Many people love to view George W. Bush’s actions through the prism of his father’s experiences. Many also argue that the Bush administration’s actions are primarily motivated by the desire to do the opposite of the Clinton administration on any given topic. What if there was a neat theorem which combined both theses, in a way which (to my knowledge) nobody in the mainstream media has noted? I think one exists, and it's one which should work for both Bush supporters and opponents.
Here’s my proposed Grand Unified Theory of the George W. Bush Administration:™
“Our opponents aren’t going to support us, whatever we do. Screw ‘em – there’s no point in meeting them halfway.”
I – Lessons from the Father
George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act and a massively revamped and expanded Clean Air Act. He wooed reporters as if he actually enjoyed it. Most notably, he warmed the hearts of every Democratic member of Congress and raised taxes, publicly breaking his vow to the contrary.
And it didn’t do him any good, politically speaking. The Democrats lost no opportunity to bash him even in those areas where he had shown the most accommodation. He was called a disaster for the environment, a claim flagrantly at issue with his administration’s record. Despite his capitulation to the Democrats’ demands for higher taxes, he was consistently blamed for not doing more to resuscitate the economy. (And as an aside, I haven’t seen too many Democrats who credit Clinton’s tax increases for lowering the deficit and creating the lower interest rates that fueled the ‘90s boom give any credit for those outcomes to George H.W. Bush’s larger tax increases.) While one could not reasonably have expected the Democrats to go easy on an incumbent in an election year, the mainstream press largely went along with those claims and added their own spin: that he was too out of touch with the country. His schmoozing of reporters was for naught.
People have wondered why George W. Bush is content to push his agenda through Congress with barely an attempt to convince opposing legislators, especially since his practice as governor of Texas was so different. Some have also wondered why the Bush administration campaigned mercilessly against Democrats who supported parts of his agenda. Perhaps the experience of 1992 can provide an answer to those questions; unlike Texas, where Democratic legislators might support the re-election of a conciliatory Republican Governor, Washington Democrats could be expected to offer little succor at election time, regardless of how conciliatory their opposing number in the executive branch had been.
II – Lessons from the Bill
Many have noted that one of Bill Clinton’s signature traits was his belief that everyone could be convinced to support him, if he could only talk to and debate them long enough.
It seems clear that George W. Bush, due to his religious beliefs / habits resulting from giving up drinking, has a more militantly modest outlook: he is a clear believer in the recognizing the difference between what he can change and what he cannot. It wouldn’t surprise me if Bush sees Clinton’s inability to concede that some people are beyond his persuasive powers as a moral failing, as much as the more obvious foibles.
Bush’s viewpoint is probably reinforced by the fact that the results of Clinton’s indiscriminate attempts at persuasion were, obviously, mixed – especially in international relations. As pointed out by a charter member of the “neoconservative cabal,” Robert Kagan:

Although transatlantic tensions are now widely assumed to have begun with the inauguration of George W. Bush in January 2001, they were already evident during the Clinton administration and may even be traced back to the administration of George H.W. Bush. By 1992, mutual recriminations were rife over Bosnia, where the United States refused to act and Europe could not act. It was during the Clinton years that Europeans began complaining about being lectured by the “hectoring hegemon.” This was also the period in which Védrine coined the term hyperpuissance to describe an American behemoth too worryingly powerful to be designated merely a superpower. (Perhaps he was responding to then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s insistence that the United States was the world’s “indispensable nation.”) It was also during the 1990s that the transatlantic disagreement over American plans for missile defense emerged and many Europeans began grumbling about the American propensity to choose force and punishment over diplomacy and persuasion.
The Clinton administration, meanwhile, though relatively timid and restrained itself, grew angry and impatient with European timidity, especially the unwillingness to confront Saddam Hussein. The split in the alliance over Iraq didn’t begin with the 2000 election but in 1997, when the Clinton administration tried to increase the pressure on Baghdad and found itself at odds with France and (to a lesser extent) Great Britain in the United Nations Security Council. Even the war in Kosovo was marked by nervousness among some allies — especially Italy, Greece, and Germany — that the United States was too uncompromisingly militaristic in its approach. And while Europeans and Americans ultimately stood together in the confrontation with Belgrade, the Kosovo war produced in Europe less satisfaction at the successful prosecution of the war than unease at America’s apparent omnipotence. That apprehension would only increase in the wake of American military action after September 11, 2001.

Combine the deep fault-lines in interests exposed by the Clinton administration with the popular image of George W. Bush as a gun-toting provincial Christian fundamentalist (which pre-dated his inauguration, much less anything he actually did in office), and it is easy to see how Bush concluded that he never stood a chance with much of Europe.
It is also entirely possible that Bush noticed how in the previous decade, America had gone to war three times to protect Muslims and pushed Israel to the negotiating table with, and to make concessions to, the Palestinians (at Madrid in 1992, at Wye in 1998 and at Camp David in 2000) – events which bought America approximately 2.5 seconds’ worth of goodwill in much of the Arab and Muslim world. Is it any wonder that the Bush administration has been appropriately skeptical of European and Arab claims that particular policy changes (signing Kyoto, pushing Israel to make more concessions to the Palestinians, etc.) would suddenly solve all problems between those countries and the U.S.?

Like all good cynical beliefs, the Grand Unified Theory has a lot of truth to it: it is not as if too many congressional Democrats would support Bush’s re-election regardless of what he did between now and then, and it seems clear that France would have been obstreperous on Iraq even if Bush had given his September 12th speech to the UN in French.
This theory is so obvious to me that I’m surprised more people in the mainstream media haven’t put it this way yet. I think media-types may not see it because it potentially implicates the their treatment of George H.W. Bush in the 1992 election cycle (and, by implication, how they’ll treat his son in 2004). What do you think?