Bushism: The Highest Form of Conservatism
Only the Leninist cool kids will get the title, but it’s still true. At any rate, here’s Ryan Avent on the leader of the free world:
[Bush] very easily could have asked Congress to send him a stimulus bill, even a modest one, amid an intensification of what will likely be the worst recession in thirty years, if not longer. It would have made a difference. It would have made the season a little more bearable for the growing numbers of unemployed, and it would have made Obama’s task a little less daunting.
Instead, he’s spending his waning days weakening environmental rules, helping his cronies get jobs in the professional bureacracy, and preparing his pardons. What a stupid, despicable man. History can’t judge him too cruelly.
It’s true and it’s important and it’s also true and important to note that while Bush has deviated from conservative thought in some respects, he’s been despicable precisely insofar as he’s tended to represent the apogee of contemporary conservatism. There being no further point to running a sham policy operation for political purposes, Bush has just stopped even bothering to run a sham policy operation. There’s basically just nothing doing in the movement-controlled elements of the administration and the congress except a continuing effort — one that, I might add, may well prove successful over the long run — to put the survival of the human race at risk in order to advance the short-term financial interests of polluters. No effort to help shelter the poor from the worst consequences of the recession. No nothing.
And no complaints about it from the right! His indifference to the well-being of the vulnerable is their indifference.
38 Responses to “Bushism: The Highest Form of Conservatism”
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November 26th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
indifference, brutality, incompetence, cronyism.. all are features, not bugs.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
But he’s a CHRISTIAN! He cares by definition.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Thank you Matt. These points cannot be overstated. Indeed, they need to be stated often not simply on progressive blogs, but with friends and others of various persuasions, until it is common wisdom that this is not just a bad president, but truly a buffoon.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Well said. He deserves to be cast into a lake of fire.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Can we just take a short hop and skip, and call him a criminal?
November 26th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Not to defend the man, but he probably hasn’t done so because he’s delegated all economy-related efforts. He may be paralyzed by insecurity - fearful that he’d just make things worse - so he takes the easy way out and passes the buck and lets Bernanke and Paulson and Congress take the risks.
I doubt that it’s all conservative ideology at work here. It’s just another case of Bush letting other people clean up the messes.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I doubt that it’s all conservative ideology at work here. It’s just another case of Bush letting other people clean up the messes.
Well, according to contemporary conservative ideology, the less government does, the better. Perhaps Bush embodies conservative ideology so well that he can’t help but act accordingly.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
His legacy — economic disasterstrengthening the global banking system in time of crisis, thousands of lives lost to questionable ends securing democracy for those under tyranny, torture protecting
American citizens from evil-doing terrorists, domestic surveillance (repeat last one), complete inaction on the dire threat of climate change preventing tree-hugging hippies from destroying American way of life — is set.
How he might be looking at it.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Such a patriot.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
His legacy — economic disaster (strengthening the global banking system in time of crisis), thousands of lives lost to questionable ends (securing democracy for those under tyranny, torture (protecting
American citizens from evil-doing terrorists), domestic surveillance (repeat last one), complete inaction on the dire threat of climate change (stopping tree-hugging hippies from destroying American way of life) — is set.
Sorry. How he might be looking at it in parenthesis.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Where are the Pelosi/Reid stimulus packages?
For better or (I would argue) worse, they’ve decided that it makes Congress look bad if Republicans defeat a bill. (Or if it passes and Bush vetoes it.) That way, Congress as a whole can take the blame, and not just the Republican obstructionists who blocked it. Impeccable logic, no?
November 26th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
“Only the Leninist cool kids will get the title, but it’s still true.”
By pointing it out your stature dimishes (only slightly, but still) for mentioning it among those of us who caught the allusion without prompting.
And Al, Avent said: “what will likely be the worst recession in thirty years, if not longer.” The text is right there. Troll somewhere else.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
The exclamation mark is decidedly unnecessary…oh, wait, I forgot: this is a non-partisan blog–nevermind.
Seriously, Bush was everything conservatives have wanted, they were thrilled with every major decision he ever made–sans Harriet Myers, where, not coincidently, he capitulated after sufficient protest–, and none of them can ever point to a specific error he made that they object to; there is just a vague protest against insufficient bluster and paucity of codpieces.
…
Also, I find it amusing that you seemingly put more effort into the titles of your blogposts than their content.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I overheard a former boss of mine, a moderate in politics who had worked under both Democrats & Republicans, say to an old buddy: “you don’t understand why I’m upset. I don’t give a crap if Republicans win. It’s these guys. These are the guys we were all always worried about, and now they’re in charge. Unless we can get a leash on them, we’re totally fucked.”
Where are the Pelosi/Reid stimulus packages? The Democrats control Congress, and yet have not passed any stimulus? Why not?
Uh, because of George Bush and his mighty veto power? We don’t need to pass a stimulus bill, we need to make the stimulus law, and in our system of government simply “controlling congress” isn’t enough to make something into law. The President has to sign, too. And last time I checked, neither Pelosi nor Reid had the 2/3 majority to override this veto. Game over.
Of course, I expect you already knew that, and were desperately trying to blame Pelosi and Reid for Bush’s veto. Poor, poor victimized George Bush.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Al says… Where are the Pelosi/Reid stimulus packages?
Uh, perhaps buried under a heap of unprecedented Republican filibusters? That’s why America chose a Democratic President and larger Democratic majorities in both houses, so things could actually get done. The GOP has no ideas, just “noes”.
Though it is interesting to see you state that Pelosi and Reid should be leaders. It must be tough to admit that there is a leadership vacuum to be filled because Cheney only used George W. as a meat puppet for war, torture, and pollution, not to actually do something that would be good for the country.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
From Eric Jantzen (itulip.com)
“…The false hope is that government spending can pull the economy out of its debt deflation and that we are wiser than our grandparents and great grandparents were under similar circumstances…
…The “lesson” we are supposed to have learned is to not worry about deficits during recession — or before or after them, for that matter. In the fictional world of mainstream economics, deficits don’t matter when the economy is expanding because we’ll grow our way out of it, you see, and they don’t matter during recessions because fiscal stimulus to prevent recession from turning to depression is paramount, you see. The lesson of 1930 was Hoover’s mistaken balanced budget policy during a recession. That plunged the US into a depression. Or maybe not…
…Next year the fiction will be dispelled that governments can stop debt deflation by means that do not either produce mass unemployment or horrific inflation. As they try and repeatedly fail to meet expectations the Period of False Hope and Uncertainty will give way to the Era of Total Despair, and then we will see a bottom. Lost and wandering the ideological landscape with all of the old beliefs washed out, men go mad and grasp for any explanation but the truth — that the debt must be deflated before recovery can begin — and anything can happen. Watch Kudlow’s show and you’ll see what I mean…”
November 26th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Don’t feed the troll.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
The part that gets me is that despite at least a year of growing indications of economic peril, this administration did virtually nothing to address the economic situation until we were days away from the credit markets completely seizing up. There was an (ineffectual) stimulus package this spring, but I would argue that it was more about electoral politics than actual economic results. Aside from that, what else were they working on?
November 26th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
And no complaints about it from the right! His indifference to the well-being of the vulnerable is their indifference.
They’re too busy trying to pick their entrails off of the floors of banks and bourses, writing each other multi-billion/trillion dollar overdraft checks drawn on our future taxes.
I hope these assholes get an 80% marginal rate shafting in the next Congress, and get blackballed by the INS when they run off to the Bahamas for a tax dodge passport.
November 26th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Don’t feed the troll.
That’s OK. Al has obviously admitted that George W. Bush is no leader. Recovery starts with admitting it.
November 26th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Almost forgotten is that Obama got his initial attention for being competent on Iraq.
Note that Al chose to respond to the clear mistake rather than the valid question. What a jackass.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Fair enough that a stimulus bill has a better shot of passing Congress and getting signed into law starting in January, but I think there’s another reason we’re not seeing a Reid/Pelossi bill. I think they know, first, that the first Democratic bill should like a serious initiative, not a stopgap like the kind that Matt wants out of Bush. Second, they know it’s going to be complex, picking priorities on where the stimulus should go and how it fits into a bigger economic plan (as opposed to the kinds of things we’ve all been jumping all over Paulson for veering between without making sense). And third, they know that it’ll help Obama’s success if he’s seen as the leader rather than a part of their team. For all three reasons, I think, they’d rather wait and see his proposal take the lead.
November 26th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
David: By pointing it out your stature dimishes (only slightly, but still) for mentioning it among those of us who caught the allusion without prompting.
Seriously. I never expected to get many perks from becoming a Leninist, but must you cheat me even of the pleasure of recognizing obscure historical references? A Lenin reference, but labeled as such? One step forward, two steps back…
November 27th, 2008 at 1:22 am
A lot of people assumed that the historical thumbs-down on Bush would be based on the botching of the Iraq occupation and the unforgivably inept response to Katrina. Now it turns he saved the very worst for the endgame.
Bush’s indifference, Paulson’s flailing and the Senate Republicans’ intransigence made the panic far worse than it had to be. We’ll be digging out of this for at least a decade, and we won’t forget whose hole it is.
Republicans who think Obama’s going to “own” this mess after Jan. 20 are sorely mistaken. On the economy, Democrats will beat the Bush drum as long, and as successfully, as they beat the Hoover drum.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:48 am
This is absolute rubbish.
Early in the year there was a significant stimulus package. More recently, there was a $700 billion bill to address the financial crisis, and another $25 billion for automakers.
Ryan’s suggestion that a small stimulus package would ‘make a difference’ demonstrates that he’s a jackass. No, it wouldn’t make a difference. It would be a gesture, not a policy.
And Matt’s accusation that the Bush administration doesn’t have a policy operation demonstrates that Matt has stopped reading the news, and doesn’t read his own blog. No, Matt, the administration hasn’t stopped its policy operation. For example, the administration continues to coordinate a massive response to the financial crisis, and also continues an energetic foreign policy.
November 27th, 2008 at 3:14 am
Christ, could I use some stimulus right about now.
November 27th, 2008 at 5:22 am
“survival of the human race”?
Really?
November 27th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Mr. Bush invented a reason to invade a country that did not threaten us. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people, every bit as real and with just as much right to live as the people who live on your street, died horribly as a result.
He’s one of the great criminals of recorded history, and any domestic mischief he does pales in comparison.
December 23rd, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Forget “conservatism,” please. It has been Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson’s Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
“[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It .is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth.”
Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).
John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com
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