Bush the Conservative Liberal

Here's an interpretation of Dubya you won't see on Fox News Channel (or CNN, for that matter). Writes George Mason Univ.'s Peter Berkowitz in the Boston Globe:

Progressives are not alone in taking offense over how President Bush has governed. Some conservatives too have been dismayed, particularly by what they have derisively referred to as Bush's "big government conservatism." Yet as his administration makes its mistakes, rolls with the punches, and adapts to changing circumstances, the president reveals himself to be a pragmatic conservative who knows in his gut that it is a liberal welfare state that he wishes to reform, and to conserve. This will continue to discomfit purists on both sides. And it may prove attractive to a majority in 2004, not only in the Electoral College but in the popular vote as well.

Btw, if Bush does win a majority of the popular vote in 2004, he'll be the first president to do so since his dad in 1988.

Read all of Berkowitz's interesting commentary here.

[Link via Arts & Letters Daily.]