The Week.(George W. Bush's inaugural address; pro-life politics; other political issues)

We always said you couldn't trust them with the silver; we didn't know to mean it literally.

George W. Bush's inaugural address was an impressive one. Even bitter-end chad-massagers like Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker admitted that it was graceful and thoughtful. And at fourteen minutes, it was a welcome retreat from the average Clinton speech, with its bloat. There was another implicit rebuke of Clintonism in it, too: When Bush asked Americans to be "citizens, not spectators," this was typical civic-minded rhetoric; but when he asked them to be "citizens, not subjects," he was calling an end to eight years of sycophancy, legal double standards, and droit du seigneur. He wanted citizens to devote themselves to his compassionate conservative agenda: "Persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation's promise." Alexander Hamilton, one of the few poor-boy Founders, might have agreed; let us hope Bush's understanding of the dynamics of wealth-formation is as supple and hardheaded as his was. Bush ended by declaring that Americans are not the authors of their own story. That Author "fills time and eternity with His purpose. Yet His purpose is achieved in our duty . . ." Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State probably wanted those words blue-penciled, but he'll just have to take it to court.

Pro-lifers are, in the main, quite pleased with the Bush administration. They had pressed it to restore the Reagan administration's "Mexico City" policy, which denies foreign-aid funds to groups that perform or promote abortions overseas. Bush not only obliged, but did so on his first workday as president, the day of the annual March for Life. It was a powerful symbolic gesture. But not all doubts about the administration have been allayed. In his Senate testimony, Bush's nominee for attorney general, John Ashcroft, said that he would not ask the Supreme Court to rethink its abortion-on-demand jurisprudence. And a day before the inauguration, Laura Bush-who had kept mum on the subject all last year, and whom pro-lifers had been encouraged to think was one of them-declared herself opposed to overturning Roe v. Wade. Republicans may be moving toward a new position, one that seeks to restrict abortion in ways consistent with Roe but gives up on overturning it. But since Roe and its successor cases bar any serious restrictions on abortion, pro-lifers cannot accept that position. Nor should any pro-choicer who would rather be governed by the Constitution than by the Supreme Court. The happier interpretation of the comments by Ashcroft and Mrs. Bush is that Republicans will do the right things (e.g., Mexico City) even as they say the wrong ones. As Princeton University professor Robert P. George observed some years ago, on abortion Republicans reverse their usual pattern: They are all action and no talk.

A motif of the coverage of the new administration has been the bogus parallel to Bill Clinton's first days in office. Just as gays-in-the-military had gotten Clinton off to a rocky start, so Bush would be undone by his executive order on abortion. Or by the Ashcroft nomination. Or his tax cut. But the situations are different. The gays-in-the-military debate was bruising to Clinton because there had been no trial run: Congress had never seriously debated it, and the clueless Bush campaign of 1992 had not made an issue of Clinton's position. Clinton hurt himself further by passing a tax hike after campaigning on a tax cut. By contrast, official Washington has fought about overseas abortion funding for years, and George W. Bush defended his policies on abortion and taxes against Democratic attacks throughout the campaign. Bush may yet stumble, but nothing he has done so far has the potential to blow up in his face-much as the Washington press corps might wish it so.

The prospects for tax cuts, indeed, continue to improve. First Democratic senator Zell Miller of Georgia broke ranks to cosponsor the Bush tax-cut bill. Then Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan endorsed several of the premises behind Bush's tax cut: that the budget surpluses are indeed burgeoning, that the economy is growing slowly if at all. His own rationale for a tax cut was that, without one, the federal government will accumulate so much surplus money that it will retire all its debt and have to purchase private assets, which he rightly considers unwise. Greenspan's comments were welcome. But would he have said what he did if Al Gore were president? For that matter, would he have stuck his neck out had Bush not persevered with his tax-cut proposal through a year of negative coverage and congressional timorousness? Greenspan cast a vote of confidence not just in Bush's economic policy, but in his political strength.

The president will have much rougher sledding, however, on Social Security, not least because the Senate moved sharply to the left in the election. Here, too, he should not give up. The reform he proposed-letting individuals invest some of their contributions to the system-is a good, and popular, idea. Indeed, Bush should start campaigning for that reform now, with his tax bill. He has been curiously reluctant to push tax cuts that encourage investment. Although he supports abolishing the estate tax, a pro-investor move, he has not proposed a reduction in the capital-gains tax, or an expansion of IRAs and 401(k)s. Yet these policies, by helping people to gain experience managing their own investments, would build support for the Social Security reform. They would also pass Congress easily. Bush should endorse them, and establish himself as a champion of small investors.

During the campaign, Bush frequently promised that as president he would rally "armies of compassion" to minister to the needy. True to his word, in his first days in office he has launched a campaign designed to facilitate the work of private, and often religious, charities. Federal agencies are to avoid regulations that might hinder such groups; tax law will be changed to promote giving to them; and the religious character of a group will not bar its participation in federal programs to treat drug addiction, feed the hungry, etc. The president's initiative may accomplish two worthwhile objectives: improving the effectiveness of those federal programs, and correcting a misreading of the First Amendment that has too often led to official hostility to religion in public life. But neither accomplishment is guaranteed. While many religious charities are successful in transforming lives, many of them are, like their secular counterparts, too infused with the nonjudgmental ethos of the therapeutic culture to do so. And the danger that federal aid will bureaucratize and secularize religious groups must be guarded against, as Bush himself has recognized. Compassionate conservatism will have to be judged by its works.