Republican opportunities, democratic dilemmas.

• Author: Bresler, Robert J.
• Position: State of the Nation

THE LAST TIME the Republicans controlled the Executive Branch and both houses of Congress was 50 years ago, after the 1952 election. The Republicans of that era had only a modest agenda and were largely defined by their willingness or unwillingness to accept the New Deal legacy. Given such a paucity of ideas, the Democrats recaptured Congress in 1954. The Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, having ended the Korean War and avoided one in Indochina, was reelected in 1956, but with a Democratic Congress.

Today, the Republicans have an agenda and a more-ideologically coherent party. Their position on school vouchers, medical savings and private Social Security accounts, and tax reductions and simplification is designed to establish a new Investor State to replace the Entitlement State of the New Deal/Great Society. The idea, revolutionary in some respects, is to shift power from the Federal bureaucracy to the individual citizen. This ambitious agenda was begun by Pres. Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and carried on by Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich in the 1990s. They shifted the momentum away from the inevitable growth of government control. Reagan reduced the top marginal income tax rate from 70% to 28% (later raised to 39% under Bill Clinton), and Gingrich led the fight for welfare reform, reducing an entitlement program begun in the 1930s.

Pres. Bush is poised to take another important step. He understands that the American people have come to expect a certain level of public service and that the Republican Party must stand for more than just the reduction of taxes and spending. His agenda involves delivering programs with the least amount of bureaucratic control and the greatest amount of individual choice.

The 2002 election gave the President a slight governing majority. It is an opportunity to do some things, not the overwhelming mandate that Franklin Roosevelt received in 1932 and 1936 or Lyndon Johnson received in 1964. Bush needs to seize the moment, but to be careful not to overreach and risk a backlash. What is clearly possible are two pieces of his agenda--providing prescription drags for seniors and making the 2001 tax cuts permanent. The Republican prescription drug program contrasts sharply with the Democrats'. The Democrats support an extensive program for all seniors, regardless of income, administered through the Medicare bureaucracy; the Republican plan involves subsidizing only low- and middle-income seniors, giving them...