“Bush’s Greatness”
Part of the effort to pull the wagon of conservatism out of the ditch into which Bush piloted the country is going to be an effort to deny that George W. Bush was a real conservative. In reality, Bushism should be understood as the highest form of conservatism. In particular, the High Bushist years of 2001-2006 represent the only time that the post-war conservative movement has had total control over the federal government. If the practical consequences of pre-Bush conservatism were less disastrous, that’s largely because conservative political power was more constrained in those earlier eras.
Meanwhile, it’s worth recalling that at the peak of his political power, when Bush was making his most disastrous decisions, conservatives not only thought he was a good president, but a great one. There was practically a line around the block to write paens to his genius. Here’s David Gelertner’s “Bush’s Greatness” from the September 13, 2004 Weekly Standard:
It’s obvious not only that George W. Bush has already earned his Great President badge (which might even outrank the Silver Star) but that much of the opposition to Bush has a remarkable and very special quality; one might be tempted to call it “lunacy.” But that’s too easy. The “special quality” of anti-Bush opposition tells a more significant, stranger story than that.
Bush’s greatness is often misunderstood. He is great not because he showed America how to react to 9/11 but because he showed us how to deal with a still bigger event–the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 left us facing two related problems, one moral and one practical. Neither President Clinton nor the first Bush found solutions–but it’s not surprising that the right answers took time to discover, and an event like 9/11 to bring them into focus.
I hope to keep on revisiting some writings in this vein over the next few weeks, so if there’s any special pieces you recall or dig up, please get in touch (the form in the sidebar works) and give me a tip.
66 Responses to ““Bush’s Greatness””
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November 28th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
What exactly did Bush show in regards to dealing with the Cold War? Alienate Russia? Alienate Western Europe? This is like the incredible book by the even more incredible Larry Kudlow and another crony, called “The Bush Boom - How a Misunderestimated President Fixed a Broken Economy”.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
This kind of stuff will go into the same historical file with the most fulsome praises of Hitler and Stalin by their partisans.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
well, of course the classic bush-praise was hinderaker’s comment about bush being a genius unappreciated in his own time.
more to the point, ye gods, right-wingers loved this clown to an astonishing degree.
indeed, a test for whether someone is an honest conservative or a right-wing authoritarian is when they realized bush was a disaster: the honest conservatives knew it pretty early on.
sadly, there’s hardly any of them: the right-wing authoritarians were in love with 43 right up until his approval ratings fell into the toilet….
November 28th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
It’s obvious not only that George W. Bush has already earned his Great President badge
Commander Bunnypants probably already had one of those commissioned for him. It matches his Presidentin’ socks, made up faux military jackets, and other assorted bullshit kitsch of which Dear Leader is overly fond. What a fucking embarrassment.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Cruise the archives of Andrew Sullivan and Jane Galt starting in 2001. Nonstop comedy. It’s important to keep in mind that both are unrepentant Bush Lovers, though they surely claim otherwise at this moment. The Atlantic Monthly is an embarrassment.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Not is Bush not a conservative, neither are most Conservatives ™. I’ve been saying this for a while now: our Conservatives (big “C”) are really radicals who have appropriated the name of a decent, useful if somewhat limited political philosophy to masquerade before the public while they seek to implement an agenda that would transform America, perhaps the whole world, far out of its traditional ways and understandings.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
…2001-2006 represent the only time that the post-war conservative movement has had total control over the federal government.
Shouldn’t that be 2003-2006? Or did Democrats not have a bare majority in the Senate for part of 2001 through the 2002 elections?
November 28th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Conservatives did not have total control over the government from 2001-2006.
Jim Jeffords left the republican caucus before September 11th, and the democrats had control over the senate until January 2003.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
I hope to keep on revisiting some writings in this vein over the next few weeks HIMM GOO http://www.makkale.blogcu.com
November 28th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Oh the Soviet Union wasn’t *really* communism.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
I believe the best piece of work from this time period is the ‘it must be hard being President Bush, a man who is such a brilliant mind but misunderstood is his own time’. I believe it’s from Powerline. Does anyone know which one I’m talking about?
November 28th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
But Matt, in your Good Riddance post about GWB, you said that Bush was a bad president NOT because he was the perfect representative of movement conservatism, but because he chose to embrace the bad parts of conservatism because he’s a bad person. Which is it?
November 28th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
The Good Riddance post I referenced is here:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/11/good_riddance.php
November 28th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
@10
Yes, exactly. Cruising the website of a publication like Reason, for example, reveals hilarious examples of this sort of ideology at all costs revisionism.
http://reason.com/news/show/129580.html “Thus in Libertarian Land, the Great Depression would probably not have occurred.” Just wait until the true heir to Reagan’s legacy gets back in there and REALLY tries some conservatism!
November 28th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
I would say that Bush wasn’t really a conservative, and neither was Reagan. No one, in any country at any time, has managed to govern according to principles of pure economic liberalism and social traditionalism. It’s just not possible in a democracy. Libertarianism is imossible to implement in the real world, and social conservatism is impossible to implement in a free society where people disagree as to morality.
This is not a defense of conservatism, but an attack on it. It’s a form of utopian thinking. No political ideology that ends up being impossible to implement is worth bothering with, even if you think (I don’t) that it *would* be a good idea if it *were* possible.
At the same time, it’s plain stupid to pretend that having the government give out special favors to select companies and protect incumbents from competition has anything to do with economic liberalism. Matthew, your response on the Cato Unbound piece I think understood this.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
But what if the list of people authorized to speak as Voices of American Conservatism has changed over the last few years, with some Bush skeptics gaining more cred and some loyalists becoming less respected?
It’s not really fair to speak of the people on the 2004 list as being more legitimately conservative than those on the 2007 list–movements, like countries, experience power shifts. (Strawmanning Matt’s logic in graf 2, Bushism could also be considered the highest form of Americanism, because Gelernter is an American writer and the Weekly Standard is an American publication.)
And given the pressure to adhere to conventional wisdom in the journalistic/pundit world, would it really be any surprise if other conservatives didn’t agree with Gelernter, but didn’t deem it worthwhile to risk their reps with his editors by saying so?
November 28th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Ed, do you know what the hell you are talking about when it comes to Andrew Sullivan? The guy was wrong for a while after 9/11 but he isn’t a recent convert to sanity. He endorsed Kerry in 2004 and has been railing against Dear Leader with gusto for going on five yeas now. That isn’t to say his fifth collumn attacks against the left in 2001 weren’t wrong and outrageous but as conservatives go, I don’t think you get a more honest one than him. If only our political opposition had his ability to change opinions when presented with new facts and evidence.
November 28th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Of course, a lot of nonconservatives supported Bushes biggest mistakes - invading Iraq, for example. Seems to me that being wrong on that was (on average) a lot better career move than being right.
But the real question is whether most people who supported a pointless and expensive aggressive war are going to be any more sensible next time. The problems will be different: we probably won’t have Saddam Hussein to kick around again, barring cloning. But there will be other problems.
So, next time, will those same people check carefully before endorsing drastic, unprecedented, and incredibly expensive actions? Will they actually examine the facts - will they read the NIE next time? Will they be any less susceptible to groupthink? Will they bother to read any history?
Of course not.
November 28th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Powerline:
“It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.”
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2005/07/011024.php
November 28th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Ed, cruising 2001 posts for mistaken impressions of Bush is a pretty piss poor way of mocking someone. And Sullivan is as good a “conservative” as you’ll find, as he characterizes it as an impulse, a distrust that we can make huge changes successfully, and thus should generally favor conserving what we already have.
November 28th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
What does it say when the test of whether or not someone is conservative is whether you can find other conservatives gushing about them? Even when they enact policies which fly in the face of traditional conservative planks? A long catalog of embarrassing NRO and WS quotes will only tell you things about those rags, not the object of their enthusiasm.
Plenty of fulsome praise from the left for the Clinton years as well. Was he a progressive by any significant measure?
November 28th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
“The public intellectual” Megan Freaking McArdle was practically getting a heart attack out of sheer excitement for voting for Bush.
What a sad pathetic loser that woman is!
November 28th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
As for Sullivan, well, he’s intellectually lazy and fundamentally stupid.
November 28th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Matt, perhaps you could compile a companion volume to Weisberg’s Bushisms, you could call it Bushism-isms
November 28th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
For some reason Sullivan’s words “How can you not love the guy” have stuck with me (more or less, anyway; that might not be the exact quote.
Here’s the old Daily Dish site: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.andrewsullivan.com I couldn’t find the exact quote; I stopped after 2003, realizing that a) this is not a productive way to be spending my time and b) this is an incredibly depressing way to be spending my time. However, the guy was an absolute raging asshole for a while there…
November 28th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Oh, apparently it is archive on the Atlantic from the beginning: http://time-blog.com/daily_dish/index.php?dish_inc=archives/dish_archive.html
Beyond that, well, what I said.
November 28th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Matt,
Keep dogging those Bushies and leave the poor turkeys alone.
Seriously, you hit it on the head, but please push it further with some historical analogies. When was the last time the conservatives (or Conservatives, or ‘Conservatives’ or whatever) had total control of a western democracy?
USA late 1920s - heckuva job!
Britain 1931-1940 - the gold standard in foreign policy achievement. Bush only wins the silver compared to these clowns.
Canada early 30s - sure there’s jobs - in a work camp in the taiga…
We could go on, but no democratic left or center government comes close to the idiocy and incompetence and damage of even moderately right wing administrations when they really run the show.
November 28th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
This whole discussion is proof that Obama is actually succeeding in delivering on his campaign vision of unity. He realizes that the Bush disaster has given him an important opportunity to form a coalition of non-crazy people from all sides. The question is if seeking advice from conservatives is a good idea
November 28th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Ed, cruising 2001 posts for mistaken impressions of Bush is a pretty piss poor way of mocking someone.
Here’s Sully today:
See, the problem here is that Sully’s every bit as guilty guilty guilty as Joe Klein, but he’s too self-righteous and self-absorbed to get it. That’s some serious irony there that is. Dude called me a Fifth Columnist back in Aught Two. I still await my apology.
And Sullivan is as good a “conservative” as you’ll find, as he characterizes it as an impulse, a distrust that we can make huge changes successfully, and thus should generally favor conserving what we already have.
This is a level of thinking I’d expect from a (high school) sophomore. A good “conservative”–whatever that is–would have seen the Iraq Invasion for what is was. You know, like we Reality Based organisms did. Why is this so difficult to grasp?
I’ll need several heartfelt apologies and a modicum of self-awareness from Sully before I’m cool with him. You dig?
November 28th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Ed, do you know what the hell you are talking about when it comes to Andrew Sullivan?
Yes. Yes, I do. Next question.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Jane Galt… good god, can you believe they gave a job to someone styling herself Jane Galt? What’s next, an Atlantic gig for Pam Atlas?
November 28th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Tom Friedman’s Oped piece “Because We Could” of May 2003 could use some serious revisiting.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
In thinking about Andrew Sullivan, it is useful to remember that he was appalled by the photographs from Abu Ghraib and what they showed (beyond doubt) American policy to be. He has also been clear on Sarah Palin as an indication of McCain’s various and deep failures as a candidate. At the same time, he has still sometimes, albeit not recently written about those who opposed the war in Iraq prematurely (his wording I’m sure). And his continuing suggestion that libertarian economics make sense….well, that won’t stand up.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Estrien, I see no reason why we can’t fight on two fronts simultaneously.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:34 am
I would agree that GWB is a “very special” president. But I would also agree that the opposition to GWB has a distinctive “special quality”.
November 29th, 2008 at 4:34 am
That isn’t to say his fifth collumn attacks against the left in 2001 weren’t wrong and outrageous but as conservatives go, I don’t think you get a more honest one than him.
Well sorry, but if someone proclaims that my moral core is totally worthless, that I am a supporter of dictators and indifferent to human rights - then I really don’t know why I should pay any more attention to him.
This is not a case of someone having been wrong and then seen the light of reason, rather Sullivan is simply an incredibly vicious and self-centered guy, who happened to find it more convenient to switch sides.
November 29th, 2008 at 8:55 am
In all the discussions about Bush’s demerits, I’m interested in a little side-show: what the early dissenters were informed of that made them recant their heresies. I’m thinking mainly here of John DiIulio, but the pattern was repeated often enough.
Akin to that, what took the calcium from the spines of the Democrats and turned their backbones to sponge? They were sure frisky when Clinton was in the dock. Are there compromising photos or tapes on all of them? or is the threat of a primary opponent sufficient to bring them all to heel?
November 29th, 2008 at 9:04 am
When Bush Jr’s approval ratings were at 90%, he was for Republicans the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan and the ideal conservative leader who would establish the permanent Republican majority forever.
Then as the Iraq war began spiraling into predictable chaos and bodies were left to rot in the streets of New Orleans, some began to suspect that the love affair was over.
Good riddance to 30 years of Reaganite country-destroying nonsense, brought down finally by its ideal embodiment.
November 29th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Two things: A week after the ‘04 election I emailed my Democratic friends telling them, “In 2008, a Republican won’t be able to run for Dogcatcher.” Unbridled power in the hands of Republicans was always goingt to mean that even the backbone of the Republican Party, the great unread of America, were going to see what frauds Bush and his party are.
Bush is the worst President in History not becasue he was the dumbest man ever to stumble into the office - we’ve had lots of equally stupid Presidents. Bush achieves the number one slot becaue the world is now so interconnected that the impact of his monumentally thoughtless decisions are exponentially more damaging and dangerous. There are no more regional crises. Everything is global.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:34 am
In thinking about Andrew Sullivan, it is useful to remember that he was appalled by the photographs from Abu Ghraib
Wow! What a mensch!
November 29th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
What I hope you will highlight at some point Matt is that there was a period of complete conservative control… and they did nothing about getting rid of abortion. That is a failure of sorts…
November 29th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Just another anecdotal view on Andrew Sullivan. I have been reading him regularly for about four years now. In that time I have never seen him say anything good about Bush or Cheney, and have seen him refer apologetically to his early support of Bush and the Iraq invasion. Also in the previous long presidential primary and and national campaigns, he favored Obama from almost Day One, and defended him against the Rev. Wright stuff. I agree with him on a lot of issues, and disagree with him on several. I don’t think he is often the smartest person in a given room, but he links to a lot of interesting stuff that I would not have found myself, and he seems like a decent human being to me. Like a lot of us he has a tough time letting go of ingrained ideologies such as libertarianism and Catholicism, but I think he makes some effort to understand others’ viewpoints. When and if he says something I find personally insulting I might stop reading him, but until then his is one of my favorite blogs.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Ed,
You are either ignorant or very imprecise. You said about Sullivan, “It’s important to keep in mind that both are unrepentant Bush Lovers, though they surely claim otherwise at this moment.” At this moment? The guy has been speaking the truth about Bush for five years and repenting for his stupid Bush love in the aftermath of 9/11. The worst aspect of the conservative movement which has been inherent for 40 years is its inability or unwillingness to acknowledge any fact or reality contradicting its philosophy. That’s why we still have to argue about trickle down economics in 2008 when every empirical study showed it failed when imposed in 1981. Sullivan is a guy that can actually be reasoned with, who can actually change his mind when he sees the objective results of his favored positions and leaders. I disagree with him on most everything aside from social issues, but I pray that our actual opponents adopt his level of intellectual honesty in policy matters. I ain’t holding my breath though.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
I don’t find Sullivan to be intellectually honest. He actually has a terrible history going all the way back to the 1990s of gross intellectual dishonesty on many issues in favor of being provocative and contrarian, such as healthcare. He’s quite like Hitchens in that way. Sullivan’s popularity was fading fast when he was a Bush dog and it was only when he took the contrarian view of Bush that he took off. I also suspect he may have backed Obama to make up for his Bell Curve days and because he hated Clinton so much.
I have no doubt that Sullivan will turn on Obama if he feels that’s what he needs to do to maintain his page views and his outrageous image. That’s how Sullivan operates, albeit cleverly.
November 30th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Interesting discussion of this post is going on at FriendFeed.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Part of the effort to pull the wagon of conservatism out of the ditch into which Bush piloted the country is going to be an effort to deny that George W. Bush was a real conservative.
He wasn’t.
In reality, Bushism should be understood as the highest form of conservatism. In particular, the High Bushist years of 2001-2006 represent the only time that the post-war conservative movement has had total control over the federal government.
Well, if you define conservatism by what letter the people have after their names (i.e., a “D” or an “R”), then this makes sense. However, in declaring Bush a conservative, it would make more sense in my opinion to look at which policies he pushed that were and that were not conservative.
Meanwhile, it’s worth recalling that at the peak of his political power, when Bush was making his most disastrous decisions, conservatives not only thought he was a good president, but a great one.
Well, if you define conservatism by the Weekly Standard, then what you say makes sense. But I do not think that the Weekly Standard would be what I would consider conservatism. Rather, it neoconservatives thought he was a geat president, and a lot of the establishment conservatives, more concerned with sucking up to power than to principle, praised him to high heaven whatever they really thought.
I suppose I would say that criticism of Bush for not being conservative enough make a great deal of sense coming from VDARE, The American Conservative, or Chronicles. Coming from National Review, comme ci comme ca, and coming from The Weekly Standard are balderdash.
December 6th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Get your dates right you fucking moron.
December 8th, 2008 at 2:55 am
If you’ve been outside for even a minute, you’ve seen them: piles of fading yellows, oranges and reds lying there like unclaimed treasure. The economy might be stumbling, our 401(k)s hemorrhaging, but one thing can’t be denied:
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