Bush must lean to the left

? Eager, as always, to discern dissension in conservative ranks, the press is finding evidence of right-wing disenchantment with George W. Bush. It is a disenchantment that is largely confined to activists in the nation’s capital the “grass roots” seem eminently satisfied but it would be mistaken to suggest that it doesn’t exist.

The Club for Growth, a free-market lobbying organization that takes an active interest in Republican primaries and general elections, has written to presidential counselor Karl Rove to complain about White House support for such GOP Senate candidates as Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina and Lamar Alexander in Tennessee. You have to wonder about a political universe in which Lamar Alexander and Liddy Dole are regarded as dangerous moderates, but there it is.

Meanwhile, conservative activist Paul Weyrich has told The Washington Post “conservatives in a broad cross-section of the movement are getting very uneasy about this presidency.”

Weyrich, who runs an organization called the Free Congress Foundation, did not specify where in the country this broad cross-section might be situated, or what method he employed to arrive at such conclusions. But in the words of onetime presidential candidate Gary Bauer, “a sense of disappointment is spreading” among the ranks.

Some sense of the quality of such disappointment might be gained from the following anecdote. A recently formed right-wing women’s organization, meeting with a senior (female) White House aide, angrily demanded to know why the Bush administration had endorsed a program sponsored by a left-wing feminist group, called Vital Voices, to provide sewing machines to women in Afghanistan. Because, replied the White House aide, first lady Laura Bush considered it a good idea and didn’t care who thought of it first.

Which suggests, and with good reason, that the White House is not especially anxious about right-wing disaffection. With friends like Paul Weyrich, who needs Democrats? Bush’s astonishing popularity remains intact, and there is every indication that the so-called conservative base, outside the Beltway, remains enthusiastic about his presidency.

A recent poll gave the president 100 percent support among evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who identify themselves as Republicans. Which is hardly surprising: Between the tax cut, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, anti-cloning legislation and conservative judicial appointments, they have every reason to be satisfied.

But satisfaction is an unfamiliar sensation on the right: Accustomed to intellectual and political dissent for the past half-century, certain conservatives demand an ideological purity in public officeholders not seen since the Stalinist left of the 1930s. And as a practical matter, it is considerably easier and more satisfying to attack adversaries than defend allies, especially allies who must compromise on occasion to prevail.

Consider, for example, the Middle East. Israel’s fevered enthusiasts on the right the ones who think Secretary of State Colin Powell is a secret Hezbollah agent include many of the same people who despaired of Ronald Reagan’s softness (!) toward the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Or consider, for that matter, the “broad cross-section of the movement” that is growing uneasy about George W. Bush’s basic instincts. This features many of the same individuals who were convinced, in the early ’80s, that Reagan was being steered by his White House staff on a perilous leftward course. Chief of Staff James Baker was alleged to be the malevolent influence in those days, and “Let Reagan be Reagan!” was the battle cry.

They were wrong about Reagan then, of course, and are wrong about Bush today. For there is a larger issue that “activists,” right and left, usually miss under such circumstances. Presidents of either party come to the White House with certain philosophical presumptions: That is, in part, why voters have chosen them. But presidents must also contend with the political reality they inherit in the nation’s capital, and George W. Bush is mindful not only of a contemptuous press and divided Congress (and a Senate ready and willing to thwart his policies), but of the fact that he lost the popular vote, albeit narrowly, to Albert Gore.

The Bush White House has been unusually attentive to the conservative ranks that professed disillusionment with the president’s father in 1992, and it has achieved considerably more for the right than Bill Clinton managed to accomplish for the left in his first term. But the war on terrorism notwithstanding, if Bush has any expectations of a second term, he must find those votes among people who pulled the lever last time for Albert Gore, not among those who demand strict allegiance to pet causes. And if that means offending groups that resent making common cause with organizations shipping sewing machines to Afghan women, so be it.