c onclusion 351Here, though, the war so deeply divided the party’s ranks as to doom
any prospect that Democrats might cooperate to protect the Great
Society from conservative demands for retrenchment.
The record of the Bush administration suggests that the same
dynamic may not operate when a conservative president pursues a
reform agenda during a war. Although the 2001 Bush tax cut created a
federal defi cit and the Iraq War made it larger, the budget gap occa-
sioned minimal political discussion. In contrast to the conservative
response to wartime defi cits in earlier confl icts, the political right did
not demand fi scal discipline as the price for supporting the war. Not
until Obama became president did conservatives voice alarm about the
size of the federal defi cit. In part, the indiff erence to wartime defi cit
spending may have refl ected the lack of infl ation, an unusual wartime
condition not enjoyed by Roosevelt or Johnson. Yet, given that
infl ation has not shown itself under Obama either, it seems reasonable
to conclude that conservatives will hold one of their own in the White
House to a diff erent standard. Economic circumstances during the
Iraq War made it possible to put off any fi scal reckoning and let both
the Bush administration and the Democratic opposition carry on
business as usual, something each preferred to the more painful alter-
natives. Bush tried to continue his program of downsizing the federal
government after he won reelection in 2004, taking aim at Social
Security with a proposal to privatize the system over time. Th e scheme
went nowhere, but his political failure does not seem to be connected
to the war.
In sum, it appears that during wartime a reformist conservative pres-
ident, because he already enjoys the backing of business elites and does
not depend on activists who will be marginalized by their antiwar
dissent, can escape some of the anti-reform political pressures that
weaken his liberal counterparts. That said, when a war becomes
unpopular, any president, liberal or conservative, will fi nd policy vic-
tories scarce for the remainder of his term.
The fifth puzzle is the most daunting of all. We have seen
repeatedly that presidents fi nd themselves bereft of strategic options,
with little latitude to alter the course of the war they initiated.
Debates about presidential war powers have obscured this central
dynamic of wartime presidential leadership. On one side, liberals have