Will compassionate conservatism make a comeback?

The conservative website Hot Air has a headline this morning, “Jeb Bush’s first campaign ad: Compassionate conservatism is back, baby” (see video below). That could be good news politically. Bush sees that Mitt Romney lost big on the “Cares about people like me” question. It could be bad news for policy and for the poor. Is Jeb Bush is a big-government conservative?

President George W. Bush was not a big-government conservative, but his administration ended up that way. I liked his heart and his enthusiasm for small-government compassionate conservatism, but he didn’t sweat the policy details. As a result, the equation of compassion with liberalism floated back in. Would Jeb Bush do better? The angel is in the details.

Given that the nation’s biggest structural problem is bad education, particularly in poor neighborhoods, the good news from Nevada this month is enactment of “education savings accounts” that allow parents to pull their children out of state-run schools and use allotted tax dollars for the education they prefer: public schools, private schools, distance learning, community college classes, computer software, and so forth. For example, parents will be able to add high school chemistry labs to homeschool curricula.

That’s the decentralizing kind of compassionate conservatism. Similar steps could transform welfare. If the Supreme Court this year or voters next year toss out parts of Obamacare, compassionate conservatism could also improve medical care. But we need to watch the details and not just the commercials.