You May Not Like Me Now....

But they'll sign songs about me and throw parties in my honor... after I'm dead!

Seriously, I'm used to the litany of articles at the end of a Presidency, reminding us that a president's legacy can change over time - for the better or for the worse.

But is there any precedent for the defense offered of Bush by his faithful followers - that when all the living witnesses are dead, there's a good chance he'll be beloved?

Prepare to be Chastened

You remember Bruce Anderson from his ethnically sensitive column on Hurricane Katrina (Don't blame Bush - Blame black people!), or perhaps from his "carbon emissions, schmarbon emissions" column about global warming (Yes, The real leader on climate change is Mr Bush ). Watch out, Bush critics - he's coming for you.

It is not difficult to make the case against George Bush.

Ouch.

There have been mistakes.

Mistakes, plural? My how the world has changed following Bush's final press conference... Bush sort of admits to three mistakes,

Clearly putting a "Mission Accomplished" on a aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but nevertheless, it conveyed a different message. Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake.

* * *

I believe that running the Social Security idea right after the '04 elections was a mistake. I should have argued for immigration reform.

Back to Anderson:

But in their abuse of him, many of his liberal critics demonstrate their own weak hold on reality.

You mean, like crazily being concerned about carbon emissions, or not blaming the Katrina disaster on African Americans? Or what? (Sorry, Bruce - I'm not even sure G.W. is on your side on those points.)

In trying to belittle him, they merely reveal their own littleness.

Yes, yes. Tiny little liberals. We get it.

George Bush is a much more considerable figure than the caricature version.

Er, Bruce, that's not a defense... you're damning him with faint praise.

As he has set great events in motion, it will be impossible to judge his Presidency for many years.

Another presentation of the "You can't judge Bush by his decisions, but must wait a few decades or generations to see what comes next. If you parked a feces flinging monkey in front of a fan, Anderson would likely assure us that "You have to wait to see if a verdant tomorrow grows out of the monkey's newly fertilized surroundings." Had Bush initiated a nuclear war, Anderson would probably be telling us that we have to wait and see if the benefits of reduced world population and possible beneficial mutations of the human genome lead future generations to regard him as a great man. Or, as Anderson so aptly puts it,

It is not impossible that history will offer a partial vindication.

Partial vindication is not impossible? Does praise get any fainter than that?

Okay, that was Anderson's first paragraph and there's a lot more... of similar quality. Read it and weep, you tiny little liberals. Anderson continues to make sweeping, unsubstantiated statements (e.g., "Although some of George Bush junior's speeches will rank high in the annals of political oratory, once he was without a text, he often went adrift." - er, which speeches?), and presents a second-hand depiction of Bush's astonishing leadership behind closed doors that's worthy of a SNL skit. For eight years we've been told that Bush is brilliant, witty, smart and commanding, until a camera lens hits him at which time his brain seems to turn to mush. Maybe there's some hidden camera footage? An audio recording? Because as much as I want to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, you would think by now we wouldn't have to take people like Anderson's apocryphal friend at their (purported) word.

Typical of Bush's defenders, Anderson wants to reinvent the Iraq war.

After 11 September, the US Administration asked itself one repeated and agonised question. Why do these people hate us? The Bush team came up with their answer: because they live in failed states, which offer their young no hope in this world and thus leave them open to the temptations of fanaticism and a better deal in another world.

Well, not quite. What Bush actually said was,

They hate what we see right here in this chamber - a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

That's not quite the same thing, is it.... Anderson apparently didn't convince even himself, as he carries on about Hussein's desire for WMD's and suggests that choosing not to invade Iraq and topple Hussein would have been tantamount to waiting "until the certainty of a mushroom cloud".

It seemed that all the routes to progress in the Middle East and safety in the West led to Iraq.

Talk about your hyperbole.... But "seemed"? His defense of the entire Iraq debacle is "Appearances were deceiving"?

But in moving forward with the war, "There was one problem." Just one, mind you. Wanna guess? I'll give you three tries.

Largely because of the malign influence of that fraud and tautology, international law, we have grown squeamish about regime change.

I bet that was at the top of your list. I mean, think of all the leaders who weren't toppled due to American squeamishness about regime change and fear of international law. Manuel Noriega, Bernard Coard, Slobodan Milosevic, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras... all happily ruling their countries. Squeamishness like that almost assuredly was why the U.S. would never have backed a coup attempt in Venezuela before not invading Iraq.

As a result, the overwhelming desirability of regime change in Iraq had to be downplayed, and there was a further difficulty: the most unfortunate un-meeting of minds in recent public policy. After 2001, in both Washington and London, there was a split between those who knew Iraq, who were generally hostile to the War, and those who wanted war but usually knew nothing about Iraq.

Oh, this is too good. Here's Bush, downplaying regime change in a joint press conference with Blair, April 6, 2002:

THE PRESIDENT: Maybe I should be a little less direct and be a little more nuanced, and say we support regime change.

Q That's a change though, isn't it, a change in policy?

THE PRESIDENT: No, it's really not. Regime change was the policy of my predecessor, as well.

Q And your father?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, I can't remember that far back. (Laughter.) It's certainly the policy of my administration. I think regime change sounds a lot more civil, doesn't it? The world would be better off without him. Let me put it that way, though. And so will the future.

Talk about nuance. But what about Anderson's concern about the split of opinion on the Iraq invasion between, shall we say, those who knew what they were talking about and those who didn't?

George Bush had little confidence in his Secretary of State, Colin Powell. Unable to sack Mr Powell, he made up for it by not listening to the State Department. Tony Blair never took much notice of his foreign secretaries.

As a result, the Arabists' expertise was disregarded and ... the direction of events was left to the neo-conservatives, most of whom were dangerous idealists who believed that democracy was an infallible political antibiotic.

But enough about Fred Hiatt. No, in fairness to Hiatt, he at least recognized Bush's "commitment" to democratization for what it was. If the people Bush in fact allowed to lead him around by their nose were even half as informed as Hiatt, Anderson's account would fall apart. What's amazing to me is that Anderson's trying to defend Bush by arguing that Bush had a choice between going with knowledgeable experts and Colin Powell, and people who knew absolutely nothing about anything - and that Bush made the wrong choice. Anderson elaborates that, if Iraq hadn't been such an unmitigated disaster in the hands of the incompetents picked by Bush, "George Bush's ratings would be much higher". Well, yeah, but in that universe we might be talking about how Bush's record of good decision-making justifies calling him a good President, rather than how once the dust settles and future Presidents and people put Humpty Dumpty back together, it's "not impossible that history will offer a partial vindication".

The funny thing is, having just said that, Anderson tells us:

There was one unfortunate side effect of the war on terror: Guantanamo.

I guess Anderson sees the rest of the side-effects, including two years of chaos and lost opportunity in Iraq, the idiotic disbanding of the Iraqi military, loss of world respect, loss of respect as the world's preeminent military power, as fortunate side effects?

At the time, it seemed a good idea: a cunning means of preventing American lawyers from undermining America's security. But the US prides itself on being a nation founded upon laws. It follows that a legal vacuum is only tolerable for a brief period.

So it seemed like a good idea to ignore U.S. law and values, create a legal black hole where you could drop prisoners, many of whom were picked up by mistake, deny them due process, charges, access to lawyers, trial, smear anybody who tried to assert that we would be better off respecting our historic values and providing an example for the world of fairness and justice (the type of American values somebody like Anderson sees as "undermining America's security"), and engaging in treatment of some prisoners so atrocious that, despite their crimes, we may have virtually no evidence that we can use against them in court in anything resembling a fair trial. By now even Anderson's ready to bring the Guantanamo prisoners back into the light, but he adds,

That said, anyone who denies that there are some exceedingly dangerous men in Guantanamo should be forced to live among them.

No, in fact, it's the people who flouted American law, and people like Anderson who cheered them on, who should be forced to live among those we are unable to convict due to the Bush Administration's use of torture and contempt for the law.

Funny how only a couple of years ago Anderson saw Bush's Katrina failure as relevant to his legacy, but now... nary a mention. But there's a consistency with his prior piece - then, as now, every failure that occurs on Bush's watch is the fault of something that came before his Presidency:

The decisions which doomed New Orleans were taken years before he became President, including the one to build the city in the first place.

Yes, I'm sure that there were many times in the wee hours of the morning when Bush woke up screaming, "Darn you, French Mississippi Company! Darn you, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville! How could you do this to Brownie and me!" How could Bush possibly have foreseen a disaster that was a mere 287 years in the making. In fact, it's unfair to expect that Bush would have foreseen any disaster. Really:

On the economy, and like Gordon Brown, George Bush could be accused of failing to fix the roof while the sun was shining. But two years' ago, it all seemed to be working. ... George Bush did not foresee the crisis. Who did?

A lot of people saw disaster coming, actually. Sure, they were largely marginalized by the media, save most notably for Paul Krugman who hollered loud, clear warnings from the editorial page of the New York Times. If all of that flew below Bush's radar, it can fairly be said that as with Iraq, a large part of the fault lies with his natural tendency to surround himself with incompetents who tell him what he wants to hear, while marginalizing and ignoring anybody who knows anything about anything.

So there you go, Bush critics. Don't you feel small?

Look What You Can Make From A Sow's Ear!

Imagine a football game, three seconds left, the team with possession trails by five points, they're on their own forty yard line... What do they do? Even people who aren't acquainted with football knows what comes next - the "Hail Mary pass". So imagine the next day you open the sports page and read something like this:

If the abysmal performance of his team through most of the season represents a massive stain on the coach's record, his decision to call for a "Hail Mary pass" now looks like his finest hour. Given the mood in the stadium and the team's fan base as a whole, it would have been far easier to do the opposite. Politically, the coach took the path of most resistance. He endured an avalanche of scorn, and now he has been vindicated. He was not only right; he was courageous.

You would recognize that for what it is: horse puckey. The coach's only other choice was to admit defeat. So how is this different:

But if Iraq overall represents a massive stain on Bush's record, his decision to increase America's troop presence in late 2006 now looks like his finest hour. Given the mood in Washington and the country as a whole, it would have been far easier to do the opposite. Politically, Bush took the path of most resistance. He endured an avalanche of scorn, and now he has been vindicated. He was not only right; he was courageous.

There's no courage in throwing a Hail Mary. It's an act of desperation. In Bush's case, given the choice between admitting his failures and making a desperate last effort to redeem himself, there was never a chance that he would go on camera and tell the American people, honestly and candidly, of the mess he made and the odds against success.

Like William Kristol, Peter Beinart points to the Anbar Awakening as evidence of the success of the surge, despite the fact that it preceded the surge. At least Beinart adds this:

Is the surge solely responsible for the turnaround? Of course not. Al-Qaeda alienated the Sunni tribes; Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army decided to stand down; the United States assassinated key insurgent and militia leaders, all of which mattered as much if not more than the increase in U.S. troops. And the decline in violence isn't necessarily permanent. Iraq watchers warn that communal distrust remains high; if someone strikes a match, civil war could again rage out of control.

In other words, we're judging the surge solely by the question of whether it has been a military success. We're attributing successes to the surge that are, in fact, wholly or partially attributable to other factors or changes in strategy. And we're completely ignoring G.W.'s own criteria for whether or not the surge is a success - political progress, made possible by a reduction in violence.

The surge has been a success militarily, but it has not accomplished its goals. To quote, you know, the President:

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution.

By what measure beyond the military - something the President told us up-front was an inadequate measure - is the Surge a success?

To me, when the surge was announced, the largest questions were "is it big enough to suppress the violence", and "is it too little, too late?" On the first question, the answer appears to be that in the full context of Iraq - other changes in leadership and strategy, the Anbar Awakening, physical separation of warring sects, etc. - it was sufficient in size to help reduce and control violence. But I can't applaud Bush as having formed a great or brave strategy in sending what a potentially insufficient number of troops as he had no real choice - our armed forces are overextended, and many are concerned that our commitments in Iraq have jeopardized our progress and chances of success in Afghanistan. As for the political progress that Bush told us is the true measure of success.... Well, let's let's revisit Beinart's answer:

Iraq watchers warn that communal distrust remains high; if someone strikes a match, civil war could again rage out of control.

Ouch. I'm happy to agree with General Petraeus, that the surge has helped suppress violence and create opportunity for political progress. But unless and until that political progress occurs, it's premature to call the surge a success.

Here, Beinart's every bit the football fan, judging decisions not by the thought or strategy that went into them, but by the final score. He has concluded that the surge worked, so everybody should judge it by the outcome, admit that G.W. showed good judgment and that it was a great success. But at the same time he suggests that "Iraq overall represents a massive stain on Bush's record". If five, ten, twenty, fifty years from now Iraq is a peaceful, progressive democracy, based on the same kind of outcome-driven measure, is Beinart going to be telling us that the decision to invade Iraq "now looks like his finest hour"?

Citing Scripture

In terms of the invidious citing, distorting, and fabricating scripture to justify the unjustifiable, this remains "right up there":

In Gaza a few years ago, I conducted an on-camera interview with the political leader of Islamic Jihad, Mohammed al-Hindi. With his finely trimmed beard and gracious manners, he symbolized the modern - and moderate - Muslim man.

But his interpretation of the Koran suggested something else. "Where," I asked, "does it say that you can kill yourself for a higher cause? As far as I know, the Koran tells us that suicide is wrong."

Through his translator, the physician assured me that the verses endorsing suicide operations could be found "everywhere" in Islam's holy book. I challenged Dr. al-Hindi to show me just one passage.

After several minutes of reviewing the Koran, then calling for help on his mobile, then looking through companion booklets, he told me he was too busy and must go. "Are you sure you're not pulling a fast one on me?" I asked. He smiled, clearly understanding popular American lingo. "I want to know that you're telling me the truth," I repeated.

The essay continues exactly as you should expect, but not from reading the popular media, listening to western political leaders, or listening to most religious leaders.

Of course, most people - not just Muslims - could use more independent thinking. This point grabbed me at the Gaza office of Mohammed al-Hindi. As we left, I asked his translator why Dr. al-Hindi would give me an on-camera interview, knowing that he could not find a single verse to prove his claim that the Koran justifies suicide operations.

The translator replied: "He assumed you were just another dumb Western journalist." Reporters from the West had never asked this veteran terrorist the most basic of questions: Where is the evidence for what you do in God's name?

It's widespread, abject, unforgivable ignorance that leads dolts like George W. Bush to glorify suicide bomers as "homicide bombers", "jihadists" or "Islamofascists", rather than emphasizing their suicides and the distance between their actions and Islam.

Oh, Spare Me....

Richard Cohen is amazed that G.W. Bush is an avid reader. And he knows, for a fact that Bush is an avid reader because... Karl Rove told him. Seriously.

Still, the fact remains that Bush is a prodigious, industrial reader, and this does not conform at all to his critics' idea of who he is. They would prefer seeing him as a dolt, since that, as opposed to policy or ideological differences, is a briefer, more bloggish explanation of what went wrong. Still, in fairness to these critics (see Rove above), Bush himself has encouraged this approach. Aw shucks is an infuriating defense of a policy.

And Cohen knows this because he read what Bush critics have to say, or because that's what Karl Rove told him about Bush's critics?

Governing Like Bush?

Michael Gerson's the latest to pen an "OMG! He's Just Like Bush!" column about Barack Obama - the type of column that suggests that his only sources of information about Obama are party memos and McCain's campaign ads.

Conservatives have generally feared that Obama is a closet radical. He has uniformly voted with liberal interests and done nothing to justify a reputation for centrism.

Until now.

Because there is no evidence that Obama is a cautious politician with a history of working from consensus and not making waves. Oh, wait. I guess there is plenty of evidence if you base your analysis of Obama's record on, you know, his record. I believe Larison overstates his case in respect to the implications of this:

Most people in the broad “middle” seem to be relieved by Obama’s moves in the last few weeks, so I have to conclude that they don’t have much of a problem with conventional Washington thinking, either. The majority is not just getting the government they deserve, but apparently it is also the government they want. When it fails them, as it is going to do, I don’t want to hear them complaining about the problems of the status quo.

Our system is constructed to impede radical change. If you want disappointment, elect your ideological hero in the form of a Dennis Kucinich or a Ron Paul, and see how his agenda for reform never even gets out of the starting blocks. But that aside, it's always been readily apparent that Obama's far from being the socialist revolutionary the McCain campaign, and portions of the right-wing punditocracy, attempted to argue. But back to Gerson:

Obama's appointments reveal not just moderation but maturity - magnanimity to past opponents, a concern for continuity in a time of war and economic crisis, a self-confidence that allows him to fill gaps in his own experience with outsize personalities, and a serious commitment to incarnate his rhetoric of unity.

Again, which part of this wasn't apparent from Obama's record?

Obama is benefiting from being the only player on the stage - all his pretensions of moderation could be quickly undermined by a liberal Congress, unhinged by its expanded majority. And Obama's social liberalism could still turn Washington into a culture-war battlefield.

I suspect that Gerson means this as a caution, or as a distinction from G.W. - But if you look at the history of G.W.'s administration, perhaps instead he's warning us that Obama's first term could look like G.W.'s administration, during his first eight months and starting again with his reelection, where his popularity plummeted and he ran both his administration and (with their active complicity) his party into the ground.

Though Obama's campaign savaged the administration as incompetent and radical, Obama's personnel decisions have effectively ratified Bush's defense and economic approaches during the past few years. At the Pentagon, Obama rehired the architects of President Bush's current military strategy - Gates, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Raymond Odierno. At the Treasury Department, Obama has hired one of the main architects of Bush's current economic approach.

This continuity does not make Obama an ideological traitor. It indicates that Bush has been pursuing centrist, bipartisan policies - without getting much bipartisan support.

Good grief, does Gerson pay attention to anything? When Obama launched his campaign, we were told of the superiority of Bush's war policy, and that Obama's call for ending the war and fixing a date for withdrawal of the troops was defeatism that would reward terrorists. Around that same time, Bush brought in Gates to replace the disastrous leadership of Donald Rumsfeld and within months "every single one of the top commanders running the war ha[d] been replaced." Bush has since negotiated a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. That is, in the face of significant public opposition to his war and his policies, Bush shifted his position from his prior (failed) partisan policies to something to what he would formerly have described as letting the terrorists win.

Gates was appointed by the Senate in a 95-2 vote. When Bush started moving from partisanship toward the positions shared by the majority of Congress and the majority of the American people, he got plenty of support. It isn't Obama who has shifted on these issues - it's Bush.

In terms of treasury, Gerson is apparently talking about Timothy Geithner. There's good reason to believe that Geithner has worked with Henry Paulson to fashion the response to the present crisis in the financial industry, but... you know, funny thing, you would expect the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to be involved in this sort of crisis. Although I am not at all impressed with Paulson's inconsistent approach to this crisis, or his tendency to indiscriminately and unconditionally throw money at banks while refusing to hold bank executives responsible for their incompetence, he's clearly been given a lot of discretion to respond to this crisis. To some degree you have to credit Bush with giving him that discretion, but Bush's desperation is hardly reflective of centrist policy. In normal times, the political center would be horrified by what Paulson has been doing - actually, it's hard to imagine any segment of the political spectrum that wouldn't be horrified. So again, this is a horrible example of Bush's supposed centrism.

Particularly on the economy, Bush has never been a libertarian; he has always matched a commitment to free markets with a willingness to intervene when markets stumble.

I'm not sure what Bush has been "on the economy", other than a failure by the measure of the political left, political right, job market, stock market, housing market.... But I'll grant, he's no libertarian.

Third, Obama is finding the limits of leading a "movement" that never had much ideological content.

This notion of a "movement" seems to emerge from two separate phenomena - the fact that some individuals and loose-knit groups projected their own political goals onto Obama (as, frankly, happens with pretty much any new, charismatic political leader who builds a coalition sufficient to win a national election), and the caricature advanced by people like Gerson. But you know, there's one person whom I've not once heard speak of Obama as a leader of a cohesive "movement" - Barack Obama. And there's a guy who has been willing to disappoint large groups of his supporters on issues such as Iraq policy and FISA, even before he was elected. (Can Gerson guess his name?) But then, Gerson was apparently taken surprise that Obama reappointed Gates, despite, you know, Obama promising to reach across the aisle when composing his cabinet.

Reappointing Gates is also politically savvy, as it makes it harder for Republicans to blame Obama if the Iraq phase-down goes poorly. But whatever Obama's motivations, take a step back and think about what it means for Gates to be accepting this reappointment. He had the alternative of cashing in, big time with a book deal, private sector jobs... think Cheney at Halliburton. It's a testament to his character that he's continuing in the job, and a testament to Obama that he's again willing to disappoint supporters who wanted a clean break from past war policy in order to retain somebody who may in fact be the best available choice for the job. So with regard to Gates, although my reasoning is different, I'll accede to Gerson's conclusion - That's centrism we can believe in.

As for Gerson's having his hopes raised by Obama's "disappointing the ideologues", he may be onto something. After all, had Bush been more willing to stand up to factions exemplified by PNAC, the Club for Growth, the domestic energy industry, etc., his administration might not have been such a miserable failure.

It Was Only Eight Years Ago....

That, as G.W. Bush became President Elect of the United States, I commented that he was inheriting a gloomy financial picture and that I didn't envy anybody who was taking over as President, and wondered if either candidate could have looked forward to more than a single term presidency. And from day one until the day history took over, G.W. seemed intent to prove me right.

Looking back, it's amazing how good things were - exceptionally good - as contrasted with the gaping chasm left for Obama by the Bush Administration. Is there anything Bush touched that didn't turn to, um, lead?

Put the audacity on hold - it is time to hope, but perhaps more modestly, that we've reached a point where there's nowhere to go but up. I don't actually believe that - things could get much worse - so I guess that's where the hope comes in.

The Decency of "Writing A Check"....

With somebody else's money?

In advancing the notion of George W. Bush's "decency", Michael Gerson first goes off on a tangent, arguing that our nation's judgment of George W. Bush is unfair because "Iraq is on the verge of a miraculous peace". This, he argues, is because George Bush showed "Truman-like stubbornness" and "pushed to escalate a war that most Americans" had abandoned. Some of Gerson's observations about Bush make sense - Bush is by all appearances pathologically stubborn, and the same stubbornness that got us into Iraq (with no exit plan) has kept us there through the worst of his incompetence and into the present.

It's possible that the roses Bush promised us by the end of 2007 (or at least a couple of them) actually will start to bloom in 2009. Gerson states only that "the decision to pursue the surge in Iraq will be studied as a model of presidential leadership"; well, perhaps as a study of what can happen when failed leadership leaves a President, too vain and stubborn to admit to a mistake, with no other options. But what does any of that have to do with "decency"? Maybe nothing.

Gerson changes the subject:

Because of the passage of Medicare Part D, nearly 10 million low-income seniors are receiving prescription drugs at little or no cost. No Child Left Behind education reform has helped raise the average reading scores of fourth-graders to their highest level in 15 years, and narrowed the achievement gap between white and African American children.

So Bush, the man who ballyhooed the Texas "patient bill of rights" during his 1999 campaign, and then did his best to kill it and anything like it when he became President, is "decent" because he ushered in a new prescription drug benefit? And because standardized tests show a narrowing of an achievement gap between nine-year-olds of various races? You know, as much as I favor helping sick, elderly people, and helping kids succeed in school, I'm not yet feeling overwhelmed by this argument.

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has helped provide treatment for more than 1.7 million people and compassionate care for at least 2.7 million orphans and vulnerable children.

Yet all that "decency" didn't stop Bush from mandating that 1/3 of this AIDS prevention funding be directed toward absolutely useless "abstinence only education", or barring its use for needle exchanges. But Gerson tells us, the true mark of Bush's decency was in funding an initiative to fight malaria:

Before the Group of Eight summit in 2005, the White House senior staff overwhelmingly opposed a new initiative to fight malaria in Africa for reasons of cost and ideology - a measure designed to save hundreds of thousands of lives, mainly of children under 5. In the crucial policy meeting, one person supported it: the president of the United States, shutting off debate with a moral certitude that others have criticized.

And this brings me back to my initial observation. Gerson's greatest illustrations of Bush's decency, his efforts to fight AIDS and Malaria in Africa, involve his writing checks. With other people's money. Gerson tells us,

I saw how [Bush's] moral framework led him to an immediate identification with the dying African child, the Chinese dissident, the Sudanese former slave, the Burmese women's advocate.

Or maybe Gerson saw an heir who, hit with a sad story, was happy to support a charitable cause by writing a big check... from daddy's bankbook. Because what has Bush ever done for any African child, Chinese dissident, Sudanese former slave, or Burmese woman's advocate other than shake his head sadly and cut a check that somebody else pays for?

If Gerson lets me write checks to charities from his bankbook, I'll be happy to show him how decent I am, right down to his last penny. Like Bush, I'll pick causes that truly touch my heart, I'll be very sincere as I cut those checks, and I'll revel in Gerson's assurance that I have demonstrated my decency. But by my measure it would mean more if I used my own money, and perhaps even committed some time and effort.

"My First 100 Days Start Today"

Whoever wins tomorrow, I want to hear more than an acceptance speech. I want to hear the President Elect explain that he recognizes the gravity of the problems our country faces, and that he's assembling a team that is going to be working hard over the next two months to put together policy proposals and draft legislation that can be quickly introduced, debated, and enacted after January 20. I want to hear that congressional leaders from both parties will be consulted and kept informed so that nobody can claim surprise and so that, if they wish, their parties can contribute to the effort or prepare their own proposals.

Let's stop G.W.'s slow train wreck, and get things back on track as quickly as possible.

You Play The Hand You're Dealt

This comment, from a venture capitalist, is pretty typical following... well, pretty much any election:

I think Obama has the election pretty wrapped up absent a major external event. I think my parents might vote for him. They are army people, lifelong republicans, who are in their late 70s/early 80s. But if they vote for Obama, they are not really voting for him, they are voting against the GOP and what is has become and what it has done to this country. Obama's mandate, if he wins, will be thin and he should not overplay it. He must win these skeptics who held their nose and voted for him if he wants to govern with a real mandate. And that won't be easy and he must govern from the far center which is where our country really is right now. And I think he can and will do that.

If you recall how G.W. overplayed his hand following the 2004 election ("I earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.") this might appear to be common sense. G.W. was narrowly elected, didn't have great public support for the changes he wished to press, and his initiatives failed. Something similar might be said about Bill Clinton's first couple of years, where he was stymied by his own party.

But in both cases, was the problem that they didn't have a strong enough mandate? Or that they overplayed their hands? Bill Clinton probably anticipated greater support from his own party - in retrospect he should have worked to build that consensus, or in its absence to at least build a popular consensus for his initiatives, before he tried to push them through. G.W. wanted to reinvent Social Security, proposing "reforms" that were supported more in theory than in practice within his party and which were viewed skeptically by the public. Like Clinton, and in contrast to the party unity of his first four years in office, he suffered a breakdown in party discipline that made it impossible for him to advance his proposals. After that, his continuing efforts to advance his "reform" agenda eroded his public support.

Don't underestimate G.W.'s tactics merely because they failed. He managed to cram through a great many controversial initiatives during his first two years in office, most of which were treated as minor issues or non-issues by the time the 2004 election rolled around. Saving "Social Security reform" for his second term reflects the greater political risk involved. But the Republicans had the sense to know that initiatives that pass more than two years before an election generally won't be big issues when the election finally comes. News coverage will dwindle, pundits will move on to other issues, voter anger will subside, and in all likelihood the election will turn on other issues.

To advance his agenda, the new President, Obama or McCain, should evaluate his position: What initiatives are likely to be well-received in Congress, by the public, or both? What important initiatives might pass with some finessing of Congress, the public, or both? What initiatives are likely to fail? He can build a first term agenda based upon that analysis.

But what he shouldn't do is worry about whether three or four years later a particular set of swing voters will be offended that he carried out his promises, when they had secretly hoped he would not. Really, what's the advice here? "Wait four years to see if you get a bigger mandate"? Absent catastrophe a President probably has only one chance to be transformative - and that chance most likely comes (and goes) in the first half of the first term. No, certainly, the newly elected President won't want to overplay his hand - but if he wants to change the country in any meaningful way he needs to play his hand for all it's worth.

About That Legacy....

Just a few weeks ago, some were still arguing that historians might eventually hold G.W. in high regard.

Does anybody still believe that?

Faith-Based Economics

They say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. If that's the case, Michael Gerson's definitely not on the side of the angels:

A sitting president normally must accept the boring constraints of real-world choices. Campaigns can inhabit the utopia of their own ambitions.

But it is President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, by proposing the massive government purchase of bad debt, who have assumed the mantle of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is John McCain and Barack Obama who are playing the role of Roosevelt's more timid, forgotten foils, "Martin, Barton and Fish."

He hearkens to His Master's Voice, but the best defense he can come up with is, "Bush is the new FDR"? That's the sort of comparison a wag might drop on a Bush supporter right as he takes a sip of his cocktail, with the hope of seeing it spray from his nose. I actually think Gerson is being sincere in this comparison, perhaps because he sees the Great Society programs as compassionate conservatism in action. But is there any rational basis for this parallel, other than "This is potentially a really big, really bad financial crisis?"

Gerson's argument boils down to, "Bush has an idea! Yet McCain wants to step back and see the big picture before acting, and Obama is being cautious." Is Bush's proposal any good? Well, it's from Bush and it's "massive", and apparently that's all Gerson needs to know. (What would Gerson say to those who argue that FDR's fiscal policy was unwise and prolonged the depression?)

We might ask Gerson, "How have things worked out when we blindly followed Bush's other 'big ideas'", but I suspect Gerson would actually tell us, "Everything turned out great!" So of course we should turn over almost a trillion dollars, forbid any judicial or legislative oversight, and... hope things turned out as well as they did in hunting down Bin Laden... Iraq... New Orleans... (Or is it that he wants us to "double down" on the assumption that no President can have a losing streak this long without eventually getting something right, with this being Bush's last card.)

Full of Mavericky Goodness....

Maverick (n) - someone who exhibits great independence in thought and action.

It seemed that, once upon a time, being a maverick meant standing up to your own political party, doing what you think is right.

Now it seems to be an excuse for any bad decision somebody makes, or a cover for obvious pandering.

The last choice I recall that was as "mavericky" as McCain's selection of Palin? G.W.'s nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. And no, I'm not saying that Harriet Miers wasn't qualified for the job - just that she was picked for reasons unrelated to her qualification and without any regard for whether she was the best possible choice.

So I guess this means that McCain is a maverick - just like Bush.

Agreeing With David Frum....

Because, unsurprising, he didn't think things through:

George W. Bush's political opponents will surely revile him long after he's gone. But you can be sure of this: Just as the Bush presidency led Democrats to express an unexpected nostalgia for Ronald Reagan, the next Republican president can expect to hear from pundits and academics alike that he falls far short of the high standard set by the last one."

Absolutely, George W. Bush made the previous Republican President, George H.W. Bush, look like a genius.

Looking good in comparison to a disastrously incompetent President doesn't make you a great President - George H.W. Bush was adequate. But boy, does he look good by comparison. If the next Republican President makes us nostalgic for G.W., he would have to be a catastrophic disaster.

Georgia On My Mind

My initial reactions are pretty much in line with Dan Froomkin:

Back in 2005, speaking before a crowd of more than 150,000 exuberant Georgians cheering "Bushi! Bushi!", President Bush made a promise to the people of that former Soviet republic: "The path of freedom you have chosen is not easy, but you will not travel it alone. Americans respect your courageous choice for liberty. And as you build a free and democratic Georgia, the American people will stand with you."

So where was Bush as Russia launched a major military attack against Georgia? Monkeying around with the U.S. women's volleyball players - and otherwise amusing himself at the Beijing Olympics.

This is not to suggest that Bush should have sent in the Marines. But his impotence in the face of such a gravely destabilizing move highlights not only his personal loss of stature, but how deeply he has diminished American authority on the world stage generally and, particularly, in the eyes of Russia.

and Josh Marshall, including the thought that those who essentially want us to go to war with Russia are insane. I am still wondering, did Saakashvili truly believe that the U.S. would back him up militarily? Because if he didn't, it's hard to make any sense of his decisions and tactics.

For more detailed perspectives on this conflict, check in with Eunomia or LGM. (Even if you don't agree with all the conclusions, you'll learn something.) Via lies.com, there's also this excited analysis of the conflict in the voice of a fictional "war-nerd". And there's this news roundup from more traditional sources.

Batman and the Conservative Movie List

In his much ridiculed editorial in which he gushingly compares G.W. to Batman, Andrew Klavan endorses a set of movies as representing "conservative values".

"The Dark Knight," then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror -- films like "In The Valley of Elah," "Rendition" and "Redacted" -- which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.

Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense -- values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right -- only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like "300," "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia," "Spiderman 3" and now "The Dark Knight"?

Now if he spent some time actually thinking about things, he might realize that movies that come across as preachy and condescending frequently stumble at the box office. Politics are beside the point. He might also recall the adulatory reviews given by the likes of Charles Krauthammer and William F. Buckley Jr. to "Master and Commander", a movie surprisingly void of such conservative film icons as scantily clad Spartans or men wearing masks and tights. And it might occur to him that Hollywood films with huge special effects budgets often succeed despite a lack of overall merit. His inability to find any conservative themes in successful live action films suggests either that he has a poor overall concept of conservatism, or that he doesn't get out of the house much. He's apparently also missed the wild success of Wall-E, despite the contention of various self-described conservatives that it's left-wing propaganda.

(A small caution - I'm going to reveal some plot elements for the listed films so, if you haven't yet seen them and intend to do so, proceed with caution.)

The bigger problem with Klavan's analysis is not just that he's wrong about conservatism only being depicted in adaptations of children's stories and comic books. It's his vision of conservatism as exemplified by Batman engaged in a Manichean battle against absolute evil, and projecting that comic book universe onto the real world. If that's not silly enough, even within Batman's simplified universe, Klavan sees no nuance nor does he have any sense of Batman's internal struggle. This is perhaps exemplified by Klavan's similarly child-like take on the other films he lists as emblematic of conservatism.

Let's start with Narnia and Lord of the Rings, films set in a mystical, magical world. Why, to someone like Klavan, are these films "conservative"? Is it because they're materially different from the story lines of, say, the Harry Potter films? Or is it because the authors wove Christian theology into their texts? Obviously, the latter. So is Klavan arguing that any movie that attempts to teach religion is "conservative" in nature, or is he instead arguing that any film that arguably advances Christianity, preferably Christianity locked in a literal battle against the forces of absolute evil, is "conservative"? By all appearances it's the latter.

Klavan also seems to believe that this is the first time that Narnia or Lord of the Rings have been adapted to the screen. Hardly. The films he adores represent the first time they were adapted as big budget films using cutting edge special effects. Just as Klavan doesn't mind if messages he deems "conservative" are lost in all that high tech eye candy, a lot of audience members don't mind if those same themes (or themes that Klavan might describe as liberal, even within those same films) appear somewhere alongside or behind all that eye candy. If Klavan truly cared about the themes, for example, he would be advocating one of the earlier, more literal and less splashy adaptations of Narnia. Or, if you can imagine, even telling people to "read the books".

Given his conflation of conservatism with Christianity, it is interesting to see Klavan include 300 in his list of "conservative" films. Of course, 300 plays it safe - Leonidas is depicted as being in contempt of the priests, and the uncomfortable details of Spartan life are carefully elided from the depiction. That gives Klavan a sufficiently sanitized Sparta, in which he again perceives a battle of absolute good against absolute evil. If he were even slightly predisposed to do so, this enables him to avoid having to stop and think, "Other than it's extraordinary militarism, what is it about Sparta that I see as representing 'conservative' values?"

In his comic book universe, Klavan also doesn't need to consider the other side of the coin. He sees Leonidas as the representation of all that is good in the world, fighting to the death against a much stronger enemy in order to protect his way of life. But the film can be viewed another way - with the preening Xerxes, taking up a military campaign left unfinished by his father and confusing his own will with the will of God, leads his forces on a mission to defeat an enemy that it overwhelms in terms of power, money, and resources, but due to bad planning and bad strategy suffers significant embarrassment and unnecessary casualties before correcting his initial bad strategy. Meanwhile, Leonidas fights to preserve a religion and way of life that Klavan would, to put it mildly, find distasteful in practice - although given his apparent propensities, Klavan might not mind the monarchal power structure. What's the conservative message, again?

But Klavan's superhero comic book brand of "conservatism" isn't sufficiently reflective to see the other interpretation. He sees the world in comic book terms of good against evil, and when you're "good" there's nothing you can do that isn't justified in the fight against "evil". Truly, Klavan sees the enemies of America is Orc-like beings who don't know that "that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry". If you're "evil" there's no need to worry about collateral damage - when you're battling Mordor, everybody on the other side is fair game. Obliterating the entire enemy civilization is not only justified, it's the right thing to do.

In describing conservatism, Klavan writes,

Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They're wrong, of course, even on their own terms.

This, of course, is a classic dodge - a caricatured view, attributed to an amorphous "they". Does it matter that no actual "leftist" can be produced who has ever said such a thing? What Klavan mischaracterizes is the position taken by people who, unlike him, don't see the real world through the paradigm of a comic book. People who recognize that the real world doesn't break down, as Klavan and other simple minds want to believe, into absolute good and absolute evil. There lies the nuance. And of course, there lies one of Klavan's other "conservative" films, "Spiderman 3".

In Spiderman 3, Peter Parker encounters, oh, let's call it "space goo". The "space goo" is transformative - with it, Peter Parker is faster, stronger, more confident, more capable, and happier, but also angrier, increasingly ruthless and at risk of losing himself. He has a climactic battle with the space goo, but it's a visual manifestation of an internal struggle - what is the price of power, and who does he want to be? This struggle is depicted alongside the culmination of another story line - Parker's lust for revenge against the man who killed his uncle. In the first film, Parker's nascent powers led to his setting off a series of events that led to his uncle's death, and in turn engaging in a confrontation with the man he believed to have killed his uncle, leading to that man's death. But in this film he realizes that a different man, who along the way has been transformed into the Sandman, is the actual killer.

When under the influence of the "space goo", Parker confronts Sandman and, after a dramatic battle, appears to drown him. But the Sandman is able to reconstitute himself for the final battle sequence. Parker, freed of the influence of the space goo, learns the details of the death of his uncle - that the killing was not a remorseless act of cruelty, but was an accidental act by a tormented man. Parker forgives him.

So you'll have to excuse me, but I'm at something of a loss as to how Klavan saw that film and missed all of the internal struggle and nuance. How he missed Parker's recognition that something he had seen for years as an act of absolute evil was, in fact, something that could be understood and forgiven. He didn't hear the filmmaker's frequent voiceover of the word's of Parker's uncle, "With great power comes great responsibility." But then, Klavan is exceptionally confused as to what it means to hold a moral view in which there is no nuance:

And when our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values;¹ and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes, true heroes often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised -- then and only then will we be able to pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror.

I am left wondering, does Klavan see Cruel to be Kind as a conservative anthem? He truly sees no nuance in the idea that you must at times violate your own moral code in order to preserve your values, or fight wars in order to preserve peace? Or, is it more accurate to say, he isn't being honest about it, probably not with himself and certainly not with his readers. Klavan's simplicity only serves to highlight something else he has overlooked in his "conservative" films - at least the better of them - they ask that members of their audience consider not only the circumstances under which you might be tempted to violate your moral code, but also the price of violating that code.

That, of course, brings us to the final of Klavan's examples, "The Dark Knight". In films that don't meet his measure of "conservatism", Klavan tells us,

The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films, suddenly [morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right] vanish. The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us.

Perhaps that's why "Batman Begins" didn't make his list - with Bruce Wayne joining the League of Shadows under the tutelage of Ra's Al Ghul, until he learns that Al Ghul plans to end Gotham City's decadence and corruption by destroying it, whereas Wayne still sees the city as being valuable and full of good people who are worth saving. In a flash, Wayne's mentor and ally becomes a villain. Their common cause, to rid the world of decadence and crime, gets tangled up in Wayne's beliefs that the ends don't always justify the means. Transposing this into the real world, the implication is that Al Ghul would have happily razed Falluajah, while Batman would have sought to root out the bad guys while saving the city and protecting innocents.

Similarly, where Klavan apparently sees the latest Batman film as vindicating torture and mistreatment of prisoners, he has apparently disregarded the substance of the three scenes where prisoners are confronted with violence. First, the noble Harvey Dent is pushed to the point that he's going to try to beat information out of a suspect. Batman stops him and lectures him, not only because the suspect is mentally ill and is unlikely to have any useful information, but also because of what it would mean for Dent if his actions became known - he would lose his moral high ground, his prosecutions would collapse, criminals would go free. This, of course, creates a context and a contrast for the second sequence - Batman in control versus Batman out of control.

That second sequence involves a literal ticking time bomb scenario, where The Joker taunts and provokes Batman. Batman takes the bait and pays a price - The Joker is manipulating him into running down the clock to the point where he must choose which of two friends to save. The third again involves The Joker, this time manipulating the police officer who is guarding him into a physical attack. That ends with The Joker taking the officer hostage, resulting both in immediate catastrophe and his escape to wreak even more havoc on the city.

Looking at these three sequences, the first could be compared to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, often for little to no intelligence gain, at the expense of the U.S. moral high ground. The second impeaches conservative's favorite "what if" torture scenario - the "ticking time bomb". The third illustrates how giving in to your baser instincts, no matter how badly your target deserves it, may not only backfire - it may be exactly what your target wants you to do. Which of those three scenes is the endorsement of President Bush that Klavan imagines? And at the end of the film, when Batman takes the fall for somebody else's bad acts in order to preserve the integrity of the government, what's the parallel in the Bush Administration? Whenever scandal has stricken, the Bush Administration's spine degenerates into Jello, and every effort is made to place the blame on the smallest, least significant of actors.

Let's not fail to address the portion of the film that Klavan-style "conservatives" most see as vindication - Batman's transformation of the city's cellular phones into sonar devices that allow him to see and hear pretty much everything that is happening anywhere in the city. This is compared to the Bush Administration's illegal surveillance practices.

Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

That assumes something not in evidence - that Bush has or ever had any wish to "re-establish" the former boundaries of the law, rather than establishing a permanent surveillance society. It also assumes that, despite his open contempt for the constitutional limits on his office, we owe Bush that type of benefit of the doubt. But what makes this example more interesting is that, contrary to the prisoner abuse sequences, this high tech surveillance tool works. Batman is able to locate The Joker and save the lives of some hostages. But unlike G.W. or defenders like Klavan, Batman doesn't attempt to reinvent his means - he recognizes that he is acting outside the law, a vigilante.² He doesn't trust himself with his surveillance tools, placing them into the hands of the morally upright Lucius Fox and ensuring their destruction upon the capture of The Joker. Is it that this intense surveillance would have no further utility in fighting crime, or defeating more conventional crime bosses or lesser "super villains"? Hardly.

Instead we are brought back to "Batman Begins", with a narrative from Alfred about a criminal in Burma who cared nothing about profit, but simply wanted to sow chaos and watch the world burn. How did they stop him? They burned the forest. The Ra's Al Ghul solution. Given the choice between the unacceptable, "burning" Gotham City, and a massive invasion of its citizens' privacy, Batman chose the latter. Within this framework, Lucius Fox and pretty much everybody in the audience was on board - between the urgency of the situation and the checks and balances Batman imposed upon himself, and its depiction as being used solely for a narrow, focused search for The Joker, I doubt that anybody in the audience was thinking, "No, turn that horrible machine off and preserve the people's privacy." But at the end of the day, Batman did not embrace the Bush Administration's desire for unlimited, unchecked surveillance of innocent civilians, and he again rejected the concept of "burning the forest". Batman's world view is vindicated - in Batman's world, given the opportunity, even a literal boat load of hardened criminals will "do the right thing".

What's really going on in Batman? The creator of the film is taking some questions raised by the real world and presenting them in a manner that appears intended to challenge the audience. When is the unjustifiable justified? What is the line that should never be crossed? When Batman saves The Joker, the filmmaker is playing to that part of each audience member that would rather see him plummet to his death. But that's one of the lines Batman won't cross, and it's a line the Joker sees (and exploits) as a weakness.

Whatever your political alignment, if you recognize the questions posed by the film and fail to see their ambiguity, you've missed the point. Can you listen to Bruce Wayne's opinions on government and the type of men it needs, yet retain the delusion that he would vote for Bush? Klavan mocks movie stars who "strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes", but apparently has forgotten Bush's infamous "mission accomplished" dress-up day.

But then, even at the comic book level, if you have more than a passing familiarity with characters like Spiderman and Batman and fail to see their inherent duality - the internal struggles that goes along with their external battles - you never really had a chance of picking up on the larger themes.³
__________
1. This is a philosophy Klavan apparently views as consistent with Christian values.

2. There's an earlier sequence that works largely in parallel with the surveillance theme, in which Batman bypasses law, diplomacy and extradition treaties in order to pluck a criminal out of China and deposit him in Gotham City for the police to prosecute. That's perhaps the least nuanced depiction of Batman's vigilantism, being presented primarily to foreshadow the later surveillance sequences and to give us some action and splashy special effects.

3. You might also argue that it should be impossible to miss themes of duality in a film that depicts the transformation of the city's brightest light into the villain, Two-Face. But in fairness, Klavan may know he's spouting nonsense, but may be simply trying to draw attention to himself in order to promote his next book.

What A [Bleeping] Joker

The dumbest columnist in America, after letting us know that he was right there, helping G.W. Bush get coronated as the Republican nominee back in 2000, has the audacity to tell us,

But it is hard to avoid the feeling that Obama has gained the nomination without fully earning it. Unlike Clinton or Bush, his intellectual contributions have been slight. The wave he rides may take him far - but he is not determining its direction.

Now granted, when you're as overtly stupid as Michael Gerson, G.W. may look like an intellectual giant. But wake up, Michael. The fact that G.W. gave lip service to "compassionate conservatism", and made a few nodding gestures in that direction during his first term, neither constitutes an "intellectual contribution" nor even evidences that G.W. was actually a "compassionate conservative". He should have known from the way the Bush/Rove machine savaged John McCain in South Carolina that he was working for men without honor, and that any lip service they gave to "compassion" or "honor" would wilt in the face of political opportunism, cronyism, and self-dealing.

Barack Obama came through a grueling, competitive primary season, and won. G.W. Bush was picked as the Republican Party nominee before their primaries even started, his younger brother Jeb (the first choice) having been bypassed due to his having lost his first bid to be governor of Florida. Money rained down on his campaign - it seems funny now, with his popularity in the toilet and political candidates running for cover whenever he appears - but back then G.W. was viewed as an incredibly effective fund-raiser. The Republican Party did its best to squash McCain's campaign, and succeeded. At this time, G.W. had never held a real job. Since that time he has become one of the most vacationed Presidents in history, and is probably the only President who brags about not reading newspapers and going to bed by 10:00 PM - even on days the country is attacked. "Now watch this drive."



Some hero you have there, Michael.

Paradox? What Paradox?

In yet another effort to reinvent "the surge", David Brooks heaps praise on G.W. Bush. Everybody in the world - the Republicans, the Democrats, the generals, the punditocracy - Brooks tells us, was against the surge.

In these circumstances, it’s amazing that George Bush decided on the surge. And looking back, one thing is clear: Every personal trait that led Bush to make a hash of the first years of the war led him to make a successful decision when it came to this crucial call.

Bush is a stubborn man. Well, without that stubbornness, that unwillingness to accept defeat on his watch, he never would have bucked the opposition to the surge.

This is an implicit endorsement of my theory of the surge - not as a calmly reasoned strategy, but as a "Hail Mary" pass. Brooks also glosses over a lot of the criticism of the surge - which was not just that it might be too late, but also that it was too little. The tenuous nature of the pacts that keep sectarian violence relatively low have even General Petraeus worried that violence may again flare up. Meanwhile, there is scant political progress.

The best sound bite Brooks can find suggests scant political progress:

Iraq has moved from being a failed state to, as Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations has put it, merely a fragile one.

If the measure is "statehood", by what measure, other than its having being a state prior to the war, would Iraq satisfy the traditional elements of statehood? If it were a territory arguing for statehood, would we accept that there was effective and independent government control of its entire territory? That it can effectively and independently engage in foreign relations? That it controls its own population? Hardly. The real question is what it will take to transform Iraq into an effective state, even in the absence of U.S. troops. Brooks and Bush have no answer to that, and McCain's best answer to date is to post troops in Iraq indefinitely.

Brooks sneers at opponents of "the surge",

The cocksure war supporters learned this humbling lesson during the dark days of 2006. And now the cocksure surge opponents, drunk on their own vindication, will get to enjoy their season of humility. They have already gone through the stages of intellectual denial. First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good. Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement. Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress. Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home.

So... Brooks is saying that it took him until 2006 to realize that "Bush to make a hash of the first years of the war"? Fair enough. But what about his present attack on those who dare question "the surge"?

• "First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good." - Didn't Brooks just tell us (rather dishonestly) that the only people in the entire world who believed in the Surge were G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and... a whopping six other people? So this attack is aimed at... the other six billion or so people in the world?

• "Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement." - That seems like a fair response to people who lie to you, repudiate G.W. Bush's own benchmarks as being unfair measures of progress, shift the date the surge began so they can attribute pre-surge improvements to "the surge", etc. But people who lie to you never like to be "called out", so I can see why Brooks takes umbrage.

• "Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress." - Right. Fierce opponents of the surge like General Petraeus did exactly that. You know why? Because the surge has resulted primarily in military, not political, progress. Again, examine the Bush Administration's own benchmarks.

• "Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home." - Because the six billion or so people that Brooks tells us opposed the surge think as a monolith? Well, leaving that aside, those presenting rosy scenarios invite the question - if things are going so well, why shouldn't people ask, "When will the troops come home?"

  By the same token, why do the most dogmatic proponents of the surge suggest that our troops may never come home? Why does Bush want fifty-eight permanent military bases in Iraq (up from a claimed "zero" only a few months ago) if he's expecting it to have a stable, successful government at any time in the foreseeable future? To state the obvious, he wouldn't.

Brooks carries on,

But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

Actually, I think the surge highlights the worst of Bush - narcissism, ineffectiveness and cowardice. He was afraid of admitting mistakes, so he threw his "Hail Mary", but as with every other stage of the war he was afraid of the political consequences of committing enough troops for enough time to ensure success. The decrease in violence justifies cautious optimism but, despite his cheerleaders' efforts to point the other way whenever the subject of "political progress" is raised, if political progress is not achieved "the surge" will become yet another entry in Bush's long line of missed opportunities.

Life is complicated. The reason we have democracy is that no one side is right all the time. The only people who are dangerous are those who can’t admit, even to themselves, that obvious fact.

That's rich. Here's Bush admitting his mistakes on Iraq: he made "a miscalculation of what the conditions would be" in post-war Iraq." Why? Because he refused to listen to the experts, including his own generals. Yet Brooks tells us, "Bush was at his worst when he was humbly deferring to the generals and at his best when he was arrogantly overruling them." At this point, Brooks' mistakes are compounding almost as quickly as Bush's; but I see no sign that either is going to admit them.

Hold On A Second There, Fred....

Fred Hiatt, apparenlty being unable to construct an honest defense of his own support for the Iraq war or his paper's editorializing in favor of the war, gives us a scathing attack on... bumper stickers.

Search the Internet for "Bush Lied" products, and you will find sites that offer more than a thousand designs. The basic "Bush Lied, People Died" bumper sticker is only the beginning.

He say's it's only the beginning, but for him it's also the end - he provides no further analysis of the anti-war movement, and pretends that if it cannot be proved that Bush intentionally lied or that he had absolutely no intelligence to back up even his most outlandish claim, his case for war must be seen as fully supported by the available evidence.

In choosing not to look past the "beginning" reflected in a bumper sticker slogan, Hiatt personifies the type of dishonesty we're discussing. Focusing on the most extreme case, representing it as typical, and failing to mention overwhelming contrary data? Some people, quite reasonably, would deem that "lying by omission".

After introducing Rockefeller's conclusion,

"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent," [Rockefeller] said.

Hyatt proceeds to pretend that Rockefeller's own report doesn't support his own description of his own findings. From Hyatt's self-serving synopsis - and yes, his editorial is at least as much about salvaging his own reputation as it is about Bush's - you might think that Rockefeller's report found support in the intelligence for Bush's claims about an Iraq-al-Qaeda partnership, Iraq's supposedly having trained al-Qaeda fighters, or secret meetings between Iraqi intelligence and Muhammad Atta. You might think that the report found that there was support for the Bush Administration's representations about Iraq's chemical weapons production capacity, or underground manufacturing plants. You might believe that the report substantiated Bush's insinuations about an easy, cheap post-war period. To the contrary, the report found that Bush's representations were either unsupported by the available intelligence or did not reflect the uncertainty of the intelligence. And what of the suggestion that Saddam Hussein was prepared to hand WMD's over to terrorists? That was contradicted by the available intelligence. (But supported, contradicted, what's the difference, right?) The report did not explore the work of Bush's White House Iraq Group, which was devoted to spinning intelligence and propagandizing in favor of war.

This degree of deception goes well beyond what Hyatt excuses as speaking "with too much certainty" or failing "to anticipate or prepare the American people for the enormous undertaking in Iraq". Anybody who paid the slightest bit of attention to the build-up of the war could easily see the Bush Administration cherry-picking intelligence in favor of a war that it wanted to launch, whatever the facts or intelligence. They directly attacked anybody who questioned their spin, and dispatched a slate of retired generals to propagandize in favor of war.

Hyatt wants us to pity Bush, whom he paints as having had to decide "when to act on a threat in the inevitable absence of perfect intelligence and how to mobilize popular support for such action, if deemed essential for national security". The problem is, that's not what Bush did, and Hyatt knows it. Bush didn't weigh the intelligence to decide what response to make - he decided what he was going to do, disregarded anything that did not weigh in favor of war on Iraq, stymied efforts to complete weapons inspections and get better evidence, and employed scorched earth tactics against many who dared oppose him.

This was not a contest of good intelligence versus bad - the good intelligence never had a chance. This was a contest of good judgment versus bad, and at the end of the day Hyatt's finger-pointing at the intelligence community cannot overcome the fact that neither he nor President Bush showed good judgment on Iraq.

Mastering Your Demons

Ah, the good old days, which David Brooks told us were all about wrestling with sin:

The concept of maturity has undergone several mutations over the course of American history. In Lincoln’s day, to achieve maturity was to succeed in the conquest of the self. Human beings were born with sin, infected with dark passions and satanic temptations. The transition to adulthood consisted of achieving mastery over them.

You can read commencement addresses from the 19th and early 20th centuries in which the speakers would talk about the beast within and the need for iron character to subdue it. Schoolhouse readers emphasized self-discipline. The whole character-building model was sin-centric

That probably helps explain why, as the sin-centric model of maturity faded from public consciousness, the middle class stagnated and died, American industry failed, the economy collapsed, and... Oh, wait. I got that backwards. But then, this is David Brooks lecturing me about "satanic temptations" - It's unfair of me to pretend that he is being sincere.

Brooks tells us of Lincoln's inner struggle:

In January 1841, Abraham Lincoln seems to have at least vaguely thought of suicide. His friend Joshua Speed found him one day thrashing about in his room. “Lincoln went Crazy,” Speed wrote. “I had to remove razors from his room — take away all Knives and other such dangerous things — it was terrible.”

Lincoln was taking three mercury pills a day, the remedy in those days for people who either suffered from syphilis or feared contracting it. “Lincoln could not eat or sleep,” Daniel Mark Epstein writes in his new book, “The Lincolns.” “He appeared at the statehouse irregularly, hollow-eyed, unshaven, emaciated — an object of pity to his friends and of derision to others.”

Later, Lincoln wrote of that period with shame, saying that he had lost the “gem of my character.” He would withdraw morosely from the world into a sort of catatonic state. Early in his marriage, Epstein writes, “Lincoln had night terrors. He woke in the middle of the night trembling, talking gibberish.”

He would, of course, climb out of it. He would come to terms with his weaknesses, control his passions and achieve what we now call maturity.

Climbing out of that type of madness may have more to do with somebody saying, "Mr. Lincoln, perhaps you should stop taking mercury pills" than it did with clobbering back an inner beast. I'm not sure if David Brooks is aware of this, but mercury is poisonous and mercury poisoning leads to a cluster of symptoms evocative of Lincoln's melancholy - depression, anxiety, insomnia, intestinal problems, tremors, fatigue, fits of anger, loss of weight.... (The expression, "mad as a hatter"? It's about mercury poisoning.)

Let's also be honest here, Brooks did not pick Lincoln for his example because he desires a President who has struggled with and apparently overcome significant mental illness and suicidal impulses. He picked Lincoln because he's Lincoln, as part of his effort to advance the prospects of the so-called "Party of Lincoln." If a Democratic presidential candidate had in his background the type of psychological episode Brooks identifies in Lincoln, Brooks would happily join other right-wing columnists in declaring him unfit to govern. He would not be suggesting that it is somehow a "good thing" that the candidate called his wife "mother". Brooks focuses on ravages of the soul, not ravages of the body, because otherwise he would have to bring up the disease-related struggles of FDR and JFK.

There's also something utterly dishonest in this type of column, that has nothing to do with Brooks' politics. Columns like this are produced on a regular basis, declaring paths to maturity that would somehow make our society better.

In the last few years, we may be shifting toward another vision of maturity, one that is impatient with boomer narcissism. Young people today put service at the center of young adulthood. A child is served, but maturity means serving others.

The greedy, shiftless, ungiving baby boomers, finally being replaced by "young people" devoted to "service"? How nice. But why is it that these calls - mandatory military service, mandatory national service, struggles with inner demons, or even something as soft as a putting "service at the center of young adulthood" - almost always come from people who have never lifted a finger to do the very things they demand of others? And while it's nice for Brooks to part from the standard by claiming that young people now value public service, it should be remembered both that (as usual) this appears to be something Brooks made up on the fly, and also that his primary purpose in this piece is to undermine a presidential candidate who happens to be a boomer.

The column also advances an utter fantasy, that the public at large knew of Lincoln's troubles and voted for him anyway - or perhaps even in larger numbers - due to his successful battle. As if Lincoln ran campaign ads, "I used to take lots of mercury pills and wanted to kill myself, but I'm stronger for the experience. Vote Lincoln." There may well be politicians on the national stage who have struggled with mental illness, and one day we may learn of it through their biographers, but it's not going to be a centerpiece of their campaigns. Brooks' preferred candidate, John McCain, has made a point of contending that, despite six years as a P.O.W., he returned home in exactly the same state of (perfect) psychological health as the day he left. Anger problem? That's a fiction created by his opponents.

Obviously, it’s not fair to compare anybody to Lincoln, but he does illustrate the repertoire of skills we look for in a leader. The central illusion of modern politics is that if only people as virtuous as “us” had power, then things would be better. Candidates get elected by telling people what they want to hear, leading them by using the sugar of their own fantasies.

Because Brooks' entire column does just that, and doesn't invite candidates to lead him by using the sugar of his own fantasies? Did you see how Brooks elided from history the G.W. Bush narrative that he did engage in a struggle of the soul, beat back the demon rum, found God, and became a greater man for his struggle? It's only as Bush is about to leave center stage that Brooks has noticed that Bush in fact remained intellectually incurious¹ and gripped by narcissism?

All this suggests a maxim for us voters: Don’t only look to see which candidate has the most talent. Look for the one most emotionally gripped by his own failings.

Um, yeah. Because you wouldn't want to close with the impression that the whole column is a partisan jab at Obama, this generation's presidential candidate from Illinois.... Let's all vote for the candidate with the least talent!
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1. Brooks actually describes G.W. Bush as displaying "intellectual insecurity". I don't mean to misrepresent Brooks by instead referencing incuriosity, but I have yet to see any evidence that Bush is even slightly consciously insecure about his intellect.