As a person, from what can be dimly discerned from a distance, George Bush strikes me as a decent enough fellow. But I've never mistaken him for a Republican. :-)

He's a Democrat, but he's an only-style (1990s and before) Democrat, one of the "good guys" like Tip O'Neil, Paul Simon, or Daniel Patrick Moynahan. Someone who crosses the aisle easily to attempt to build bipartisan unity and speaks respectfully towards his opponents. Perhaps you're laughing, but I'm dead serious: Can you name a president who has kept more political appointees from the opposite party in his administration? And, sadly, he's been stung for it.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise to conservative that Bush seems to think he'll have quite a bit in common with the present crop of Democrats.

For one, now he'll get what he's always wanted on immigration: a repeat of Reagan's fatal mistake (amensty, which taught the lesson that migrating illegally is a better thing to do than following the law -- immigration vastly increased after Reagan did that), and a policy which Democrats seem to reflexively embrace.

And, of course, Bush seems to think that increasing the minimum wage is a good idea, too: "President George W. Bush on Wednesday said increasing the national minimum wage is likely an issue on which he could cooperate with Democratic leaders in Congress."

Yes, I'm sure this will "punish" those Republican leaders pretty good. I'm sure they're sulking at home right now about the increased availability of illegal labor and (paradoxically) increased pay required for starting-level jobs.

Okay, kids, now let's see if we can work out the economic impact of these two policies.

First, increasing the minimum wage: When you increase the cost of X what happens to the demand for X? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler? (Let's not see all the same hands!) Right! The demand for X goes down when the cost of X goes up. So if X = labor, we predict decreased employment.

Now the other factor: increased immigration. Think of the Mexican-American border as factory pumping out widgets. President Bush has passed a law making widgets more expensive. But this factory will continue to pump them out no matter what. So you have both increasing supply and increasing cost. What does that give us?

That gives us an excess of widgets. So, again, we'll see unemployment in the low-wage sectors, and possibly also a black market -- for all those employers who want to buy widgets (e.g. hire laborers) at their actual market price.

But there's one last thing: unlike our hypothetical widgets, an excess of unemployed people, in a welfare state, impose costs on taxpayers. That's true whether the new labor is hard working, and displaces American-born labor, or vise-versa. These costs either turned into debt or turned into higher taxes -- both of which decrease the available pool of money which is used to buy more labor -- decreasing demand again.

In short, this combination produces higher taxes, more unemployment, and particularly more unemployment among societies' most vulnerable members -- poor African-American males.

Bush is a nice man. But he's hardly a conservative.