-intended, the War on Poverty had unanticipated consequences that soured many people in Macomb County and elsewhere in the country on Washington's responses to problems. Many voters felt that they were, in Stan Greenberg's words, working hard and playing by the rules, but that they were playing by harder rules than others in society. They felt betrayed by both the top and the bottom.

The rich they believed weren't paying their fair share of taxes and those on welfare weren't working. They felt that a welfare entitlement undermined personal effort and responsibility and sapped people's dignity.

The program seemed unfair, and what's worse, it didn't seem to be working. During the campaign, Al Gore was saddled with the political albatross of being the candidate of big government solutions to the nation's problems. Fifty-three percent of Americans told Gallop that Al Gore was really more liberal than he let on. So doubts that many Americans had about Democrats and about Al Gore made more people more willing to give George W. Bush a hearing.

Additionally, the generation that came of age during the Great Depression, that turned to Washington to solve problems, was beginning to pass from the scene. People who are younger are much more skeptical about Washington's solutions to problems. While very few want to shut the Federal Government in Washington down, bottom-up, private sector solutions are more attractive.

In December 1999, in a Pew Research Center survey, just 29 percent were familiar with the term, compassionate conservatism. I doubt that the response would be much higher if the question were repeated today.

But even if Americans don't know the Washington vocabulary, they understand the broader debate. In January, this year, Gallop told Americans that George W. Bush frequently described himself as a compassionate conservative. They then asked people whether Bush would or would not govern in a way that was compassionate. A solid 58 percent said that he would; 39 percent said that he would not.

It's premature to know whether George Bush has changed the image of the Republican Party. Jim Jeffords' criticism of the compassionate heart of the Republican Party suggests that there is still more work to be done. But people are willing to give Bush some running room, and they appear at this point to believe that he's sincere in his desire to be more inclusive.

As to the six points that Doug outlined as specific principles associated with compassionate conservatism, let me just say a word or two about public opinion in those areas. As I suggested earlier, Americans clearly want a lot from Washington, but they become much more skeptical about Federal Government solutions to problems.

Strong majorities, in nearly every survey, say that government is doing too many things that should properly be done by individuals and businesses. When you ask them about whether or not the Federal Government should be doing more, whether they prefer a larger government with more programs, or a smaller government with fewer programs, they opt decisively for a smaller government.

This is I think something Bill Clinton took to heart when he argued that the era of big government was over. Interestingly, the poll data suggests that most Americans did not believe him when he said that.

Americans clearly like the idea of means-testing of programs, except when it applies to them.

To the third point, while most people would not be familiar with the studies that argue about welfare entitlements and behavior, and the fact that these contribute to dependency, they intuitively know that to be true and that comes through in many poll findings.

In part, because the Federal Government has performed so poorly in the public eye in many areas, Americans are willing to let the private sector and mediating institutions such as churches play a role in addressing problems. Pew reported, two weeks ago, that Americans like the idea of the involvement of faith-based institutions in addressing social needs, but, in practical terms, they have some real reservations about how it might work.

Finally, Doug talked about choice. Choice is one of the most powerful ideas that we see in survey research. We see support for it in areas as different as the decision to smoke, to have an abortion, to kill yourself, or to even invest a portion of your private savings in the stock market.

Letting people make choices on their own, with some safety net, and that is very important, has widespread support. I couldn't find much data on the final point, about humility, in terms of response to problems, but I think I intuitively know that Americans share that perspective. Thank you very much.

MR. BESHAROV: Karlyn, thank you very much.

Our next speaker is Bill Galston who is a professor at the University of Maryland, School of Public Affairs, where he directs the university's Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy.

From 1993 to 1995, he served as deputy assistant to President Clinton for domestic policy, working specifically on education and family policy. Bill's authored five books and nearly a hundred articles, and he served as executive director of the National Commission on Civil Renewal, and is a senior adviser to the Democratic Leadership Council and the Progressive Policy Institute.

Bill worked, in 1982 to '84, as the issues director for Walter Mondale, and he was a senior adviser to Al Gore's presidential campaign.

Bill, thank you for being with us.

MR. GALSTON: Well, thank you very much, Doug, for having the broad-minded and the generosity to invite me to serve on this panel, knowing in advance that I would be a thorn in your side. If the question on the table is, Are we all compassionate conservatives now? then the answer is no, and I'm not just speaking for myself.

There are a large number of us, not just in this town, who are not conservatives at all, at least as that term is currently understood, and there are lots of this--and this is somewhat more controversial and I apologize to Mr. Jacobs, in advance, for what I'm about to say--there's some of us who do not believe that compassion offers an appropriate basis for public policy. I will expand on that point.

I'm here in my own right, but also, as some of you know, as a representative of what's sometimes called the New Democratic Movement, hence, the frequent occurrence of the word "we" in my remarks, which will be divided into two parts.

In the first part, I want to offer a kind of counter credo to what you just heard, in five points, and in the second part, I want to offer some brief reflections on the characterization of compassionate conservatism that Doug Besharov began, by both offering and recommending.

So what is the counter credo? Point number one. First of all, we believe that government in a democracy is nothing more, and nothing less, than a way of doing together those things that we must do somehow, but which we cannot do separately, as individuals, as families, or through markets and voluntary associations.

Second point. In the economic and social spheres, we believe in equal opportunity, not equal results. But we also believe that there is no invisible hand that creates equal opportunity. We must work together to bring it about.

Karlyn Bowman referred to, already, to the President's Notre Dame speech. At one point in that speech he said, "We believe in social mobility, not social Darwinism," a point of agreement, and the question is, What does that mean in practice?

I want to argue that believing in equal opportunity and social mobility, but no equal results, or social Darwinism, means at least the following.

Some limited redistribution by government, for example, educational aid for poor kids. The President appears to agree. Second, policies to reduce reducible barriers and to promote social inclusion. Policies like the Americans With Disabilities Act. Again, I take it the President agrees.

Now, in the political sphere, we New Democrats believe in the equal rights of citizenship, and we believe that the Civil War settled the constitutional basis of citizenship in this country. It is national and must be defended by national institutions whenever local forces fail to honor it. That means a national enforcement of equal voting rights everywhere. That is not a local responsibility; at least not since the Civil War it isn't.

Fourth point. We believe in public policy that rests on sound moral premises. Here are three for your consideration. First, there are certain non-optional public purposes that we are obligated to achieve, somehow, through whatever combination of public, private, and voluntary action that can be made to work effectively.

An example. Health care for all children regardless of their means. Some adults may be uninsured by choice. No child is; no child could be. We have a collective obligation to do something about that through some combination of the various ways in which a free democratic people can get its work done.

A second example of public policy based on sound moral premises. We must practice a politics of reciprocity, that both demands individual responsibility and meets and matches it with social responsibility. I take it the Welfare Reform Bill of 1996 was a pretty good example of the politics of reciprocity, so understood.

A third example of a moral premise that can serve as the basis for sound public policy. What individuals receive should be shaped at least, in part, by what they contribute. But the market does not always accurately assess the worth of an individual's contribution, either to our economy or to our society, and we may need public policy and governmental action to make up the difference.

I take it that that is the moral theory, for example, underlying the earned income tax credit.

Fifth and final point in this brief credo. We New Democrats can't be compassionate conservatives because we're not conservatives. But there's another reason. We're deeply skeptical about compassion as a guide to public life.

Now the spirit of the remarks that I'm about to make I owe to my old friend and occasional sparring partner, Clifford Orwin, in a splendid piece he published four years ago in the Public Interest, under the title of "Moist Eyes: From Rousseau To Clinton," a title that must now, I fear, be updated.

Now what is wrong with compassion as a guide to public policy? Well, here are three points I'd like to make. First of all, it easily shades over into noblesse oblige, an attitude of moral superiority towards its objects or recipients, but constitutional democracy, I would have thought, stands or falls on a foundation of the moral equality of all citizens.

Secondly, it tends to focus public attention in the wrong place, on the purity of intentions rather than on the effectiveness of actions. Repeatedly, in the late, unlamented presidential campaign, when George W. Bush was confronted with some criticism, he said of the critics, and I quote: "They just don't know what's in my heart." Close quote.

Well, I don't know and I don't care. I'd rather a politician did the right thing for the wrong reason than the wrong thing for the right reason.

Third, as a moral sentiment, compassion may be better than selfishness, but it is simply no substitute for justice. Compassion is what we do for people over and above what they're entitled to. If we don't understand that basic point, we pat ourselves on the back for doing what we're in fact obliged to do.

I'll give you an example from the law and you can extrapolate the politics. It is an act of compassion not to enforce a contract when the other party to the contract has experienced unexpected misfortune. It is not an act of compassion to do what one has committed oneself to do, or should do for other reasons.

So instead of the heart and instead of this talk of compassion, here are some real political questions. Do our policies respect the rights and liberties of individuals? Do they tend to establish justice? Do they tend to promote the common defense and the general welfare? Do they strengthen the beliefs and habits of good citizenship? If the answer to any one of those questions is yes, we're on the right track. If it's not, we're not.

The second part of these brief remarks, a six-part response to Doug Besharov's six-part depiction of compassionate conservatism. Preference for limited government. That's point one. Sure, everyone wants limits. The question is which limits; where they're located. I say everyone. There may be some people in North Korea, in Cuba, somewhere in the mainland Chinese hierarchy. But everywhere else in the world, people believe in limited government.

But to define these limits, we need to think systematically about why we have government at all, and what it is that cannot be done as well or at all through other means. Endorsing limited government does not mean that small government is always better government.

We cannot say that our country is better off just because government shrinks as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, any more than we can say that we're better off as a country because government expands as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product. Neither of those is a relevant measure.

With regard to the second point, the preference for targeting and means-testing. This may simply not be appropriate for all programs, social insurance programs, or what may be called, following Mickey Kaus, the sphere of civic equality. Should we make the wealthy pay tuition to send their kids to public schools?

With regard to the third point, concern about the behavior consequences of assistance, of course that's an absolutely legitimate concern, but I would suggest that the issue is often not whether to assist but how. That's certainly the way the issue was posed in the welfare reform act, and I would also suggest that we must consider the consequences of not assisting at the same time that we endeavor to assess the consequences of assisting in the wrong way.

Deference towards mediating institutions. Absolutely. But that deference has to be limited by the extent of those institutions' capacity to act, an extent which must be treated empirically and not romantically, and we must also consider the fact that mediating institutions may simply not be the right venue at all for certain kinds of public action and social assistance.

Faith in private choice often markets the fifth point. Isn't faith a bit strong? What about support based on the evidence. That's a formulation I prefer, to say nothing of the fact that the staunchest neoclassical economist will acknowledge collective action problems, market failures, the vicissitudes of public goods, and things like that, to say nothing of the fact that choice can sometimes make matters worse rather than better.

For example, when the exercise of choice leads to the exit of the healthiest and most independent individuals from an insurance pool, then what do we do?

So the argument that more choice is always better than less choice is not an argument that will survive inspection.

Finally, with regard to humility, I'm not going to sit here and defend arrogance, although some of you may believe that I've exemplified it. You know, sure, but it seems to me that humility in public policy implies experimental nondogmatic action, not necessarily inaction, and I would also note, in conclusion, that in the same way that public action--

[Begin side 1B.]

MR. GALSTON [continuing]: --in very important ways surprises us on the upside, the 1996 Welfare Reform Act certainly has worked better than its liberal critics said it would at the time, and the Clinton economic program worked a whole lot better than its conservative critics said that it would at the time. Thank you very much.

MR. BESHAROV: Well, I would actually see some of those notes as he was reading them.

[Laughter.]

MR. BESHAROV: Stuart Butler is the vice president for Domestic and Economic Policy at The Heritage Foundation. In that capacity, he plans and oversees the foundation's research and publications on all domestic issues. Stuart's played a prominent role in various debates in Washington, recently, about Medicare, health care for working Americans, Social Security reform. He's the author of "Out Of The Poverty Trap: A Conservative Strategy for Welfare Reform, Enterprise Zones, Greenlining the Inner Cities, and Privatizing Federal Spending."

Stuart.

MR. BUTLER: Thank you very much, indeed, Doug, and as you mentioned, in the book that I wrote on welfare, I had the foolishness to write that it's a conservative strategy, which cut its sales probably by about 95 percent, on the grounds that I had to be confused, or a lunatic to apply that term to any proposal that would talk about dealing with welfare, and I have had very similar experiences, as Doug has, in terms of having to deal with people for whom the idea of being a conservative, and actually attempting to think about solutions to problems of poverty and lack of health care, and so on, seem so disconnected to people, that they wonder how one could possibly describe oneself as a conservative.

When I first met my wife to be, 18 years ago, she was in fact a former VISTA volunteer, and so you can appreciate the "hard sell" that I had, coming from a conservative institution with somebody like that. So I'm very aware of this kind of problem, that really has forced this search by conservatives for some word, some adjective, to overcome a perception of the kind that Karlyn referred to. For reasons I'll mention, I sort of agree, to some extent, but the word itself, compassion, is not by any means an ideal word, at all, for some of the reasons that Bill Galston mentioned.

But of course we have to have alliteration in American--you have to be in some--you know, a compassionate conservative or limousine liberal [microphone cuts out.]

[Laughter.]

MR. BUTLER: These words have to be used, so you end up being trapped in a word that is not of your own liking, and therefore, when you're looking at are we all compassionate conservatives, and I'm certainly waiting to see whether David Bonior is going to "out" himself on this particular matter in a moment--but when you do this, it is very important to figure out what the meaning of is is, what the meaning of these words are, and I want to take my remarks to, indeed, to reflect on that, and to try to draw out some of these distinctions, because one of the frustrations that I had listening to Bill Galston, whom I've known for many years, and the Democratic Leadership Council friends that I have, and PPI [?] friends of many years, is what I feel, sometimes, their desperation to draw a sharp distinction to try to suggest that there's a credo of their support which is sharply different from conservatism as it's generally understood, and I'm not so sure that it is all that different.

And we can probably debate that in a few minutes. But I think these distinctions are less clear, and, in fact, one of the problems with American politics has been to draw very sharp distinctions where those distinctions really, in practice, are not as sharp, and leads to rhetoric that surrounds that.

But when you think of the word compassion, or compassionate, as part of the compassionate conservatism, I think it's very important to say what this isn't, partly as what Bill did. It's not the shedding a tear view of dealing with issues. We can all shed tears. It's not also--compassion is not measured by how much of other people's money you want to spend.

I remember, back in the seventies, coming across an article, once, that mentioned that Hubert Humphrey had been given an award as the most generous man in America, and this was because he had voted for more spending on social welfare programs than anybody else, up until that time, and even then, at such a young age, I found this a puzzling concept, as to why generosity or compassion should be measured by how much you want other people to spend their money.

On the other hand, I think that as Americans, or as Europeans, when we think of our obligations, there's a very strong notion shared by conservatives, liberals, that we all have a very strong social obligation, and that that is a root part of being citizens in a free society, and the obligations that we have, and we all share that, and it's not with regard to the--it's not the same as the notion of charity as some kind of discretionary sort of vision of assistance. It's much more rooted in the notion of a real strong social obligation, or, in Hebrew, sadaka [?], the notion that there's justice and righteousness, and a requirement on one to play a role, and that is shared, I think, and very strongly emphasized by conservatives, as opposed to requiring other people to do that by passing laws, which I think has led to some of the misunderstanding that people have about how conservatives view the poor and view obligations in society.

So maybe "sadaka conservative" might be the best way.

[Laughter.]

MR. BUTLER: Somehow, it doesn't quite fall off the tongue, quite the same way as compassionate conservative. Let me focus on the other part of the phrase, the conservative, because I think that Doug laid out, very neatly, some of the core elements, and I think that although Bill tried to draw a distinction and to suggest another credo, I think it's, to some extent, a mixture of that. But I think there are some elements of what Doug emphasized, which are very important in understanding how people who would loosely call themselves compassionate conservatives actually act in certain ways, and things they propose.

I just want to draw out three, in particular, because I think it does draw out some of the differences in approach, and I don't think there's necessarily a sharp distinction between intent or anything like that. But there are some emphases of approach that you see clearly in conservatives as distinction from those who don' call themselves conservative.

One, indeed, is the notion that outcome plays a much more important role in how one approaches a proposal than intent. That there's a strong emphasis among, or shall I say a "stronger" emphasis among most conservatives, that we're interested in what the actual outcome is rather than what the promise is. That's why, when I think conservatives looked at the issue of welfare, welfare reform, for example, that what conservatives largely were doing--as were some liberals--but certainly conservatives were saying let us actually look at what this program does to people, and are we comfortable and satisfied with what it actually does, and how what it does, that outcome compares with what was promised.

The program was promised, as it was, to reduce poverty and improve independent, and give people a helping hand. What did it actually do? And that's why conservatives, I think, are relentless in focusing on those outcomes. Why, for example, George Bush, when looking at education, at least initially, when looking at education said let us focus on outcome, let us measure results, and let us hold to account for those results. Now if it's gradually slid into a more traditional intent and promise, let us spend more money, let us "water down" those measurements, but, certainly, the initial conservative aspect of that approach to education was let us focus on whether things actually work, and let us hold programs to account.

So intent, I think, as opposed to promise, is a critical emphasis that you see in conservatism, that is very important in understanding how conservatives look at issues.

Secondly, as Doug mentioned, and I can put it sort of this way. The relationship between government and government spending, and outcome and the beneficiaries of programs, is an issue which is of great concern to most conservatives, and a great worry to most conservatives. Conservatives worry about what happened when government spends money on people, and particularly when it hires people to help others.

So the structure of a welfare state that involves the government contracting with organizations, of almost any kind, in order to help other people is something that worries many conservatives, and it's one reason that many conservatives are very worried about the idea of saying let us take faith-based organizations and hire them to help individuals and help the poor, and so on. It's a worry in terms of what the effect on those organizations will be, and a corruption of those organizations, and it's why many conservatives tend therefore to be more inclined, if the government and we--you feel that government should be in the business of helping people directly, and financially, but perhaps helping them and providing them assistance, directly, through ideas like vouchers, through changing the tax system to give people tax breaks, and refundable [?] tax benefits, and so on, is probably more likely to end up with a result that you want than contracting with some third party.

This whole debate over, say, education vouchers as opposed to spending more on education through traditional means, you know, this is why this debate takes place, because of that concern. It's a major divide.

You know, I support the idea, and have done all of my adult life, that not only children but all citizens should have an adequate access to health care. That's a shock to lots of people. But I always have and I've written books on it, and so on. I am very fearful of trying to accomplish that by setting up an entire structure of a national health system like the one I came from, in Britain, and because I oppose that does not mean I lack compassion, or do not want to see the same result.

I endorse other means of doing that, which recognize markets, and so on, and that's an important distinction because it leads to real differences of opinion about specific measures that one can enact [?]. [mike breaks up.]

And that sort of leads me to the--in so doing, to the whole notion of a vision of empowerment of people as citizens in a society. Generally speaking, I think it's fair to say that conservatives tend to see a process of empowerment as being an economic process as opposed to a political process.

When one looks at the debate, when I looked at, certainly, the debates over the creation of the Great Society, I must say, in many respects, I was drawn towards many of the radicals who were very suspicious about ideas of maximum feasible participation, and all kinds of political structures to give people power.

I wanted to see a much more, much--direct approaches to them, much more radical visions, and therefore, when one looks at empowerment from a conservative point of view, one is interested in issues like, how do you put money directly in people's hands for them to be ... [?] of whether people providing them services are doing a good job or a bad job. That is why choice is so critical, and that is why ideas like vouchers are so important to most conservatives. Because of that dynamic that it sets up.

The last area I'll just touch on, is the humility issue, again, because humility and gradualism, which is the essence of classical conservatism in many respects. At one level, everybody, in a sense, agrees that, in a sense, that big radical changes are likely ...[?] kinds of unexpected circumstances and results, and one is nervous. But, on the other hand, there are some more, very specific things, that it leads to.

It leads to the idea of variety. One of the beauties of the American federal system is that it does permit you to say, Let us try different approaches in different places. Many people oppose that, by saying, well, if it's good, why don't we do it everywhere? But there is an essence of discovery associated with variety, that I think helped us a great deal in terms of trying to discover ways of dealing with the welfare problem.

Most conservatives believe it is the device we need to use to try to find the solution to the education problem that we face, that variety is critically important, comparison is critically important, being able to see different approaches, and measure them, and get an idea of what is the better or the best of all the ones that are being tried.

So this notion of humility and gradualism leads conservatives to be strongly in support of looking at ways of devolving government programs to lower levels of government, in conjunction with measurement of the results when government [audio drops out] that it leads them into that devolution here.

Even if they support a government activity, and even if they support a larger government activity, it's an important distinction of emphasis, that I think you see among conservatives.

So when you look at these issues, I think that, at one level it's--there is emerging, there are some similarities, but at another level there is a disposition, at least very specific policy approaches which does draw some distinction between those who call themselves conservatives, compassionate or otherwise, and those who don't.

MR. BESHAROV: Thank you, Stuart.

Our last speaker is David Bonior, Democratic Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives and as Karlyn mentioned, he represents Michigan's 10th Congressional District, and has done so since 1976. He was elected Democratic Whip in 1991, and previous to coming to the Congress he served in the Michigan state House of Representatives, and this is the part I like, because I started out in the New York Family Court. He started his career as a probation officer and adoption case worker in Macomb County, Michigan.

As the second-ranking Democrat in the House, Mr. Bonior is responsible for shaping legislative strategy, and acting as a principal spokesman for his party.

As Chris said, we're just honored to have you here, Mr. Bonior, and the floor is yours.

MR. BONIOR: Thank you so much, and it's good to be with you. Indeed, I was a probation officer at one time in my life. I worked with delinquent boys. I had a caseload of about eighty. Now I work with delinquent men.

[Laughter.]

MR. DeMUTH: A larger caseload.

MR. BONIOR: A larger caseload; yes, Chris.

I want to thank Doug for your leadership in this panel today, and for [audio drop] your appointment to the chair, to Karlyn Bowman, to William Galston, to Stuart Butler, and to our moderator, Chris DeMuth. I congratulate Joe and Vi for their wonderful lifetime of leadership and support, and for providing for this chair at AEI.

I just wanted to start off with a story, if I could. On learning of the invitation, I thought I'd better come up with a little story, and let's try to make it a story of a Republican who you might all kind of relate to.

So I'm running for governor in my state right now, and I came across this anecdote, story, over the course of the campaign. Now my hometown is a place called Mount Clemens, Michigan, and it seems that back, a few years ago, when the governor of Michigan was George Romney--do you remember George Romney? I thought that would get a good response in this room.

Romney was campaigning in a town called Mount Pleasant, Michigan, and he was up there, and he was on flatbed truck, and he was looking out at the crowd, and he said, "It's great to be here in Mount Clemens." One of his aides kind of yanked at his pants, and he said, "It's Pleasant; it's Pleasant."

[Laughter.]

MR. BONIOR: So without missing a beat, the governor said, "And I've also been informed that it's pleasant to be here, in Mount Clemens."

[Laughter.]

MR. BONIOR: True story. He went on to win, and so it didn't turn out all that bad for him.

Conservativism is a--its roots are deep and long, from Edmund Burke--if I could skip a couple hundred years--up to Barry Goldwater. But where I want to kind a take off, for a second, this afternoon, is 1980, which saw the triumph of a new kind of conservativism. Some have called it extreme, some radical. Maybe we can all agree to call it less-than-compassionate conservativism.

Embodied in that conservativism were the years of Ronald Reagan, when, often, the rhetoric was geared towards such people as "welfare queens", and through the Newt Gingrich era, which was highlighted by a tape that he distributed to candidates across the country, explaining how to demonize and characterize liberals in very harsh and difficult language.

The language of this period, as I said, was rhetoric, demonizing government programs, demeaning, oftentimes, to people who used those programs, culminating, perhaps, in the whole fiasco of the government shutdown.

There seems to have been a sense among conservatives, that the pendulum had swung too far, and that it was time to tone down the rhetoric in an effort to move back to some sense of acceptability, rhetorically, at least, in the eyes of the, fears of the American public. George W. Bush's inaugural address, I thought was an amazing document, and a beautifully written speech, and quite moving, and as I sat there, and I listened to it in the rain, I actually had twinges of hope that this would be different. I'm not yet convinced that it still can't be. But it was a speech that had special meaning for me.

I want to quote a couple of things that he said. He said, "America, at its best, is compassionate. In the quiet of American conscience, we know that deep persistent poverty is unworthy of a nation's promise."

He went on to say, "Where there is suffering, there is duty. Americans in need are not strangers, they are citizens, not problems, but priorities. And all of us are diminished when any one of us are hopeless."

"Government has great responsibilities for public safety, and public health, for civil rights and common schools. That compassion is the work of a nation, not just a government."

It really was quite a wonderful speech. But from my perspective, it did not take long before it became clear that the conservative agenda remained much the same, even if the rhetoric has become a bit muted.

Ultimately, it comes down not only to attitude, and to humility, but it does come down to resources. The tax bill is evidence, not only that conservative priorities continue to be, to take care of the upper middle class and the upper class in our society, rather than those in the lower or middle income areas. But also to direct the resources of this nation away from such collective community investments as education, health care, our environment, energy and conservation.

The events of the past week, in the Senate, signaled that the struggle to moderate the rightward conservative tilt of the Republican Party is critical to the balance of power in this country. Assuming that the impulse toward compassionate conservatism is still alive, and that it can have a meaning that is deeper than just rhetorical tempering of a right-wing agenda, what can we learn from it?

What can we learn from it? Well, compassion I think is a universally-held value in our society. We care for others; support those in need. Conservativism has its roots in our respect for tradition, the need to make the most of what you have, to conserve. What we look for are policies that are both caring and fiscally responsible, that provide help without creating dependency. That recognize not only individual responsibility but the creative possibilities of acting collectively through government, through family, and through other means of social discourse. To talk about issues in this discussion, I think you need to talk about the reality of what is happening in our communities.

I have just finished spending a good deal of time in the city of Detroit, and while my congressional district, as Karlyn has mentioned, has been a district that has been sort of a bellwether, politically, in this country, all the pundits rush to it to find out what the temperature is and where people are learning--it's a very interesting district, by the way. It's a district that voted in 1972 for George Wallace, voted about 65 percent in the Democratic primary, turned around in 1976, four years later, and voted for Morris Udall, 63 percent, over Jimmy Carter. It's also a district that voted heavily for Ronald Reagan, voted, actually, for George W. Bush's father in 1988, and also in 1992, when he beat Bill Clinton in my district, but then came, and turned around, and voted for John McCain, over George Bush, Jr., this past election cycle.

So it is indeed an interesting place. But just to the south of me is the city of Detroit, and I was in a school just on Monday, and I want to tell you something about the city, first, and then I want to explain, briefly, about the school because I know you want to get on with the interaction here.

The city of Detroit used to have close to 2 million people. It has less than 1 million people today. Trade policies that some of us argue against have caused, in many respects, the city to have emptied, not only of people, but of the jobs that were supporting those people.

Most of those jobs fled to the South, and now to the south-south, Mexico, and abroad, now, to other developing countries. When that happens, that not only takes away good-paying jobs. It takes away from a community like that the ability to have an infrastructure, to have a tax base, to have a policy that deals with health care, to have a policy that has an educational component to it.

We have 200,000 children in the city of Detroit without health care today. We have a transportation glut in our metropolitan area, where we don't have a transportation system for people that works, and a third of the people in the city of Detroit have no cars. The half that do have cars, or the remainder that have cars, half do not have insurance because of the redlining problem.

The school situation is drastic. The school that I was in on Monday, it was built in 1926, a gorgeous old school at one time, you could tell; but, now, today--it was built for 895 students. It has 1400 students, many of them from dysfunctional homes. It is a middle school, and in that school today, teachers are trying to teach kids with a serious deficit attention disorder, forty to a classroom--forty to a classroom. The windows are broken, johns don't work, there's no privacy in the bathrooms. I could go on and on and on. But I think you get the picture.

In Joe Jacobs' book, he quotes Thomas Jefferson on education. He said, "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppression of the body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of the day."

I agree with that. Maybe not "vanish" but certainly will improve the situation. We are now faced, in the Congress of the United States, because of the signing of a bill today, with limited choices in providing those children in Detroit, those 200,000, with some form of health care, with providing educational opportunities, whether there are after-school programs, or some lower class sizes by having more teachers, or a school construction program which will fix the deficiencies in the school and send a better message to our children that we care about them.

Government is about choices, in many respects. We have made a choice, and that choice is to give the resources back to the community.

We can do better than just that, it seems to me. We cannot deny the need for adequate resources, not just for individuals, but for communities. Compassionate conservativism cannot become an excuse for cutting funding, for assuming that well-intentioned individuals or private institutions can replace the need for collective community action.

It is just too overwhelming. The idea of coming together as a community, as defined by Mr. Galston in his definition, earlier on, is an important piece of understanding this debate here this afternoon. Coming together and doing for the community what we, individually, cannot do for ourselves, is an important piece of what we're all about as a community, as a family of nations, and I'm afraid that even though the rhetoric is good, the resources will not be there to match the rhetoric, to do what we need to do.

Now one final word, and I'll stop. I'm not one of these guys that say "one final word" and ten final things. One final word. One idea that I have that I'm exploring right now, I'd like to just share with you.

One of the complaints I hear in the city of Detroit, people say to me there's no place to shop. We have to go into the suburbs. And that's true. They've lost--believe this or not--it's a thousand retail establishments in the city in the last five years. People have to leave the city to shop.

They have no place in the community to do a lot of things that are necessary. So they're taking their money out of the community and they're saying to me, why can't we have the schools, the shopping facilities, all the things that make life work in a neighborhood, in our community? We're moving our money out of the city and it's not here for us, and private sector's not doing anything, it's not coming in, not establishing businesses. We're losing them. The thought that I had, and I'm exploring is, why not establish within these communities--this is a marriage of compassionate and conservativism, I think.

Financial institutions that the people in the communities control, that will allow them to make the decisions on how they invest in their community. Credit unions, for instance, in each neighborhood, training people to work and run a credit union, and let them deposit the resources in those financial institutions, and let the board of that credit union make the decision on whether or not they will have a shopping facility in the neighborhood, whether they will build housing in that neighborhood, whether they will have an alternative education experience, whether they will have a health care program that they can agree upon as a community and merge with other programs. It's not a new idea of course. It's an idea that's been around a long time, and it's been tried in developing countries.

But I'm open to, obviously, trying to experiment, to try different approaches to reach people who have been abandoned. They've been abandoned by the capitalist system, they have been abandoned by their neighbors, and they have been abandoned by people in their government, and if we do not address these problems, we will only reap the consequences that I think all of us know too well may follow. Thank you.

MR. BESHAROV: Thank you very much.

Chris DeMuth is going to serve as moderator, but before that, let me do something that they taught me in law school never to do, which is ask a question whose answer you don't know.

But at least two of our speakers made an assumption about the character of the audience, which I think is not necessarily the case.

So I wonder, for those of you who feel like revealing yourselves, how many of you here vote Democratic? I'm not going to say are Democrats but vote Democratic. Okay.

Chris, the mike is yours.

MR. DeMUTH: I want to thank all of our panelists for their remarks, and I want to begin by asking Doug if he would like to register any reactions to what the other four have said.

MR. BESHAROV: Is there time?

MR. DeMUTH: Yes.

[Laughter.]

MR. DeMUTH: I want to move on to questions from the audience, but, first, I want to give you the opportunity.

MR. BESHAROV: No; no. What I meant was I had a long list. I had just one reaction, a strong reaction. It was to something that Bill Galston said, and he took issue with the word "faith" about individual choice, and without wanting to get into an argument about that, I suppose I only have faith in democracy. Now it is true, you know, a la Churchill, it's the best one we've come up with, and so forth.

But it seems to me that the issue about whether you trust individual American citizens to make decisions about their future is one of faith, although I'd be glad to fight footnotes with you, but I'd like to stand with the word "faith" on that one.

MR. DeMUTH: Any other comments from the panelists? Then I'm going to open things up.

We are open to comments. There is going to be a roving microphone, will appear, by magic, in about one second. Oh, it's right here. So if you'd raise your hand. This gentleman, right here.

MR. KURTZ [ph]: Yes. My name is Stanley Kurtz and I have a question for William Galston.

Mr. Galston, I found your rejection of compassion, your radical rejection of compassion invigorating, intellectually invigorating, and actually quite conservative, despite your sense that you're not conservative.

But what really struck me was the juxtaposition between Karlyn Bowman's remarks, which I took to be to the effect that registering compassion is absolutely critical if you want to get elected President, or probably to any other office in this country, and your radical rejection of compassion, realistically speaking, how can politicians ignore this, and isn't this something that's not created by Bill Clinton or George Bush but that's built into democracy itself?

I mean, this goes back to DeToqueville, who believed that the rise of equality was going to cut down on cruelty and make compassion become more prevalent. So how can politicians realistically be expected to ignore this, even though your points, in many ways, are well-taken? You know, how does one deal with the juxtaposition with democracy and what it tends to produce?

MR. GALSTON: Well, I don't have a glib answer to your question because I agree with its premise. I think that there have been important cultural changes in contemporary America that have pushed both parties in different ways, in this direction. But that doesn't mean that political leaders have to aid and abet it.

I must say that I found something quite honorable in Bob Dole's refusal, to the extent that he persisted in it, to pander to the contemporary demand for self-revelation, you know, the "Oprahfication" of American politics, and it is not, you know--and I would like to see a politics in which our leaders do their best, in the face of some pretty strong headwinds, to make public appeals based on public principles, rather than either feeling other's pain, or the invocation of one's heart. The heart, it seems to me, is not the organ that ought to govern in politics, any more than organs lower down ought to govern in politics. Right?

[Laughter.]

MR. GALSTON: There is--that the organ that ought to govern, or at least one ought to begin by trying to govern from the head down, however difficult that may be.

MR. DeMUTH: Here's a question for Congressman Bonior. How would you relate or reflect upon the tax cut that Bush wanted with compassionate conservatism, and if you could get into his or Karl Rove's head, how do you think they would reflect upon it?

MR. BONIOR: Well, how do I think they would reflect upon the tax cut that he signed today? I assume, and maybe incorrectly, and I'd like to hear form others who would disagree with me, that the approach here is if you give people back their money, they will find ways to spend it which will help the general good, which will be spread amongst the populace.

But I think we've learned from Ronald Reagan, that that spreading, that distribution, that trickle-down, if you will, doesn't make it to those in the lower economic strata of our society, and I'll just give you an example.

In this very bill that the President signed today, there is an impression in the country, that individuals will get $300 back this July, and that married couples will get back $600. Well, the reality is, is that 39 percent will get partial or not benefit this July. 26 percent will get nothing; 13 percent will just get a partial amount of that back. And guess which group that might be.

Okay. So it doesn't get distributed, and the needs grow, and the gap between groups widens and widens and widens. So I think that's the approach they believe and think will work, but the reality is that it doesn't. You need another component, and the concept of compassion is not just a political one. It has deep religious roots in all three of our traditional religions, all three that flow from Abraham. Christianity, Judaism and Islam. You find it in the Talmud, in the Koran, Sermon on the Mount.

This is a concept that is deeply embedded into the social and cultural mind in this country.

MR. BUTLER: I'll just make the observation, I think getting deeply into an issue of the tax bill may take us a little bit offtrack, but let me just answer that point, particularly. I mean, I do think, as the congressman just said, that when you look at the religious aspect of how we think and act, each of the religions he mentions commands us to have a social obligation, and the question then becomes what is the best and most effective way of discharging that obligation.

So simply to say that to return an excess of tax revenues to people, when there's a level of tax revenues that surpasses the objectives in the original purpose and expectations, when a tax program is put into place--to say returning that means that you are necessarily abrogating all notions of social obligation is absurd. At least it is, by no means follows from that, and I think as the President certainly tried to indicate, that there are various ways of discharging those responsibilities that we all have.

Government is one, and even within government, the Federal Government is one of several levels of government, and we have to think about what is the best organization and structures to achieve that. We all agree, in a sense, that the obligation is there, and to say that because you're against having the Federal Government take a certain amount of money, and one's in favor of returning some of that back to people, that, in no way, suggests that anybody's abrogating their responsibilities but [mike drops out for a few words.]

MR. DeMUTH: We have two question up front and then two in the back.

MR. VANVORST [ph]: My name is Bruce Vanvorst. Mrs. Bowman tells us the American voters like a means test, so long as it doesn't apply to them. I presume you're talking about the low end of the spectrum, poverty or poor. But what about the other end of the spectrum? The "big bucks." Would a compassionate conservative endorse a means test for Social Security, particularly because Social Security is or was a social welfare program, and not a pension plan, as it's now widely perceived.

MR. BUTLER: You know, that's a very interesting question because it, in many ways, gets right to the nub of some important distinctions between different philosophies on this. I was in fact involved in a debate over precisely that at a retreat just last weekend, where it was people who would call themselves liberals, who say we must oppose the notion of, in any way, drawing a distinction between what benefits go to rich people and poor people in Social Security, and Medicare was the issue we were really talking about, because that flies in the face of the notion of equality of the way people are treated under social insurance. The whole notion of social insurance in terms of equality of benefits. You had people, in other words, describe themselves as liberals, who oppose saying let's put more resources in the hands of people who need it most.

And here was I, a conservative, you know, whether compassionate or not, it was open to question of course, but a conservative saying, you know, maybe a better route is in fact to focus the resources that we are going to spend through government on those that really need it. So you get almost a flip side of what one would expect with traditional visions of where people would stand on these issues.

Now, you know, any program like Social Security, which purports to be a contributory program, into something where it is a form of insurance, in a sense, means-testing at one level violates that principle, but it therefore means that you're not focusing on the people who need it most, and, you know, that's one of the interesting twists and turns of this whole debate about who is more compassionate and who is more concerned about the needs of people who are, you know, less able to help themselves.

MR. : The matter of choice was widely discussed by the panel and it's a national issue. The thing that comes to mind, the question I have is, I think most of the failing schools are probably of the type that the congressman described, and they are probably inhabited by students who are coming from families, dysfunctional families. The parents probably are not as well-educated as, say, the President, who makes the choice to send his kid to a private school.

How are these people from dysfunctional families, the parents, going to be able to make a wise choice?

MR. BESHAROV: Well, this is where the word "faith" and the word "experiment" come together, and maybe this is where Bill and I agree. The assumption underling your question is that in fact the media portrayal of these people at the bottom, the most disadvantaged, is as negative as, you know, can be. I'm not sure that's true, having been with these folks in court, having represented their kids, and so forth. They seem an awful like us. They really do. So faith comes into this. But the second half of it is it really is time for a major experiment on this question, not a teensy one in, you know, one city, or whatever, and to do it right, and it's really a shame--where we seem to be is not even willing to try this, big time, as an experiment.

MR. GALSTON: But let me agree, vehemently, with what Doug Besharov just said, and it's a perfect, you know, it's a perfect illustration of the distinction that I was trying to draw.

First of all, I absolutely agree, that in the spirit of humility, our social policy ought to be experimental. That's why I took a deep breath, almost five years ago, and coauthored a piece with Diane Ravitch in a pretty public place, calling for a five year, ten city experiment along exactly those lines. I'm still waiting. The whole country is still waiting. But unless and until we do that, we won't know, for sure, on the basis of evidence, and sound evaluation, whether this new kind of choice-based educational system works to the advantage of the least-advantaged, or not, and I think we agree, that's the critical question.

Similarly, I think we agree that the question of whether the parents of the most disadvantaged kids will or will not make wise choices in the educational best interests of their kids in the long term, that is an empirical question. That's not a question of faith. That is a question, the answer to which can be ascertained, and it turns out--this is one of the things I do for a living, teach education policy--and it turns out that when you look at the choices that low-income parents actually make when they have a chance to make a choice, those choices are guided every bit as much by their assessment of the educational best interests of their kids as the choices that any other parents make. Surprise. Parents care about their children. But this, it seems to me, is not an article of faith. It could have been the case, that parents who were so down--some parents are so "down and out," that they wouldn't those sentiments or motivation, but in fact thank God they do, and that gives us something solid--

[Start tape two.]

MR. Galston: [in progress] appeared to me to be a nearby partisan decision to eliminate that from the bill.

MR. BESHAROV: Well, I think your question was only for one example, so that makes it somewhat easier, and that is welfare policy. In the early 1980's--

MR. Galston: Decade, I said.

MR. BESHAROV: Oh, in this decade!

[Laughter.]

MR. Galston: Let's make it 12 years, just to make it easy.

MR. BONIOR: We did a child health care program that was--that provided states the opportunity to insure children. In Michigan it's called My Child. In different states it's called other things, and it has had some success across the country, depending upon how the states have chosen to aggressively go after those, and seek out those children who don't have health insurance. So that is an example of a program that we established and tried, and we've had some success with it.

MR. BESHAROV: And truly it is the case with welfare reform, that the experiments in the early '80s, and then the experiments in the late '80s, under the Family Support Act, all showed that what was then kind of the shorthand, "tough love" approaches, worked both to reduce welfare caseloads and to increase employment, and those experiments took the wind out of some of the opposition to welfare reform. There were other issues, and so forth. But I think that those experiments helped inform policy and helped move the discussion forward.

People saw that what was called "tough love" didn't result in tremendous additional hardship, and notice, I underline the word additional, and so that helped, I think, sell the bill.

MR. BUTLER: But let's be clear that those cases involved the Federal Government permitting lower levels of government to experiment. I mean, there's a big distinction between Federal Government experimenting directly, and that does, has happened to some extent, here and there, and permitting lower levels of government to experiment. Because that's what we've been talking about in welfare. The whole essence of the welfare reform was by unleashing lower levels of government in concert with the private sector, one would see an experimentation, one would see a higher probability of solving the problem, and that I think gets you to some of the essence of conservatism, in terms of the notion of encouraging and permitting diversity within government, and there is a clash there, I think, that a lot of people can see, between the notion of uniformity and equality in the way government operates, and differences, and diversity, in the way government is permitted to operate. I think that is a valid difference of emphasis.

MR. DeMUTH: We've run several minutes over but there are a few more questioners that I'd like to recognize.

First, Elil Fradkin [ph].

MR. FRADKIN: My question is directed to Bill Galston and it's a version of the first question you were asked. Bill, it did sound as if your remarks were, went something like this.

It's an appeal to conservatives not to follow the bad example of liberals for the last 30 years, so that our long national nightmare of noblesse oblige should not continue under a conservative administration.

You know, maybe conservatives will take that to heart, but what, you know, what advice, really, do you have to offer, or what do you have, actually, to offer conservatives on the part of your own party or your own position? It seems to me--what, for example--I mean, to take a difficult but not particularly unfair example. What would you advice Congressman Bonior about the way in which he would address his remarks in the future?

I mean, he made a substantial appeal to compassion. In fact I'm not sure there was an appeal to anything but compassion in his remarks, and you appeal to the example of Senator Dole.

We know what happened to Senator Dole. It seems to me the burden is, to some extent, on you to say what you would say to your own party, rather than to conservatives.

MR. GALSTON: Well, I didn't say anything to conservatives that I wouldn't also say to my own party, and I think my remarks made were neatly divided into what I, slash, we believe as New Democrats, and believe me, that is an ongoing struggle within the Democratic Party. That's what the New Democratic movement is all about. It is an effort to say some things to other members of the party, that they don't like and don't want to hear, and get very angry about when they do hear.

And, actually, just to show and prove how consistent I am, I will give the same advice to both conservatives and liberals. If you want to get universal access to health insurance in this country, you should begin by building on Stuart Butler's premises and funding them, adequately, and the very first President to put that proposal on the table, I suggest, would launch a national discussion that would finally lead, in this country, to universal access to health insurance for every American.

That is the position of the New Democratic movement, and it has been for some time, as Stuart knows, and it ought to be the position of conservatives who believe both in choice, and in health care. You know, I wait, since it is a sin to despair, I wait with hope for the Bush administration to put Stuart Butler's health care plan on the table for debate in the Congress.

MR. DeMUTH: A final question from Professor Ezioni [ph].

MR. EZIONI: Doug, first, congratulations. I can't imagine somebody more entitled. The question I'm going to ask is not about a compassionate part but about a conservative part of the subject, and I'm neither liberal nor conservative. I'm a communitarian [?], so I come to it at a slightly different perspective. My question is what happened to all the social conservative issues? I mean, I understand everybody's given a limited amount of time, but I think I'm correct, that public opinion polls, until recently, showed the American people, even those who feel that the country's on the right track, economically, are deeply concerned about social and moral issues.

Is there anything which ties together fiscal conservativism, and social conservativism--another misnomer, to think about them as if they were in one camp. Now, I realize that, you know, again, the limit of time. I didn't hear one of the following issues. Death penalty. Three strikes, you're out. Do we need to revisit it, or we're going to double the population in prisons some more? What are we doing to do about the War on Drugs? How are we going to increase the civil society? Are we going to have dialogues among the races? How are we going to get senior citizens to do more for each other? I mean, I don't want to take the rest of the evening. The whole social conservative agenda--what happened to it?

MR. BESHAROV: Is that really a question for me?

MR. : It's not for me.

MS. BOWMAN: Not for me.

MR. BESHAROV: Well, I think, in one part, we all tried to address the question of social welfare policies, because that's where the President put this phrase to work. But you were asking a series of broader questions and let me take just one, and that is the connection between what we've been talking about here, compassionate conservatism, and some of the social conservative issues.

I think, and this is where there are some divisions among people who call themselves, or are called conservatives. i think there is a difference between those who think that the breakdown of the American family is a tremendous problem and that the government has some answers for that, I mean, these are people on the right, and others, myself included, who think the problem of the breakdown of the American family is tremendously important, but there may not be any easy governmental solutions.

So the question here is really what I was trying to get to later, which is what are those--at the end, what are those social issues to which government action is appropriate? It may be that many--not all--I know you talked about death penalty and drug policy--but it may be that the social conservative issues of values, family breakdown, neighborhood, and so forth, are beyond the reach of government per se, at least from a more conservative point of view, and I know Bill would feel somewhat differently on that.

But that's where that division arises, and those of us who are less sanguine about the ability of government to get it right, get a little worried about government designating what the neighborhood is, who the neighborhood leaders are, and so forth, and would much prefer that to be a grassroots development, totally independent of the government. Is that enough "red meat" for you?

MR. GALSTON: I'm not going to rise to the bait, Doug, because, you know, I'm going to take Amatal's [?] question in an entirely different direction, and that is--and I hadn't thought of this until you raised the question, so thank you.

That many of these social issues that you cite do seem, to me, to be policy arenas where the virtue of compassion can either manifest itself, or not, and I'll give you an example, two examples, not chosen at random.

There was an episode, during the presidential campaign, when an issue was raised about what then-Governor Bush, of Texas, had said about the execution of a woman in a Texas jail, Carla Fay Tucker. Some of you may remember this episode. The question was not whether she was appropriately executed or not. The question was did the then-governor of Texas reveal a callous, uncaring attitude towards this woman in the course of deciding that in spite of her much-discussed conversion to Christianity, and her many good works in jail, she should be executed. So, you know, I am in favor of, or at least not against the death penalty, when it's appropriately administered.

But it is not something that anyone should be happy about, and to the extent that someone seems happy about the execution of another human being, that does raise questions about compassion and an attitude of compassion.

Similarly, there was a case that was in the newspaper just a couple of days ago, where a boy who was 12 years old, in the State of Florida, was convicted of the crime of murder of a 6-year-old, tried as an adult, sentenced as an adult, and is now in prison for life without possibility of parole, and the issue arises not whether that is, you know, on the face of it, an appropriate legal process to have gone through, about which opinions differ, but, rather, having gone through it, would it now be compassionate to review that on an expedited basis? The decision from the governor of Florida was no. So I do think it is worth thinking about many of these social issues, if one takes compassion seriously, from the standpoint of the display and exercise of that virtue, not in doing justice, but in reflecting on justice, once it has been done, and then perhaps going in a different direction.

In the Jewish tradition, of course, God is taken to be compassionate precisely because the divinity treats human beings better than they deserve, or, to quote Hamlet, if all men were used according to their deserts, who would escape whipping?

[Laughter.]

MR. DeMUTH: With that, I'd like to thank everyone, both the Democratic voters and the Romney crowd, for being with us this afternoon, and to invite you to stay for the reception immediately following. I'd like to thank all five of our panelists for what I thought were extraordinarily deep, serious, and highly stimulating remarks, and I'd like to offer my special thanks, gratitude and congratulations to Doug Besharov and Joe Jacobs.

We're adjourned.

[Whereupon, the seminar concluded.]