Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor at the National Review, had an article in The New Republic (how novel -- a liberal magazine hosting a conservative opinion, in the name of robust national debate) about why the Democrats' hatred of President Bush is irrational and could be counterproductive. [link] There's a lot to criticize (Ponuru comes across as something of an apologist for Bush), but one paragraph stuck out at me:
For some people, the dislike is personal. It's not the unearned privilege Bush was born into (his detractors don't have anything against the Kennedys). It's that Bush seems to lack the kind of extemporaneous verbal intelligence that is rated highly by people who possess it. (Even his staunchest defenders must admit that it would be nice if Bush spoke in complete sentences.) And it's maddening to his opponents that Bush seems to want to win political victories without winning arguments with his critics and to shift course without ever explaining his thinking.
The last sentence is, to me, telling: it's not just "maddening" when a President "wants to win political victories without winning arguments with his critics" or when he wants "to shift course without ever explaining his thinking." It's also a legitimate target of criticism. The fact is, those are straight-up failures to lead, which is the essence of leadership. The fact that conservatives refuse to acknowledge that -- to the contrary, they extol President Bush's "leadership" -- is simply inexplicable.
Being President is all about leading the country, not ignoring half of it and pushing your own agenda. The thing that conservatives consistently fail to explain is exactly how Bush is being a leader if he changes position without explaining what he's doing or why he's doing it? That's not leading, that's dictating. And what about winning without feeling the need to answer his critics? Isn' that just another way of saying "l'etat, c'est moi"? If you ask me, the thing that infuriates liberals -- which, admittedly, may be poorly articulated -- is not that he does those things, it's that by doing those things, he's telegraphing to liberals that he doesn't care about half the country or what it thinks. He may as well just give us all the finger and be done with it.
As for the 2000 election (which Ponuru discusses elsewhere in his article), I think the liberal criticism is not that he was illegitimately elected -- that ship sailed when the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bush v. Gore -- but rather that a victory in the Electoral College is not the same thing as winning a referendum on your agenda. I'll defend to the limits of my ability that President Bush was legitimately (if unusually) elected to the office of President. But you won't convince me, and it wouldn't be intellectually honest to even argue, that he won a popular mandate for his brand of conservatism. At best, the electorate was evenly split, and when that happens, it seems to me that the only honest agenda would be a moderate one. Instead, President Bush has nominated numerous divisive right-wing figures to vacant court seats, and has allowed John Ashcroft to run one of the most right-wing Justice Departments in decades, not to mention gutting environmental laws, the Fourth Amendment, and any number of other laws, all while clothing it in dishonest rhetoric ("Clear Skies" for eliminating pollution controls, "Healthy Forests" for relaxing logging restrictions, "Leave No Child Behind" for passing on huge unfunded mandates to states and localities and "tax reform" for tax cuts).
And he has pursued a ruthlessly partisan agenda in the name of "patriotism" -- to name just one example, he opposed the Democratic plan to create a Homeland Security department until it was clear that the public supported the idea. Then, he proposed a similar idea, but with an unnecessary poison pill for Democrats (blocking department employees from unionizing). When the Democrats balked at this partisan maneuver, President Bush and the Republicans branded them as unpatriotic. In fact, they did so gleefully, to the point of making it a factor in the 2002 elections. One Democrat -- Max Cleland, the senator from Georgia -- lost his seat in the Senate after he was vilified in an attack ad as comparable to Osama bin Laden. All because he voted to preserve union protections for federal employees. The alternative, by the way, was for President Bush to achieve the same goal (the creation of a Homeland Security department), but by embracing bipartisan politics. Imagine how statesman-like he would have appeared, much to the chagrin of the Democrats!
[For the record, Senator Cleland is so unpatriotic that he was drafted and fought in Vietnam, and left three of his limbs there. By comparison, President Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard, and then went AWOL for more than a year. Yet the President stood by silently as his party smeared Cleland's patriotism for partisan advantage in the Senate. I guess if you had to pick one "irrational" reason why I hate President Bush (as opposed to the "rational" reason that he has failed to lead), it would be that while all hypocrisy stinks, that hypocrisy was particularly disgusting.]
***
For more on the rationality of Bush hatred, check out Jonathon Chait's companion article in TNR. [link]
For some people, the dislike is personal. It's not the unearned privilege Bush was born into (his detractors don't have anything against the Kennedys). It's that Bush seems to lack the kind of extemporaneous verbal intelligence that is rated highly by people who possess it. (Even his staunchest defenders must admit that it would be nice if Bush spoke in complete sentences.) And it's maddening to his opponents that Bush seems to want to win political victories without winning arguments with his critics and to shift course without ever explaining his thinking.
The last sentence is, to me, telling: it's not just "maddening" when a President "wants to win political victories without winning arguments with his critics" or when he wants "to shift course without ever explaining his thinking." It's also a legitimate target of criticism. The fact is, those are straight-up failures to lead, which is the essence of leadership. The fact that conservatives refuse to acknowledge that -- to the contrary, they extol President Bush's "leadership" -- is simply inexplicable.
Being President is all about leading the country, not ignoring half of it and pushing your own agenda. The thing that conservatives consistently fail to explain is exactly how Bush is being a leader if he changes position without explaining what he's doing or why he's doing it? That's not leading, that's dictating. And what about winning without feeling the need to answer his critics? Isn' that just another way of saying "l'etat, c'est moi"? If you ask me, the thing that infuriates liberals -- which, admittedly, may be poorly articulated -- is not that he does those things, it's that by doing those things, he's telegraphing to liberals that he doesn't care about half the country or what it thinks. He may as well just give us all the finger and be done with it.
As for the 2000 election (which Ponuru discusses elsewhere in his article), I think the liberal criticism is not that he was illegitimately elected -- that ship sailed when the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bush v. Gore -- but rather that a victory in the Electoral College is not the same thing as winning a referendum on your agenda. I'll defend to the limits of my ability that President Bush was legitimately (if unusually) elected to the office of President. But you won't convince me, and it wouldn't be intellectually honest to even argue, that he won a popular mandate for his brand of conservatism. At best, the electorate was evenly split, and when that happens, it seems to me that the only honest agenda would be a moderate one. Instead, President Bush has nominated numerous divisive right-wing figures to vacant court seats, and has allowed John Ashcroft to run one of the most right-wing Justice Departments in decades, not to mention gutting environmental laws, the Fourth Amendment, and any number of other laws, all while clothing it in dishonest rhetoric ("Clear Skies" for eliminating pollution controls, "Healthy Forests" for relaxing logging restrictions, "Leave No Child Behind" for passing on huge unfunded mandates to states and localities and "tax reform" for tax cuts).
And he has pursued a ruthlessly partisan agenda in the name of "patriotism" -- to name just one example, he opposed the Democratic plan to create a Homeland Security department until it was clear that the public supported the idea. Then, he proposed a similar idea, but with an unnecessary poison pill for Democrats (blocking department employees from unionizing). When the Democrats balked at this partisan maneuver, President Bush and the Republicans branded them as unpatriotic. In fact, they did so gleefully, to the point of making it a factor in the 2002 elections. One Democrat -- Max Cleland, the senator from Georgia -- lost his seat in the Senate after he was vilified in an attack ad as comparable to Osama bin Laden. All because he voted to preserve union protections for federal employees. The alternative, by the way, was for President Bush to achieve the same goal (the creation of a Homeland Security department), but by embracing bipartisan politics. Imagine how statesman-like he would have appeared, much to the chagrin of the Democrats!
[For the record, Senator Cleland is so unpatriotic that he was drafted and fought in Vietnam, and left three of his limbs there. By comparison, President Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard, and then went AWOL for more than a year. Yet the President stood by silently as his party smeared Cleland's patriotism for partisan advantage in the Senate. I guess if you had to pick one "irrational" reason why I hate President Bush (as opposed to the "rational" reason that he has failed to lead), it would be that while all hypocrisy stinks, that hypocrisy was particularly disgusting.]
***
For more on the rationality of Bush hatred, check out Jonathon Chait's companion article in TNR. [link]
posted by Daniel at 12:13 PM
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