Interview With Bush Speechwriter: Bush Was Thoughtful, May be Vindicated

Two things. First, you’d be hard-pressed to find another professional politician who treats his staff as well as George W. Bush. He’s a genuinely decent man and he cares deeply for the people he employs.

Second, President Bush’s intellectual abilities are dramatically undersold by most media portrayals. By his own admission, he is not a soaring orator, and you could often see his discomfort with public speeches or interviews. But when you spend time with him in a comfortable, private setting, the results are quite different.

I think the poor leadership manifested itself most in a refusal to challenge the liberal mainstream media. He apparently decided to follow the old maxim of not picking a fight with people “who buy ink by the barrel” but he didn’t realize that they would stick a knife in his back whether he fought back or not. The most ridiculous notions about Bush and his policies became conventional wisdoms among a large segment of Americans because he fought only weakly for himself and his policies against the mainstream media.

Failing to control the borders and immigration will be the biggest long-term failure of Bush. The conversion of tens of millions of Mexican and Central American nationals into voting American citizens will happen, and is already partway there anyway through the anchor baby process. The massive influx of cheap illegal aliens pulled down the wages of lower-income working class Americans, and as a result liberals like the economist Krugman pointed to a growing rich-poor gap and claimed it was the fault of Bush and the capitalist system. And the cheap labor hid the inflationary effects of a loose monetary policy, which manifested itself in asset values such as the housing bubble.

This will probably deliver control to the Left for generations. A massive national security disaster may deliver government away from weak foreign-policy liberals like Obama and into the hands of tough foreign-policy liberals like a Lieberman, but small-government conservatism will not be viable nationally after the full conversion of the Mexican and Central Americans into voting American citizens.

Bush’s smug assurance that historians will treat him better than contemporary journalists is likely wrong. With the Left in control of the government, the universities, Hollywood and the publishing industry, it will be only on the conservative fringe where he will be celebrated for things like his foreign and defense policies, his Supreme Court appointments and his tax cuts.

Agreed, and in particular the whole “compassionate conservative” message was a loser from the start, for one thing by implying that conservatism isn’t compassionate. What is uncompassionate about wanting to get government out of the way, secure the country and protect national interests so each American can excel with their God-given abilities? What is uncompassionate about seeing people as individuals rather than groups to be cattle-herded?

Meanwhile, let’s admit spending on Bush’s watch was a disgrace. Granted, he was dealt a bad hand, with the nation’s first attack on his home soil, the hellish recession bequeathed him by Clinton (complete with a jaw-dropping tech meltdown), and an opposition (including the media) which questioned his legitimacy, with Jumping Jim Jeffords tossing the Senate to the DemocRats, and so on. No mandate there. So some distasteful horse-trading was to be expected. But then we grabbed control of both houses of Congress two years in... and he didn’t consolidate his power as the leader of his Party. Instead it was all about reaching out to leftists, giving them costly baubles like the Medicare prescription bill, not to mention his attempt to secure the loyalty of Hispanics with loose immigration policies and disastrous subprime lending to Hispanic voters under CRA. He did do some good in quietly tackling regulations, but not a single Federal agency feared for its existence under Bush. I guess that wouldn’t have been “compassionate.”

Even when his popularity ebbed at its lowest, he still owned the veto pen and wouldn’t use it. Hence on his watch we saw enacted some of the most Orwellian legislation ever. The MSM didn’t talk about things like the “Heroes Act of 2008,” which enacts a key plank of the Communist Manifesto by stripping the wealth from emigrants, but my greater dismay is that (1) Bush didn’t talk about it either, and (2) he signed the bill! I’d bet that this is the first reference you’ve read of it. It means that if you give up and move out, you pretty much leave your wealth behind. Like it or not, that’s part of Bush’s legacy now.

Certainly, he will be vindicated to a large extent— he isn’t the dunce or ogre that the MSM makes him out to be. To the contrary, he is a sincerely nice, grounded, shrewd, capable and tough man who was a talented leader. Sure, he was uncomfortable and sometimes awkward in making speeches and such— but he could have addressed that in an instant by unmuzzling Dick Cheney. So saying he was uncomfortable or untalented at that sort of thing is a cop-out; so was Johnson, who managed to pursue his agenda aggressively despite much worse rhetorical handicaps. Bush just didn’t see the need to communicate, so his Administration stood mute in the face of a traitorous MSM on matters of enduring import.

Bottom line: I mostly wish he’d tacked exuberantly rightward, howling principles from the mainmast, instead of gambling that bestowing cushy compassionate kisses on traditionally lefty causes would convince idiots in the mushy middle to vote GOP. Bad bet. It meant that to America’s domestic enemies, the sign on his back said “kick me” rather than “fear me.” Bottom line: I sorely miss him in the Oval Office already. But I miss Reagan more.

I don't care how articulate he was in person. W failed miserably communicating to his conservative base - in words and deeds.

We are in the position we are in because George W Bush, who had the bully pulpit for six years (putting aside 911 events), failed to articulate, either by design or incompetence, (I now tend to think the former, compliments of the CFR), what conservatism is (insistence on personal responsibility and thus freedom), and likewise failed to take on the Media matrix.

I do think it is an elitist cabal, and GWB is, more or less, a component of that.

But even if one does not think it is a conscious conspiracy, even subconsciously, those who themselves live in an elitist world will think in such manner.

For instance, most on this supposedly conservative website have NO idea, NO idea, how comprehensive and pervasive certain technologies are surrounding the world. From satellite observation to email interdiction to supercomputer monitoring of citizen position and lifestyle. Given that power those in possession of it become to see themselves as omnipotent.

Or consider my favorite example, the arrogant a**holes of the Harvard School of Law and Government.

Which means that those with access better be totally respectful, freedom-loving, truth loving, personalities, or authoritarianism (Leftism) will prevail.

Actually this is not much different from historical analogies, like Napolean having the most comprehensively organized citizen spy network in existence, or the Assyrians (Semites by the way), placing severed heads of captive authorities throughout their empire to insure compliance through terror. It's just about higher levels of technology.

If we don't have the guts to face it, and say it, we will be the suckers.

Johnny Suntrade, The Suntrade Institute

I entertain a different view of the Bush administration which I have published here on Free Republic in many pieces that go back to before the 2006 election. This vanity, published a couple of days after the calamity of the 2006 election, is negative on Bush as a party leader and the calamities which befell the party and the country as a result. It is negative because it attempts to explain why we lost the 2006 election. Other pieces notes some of Bush's accomplishments. Here is a portion of the vanity, Why We Lost. :

Other reasons [for the 2006 the term election loss] are less easily identifiable and more subjective in nature. One goes to the very essence of the character of George Bush. I've long published that he is not a movement conservative, in fact he is not a conservative at all but rather he is a patrician with loyalties to family, friends, and country. His politics are animated not by conservative ideology but by a noblisse oblige which, as a substitute for political philosophy, move him to act from loyalty and love of country. The result of this is that he does not weigh his words and actions against a coherent standard grounded in conservatism, but instinctively reacts to do what is right for family, friends, and country. Thus we get Harriet Meirs, pandering to the Clintons and Kennedys, prescription drug laws, campaign finance laws, runaway spending, and the war in Iraq. The conservative movement is left muddled and confused and the Republican Party undisciplined and leaderless. In these circumstances all manner of mischief is possible beginning with corruption and indiscipline in the ranks. To be effective, a president must be feared as well is loved. A President is more than just Commander in Chief and Chief Executive of the nation, he is the titular head of his party and he must rule it. If Bush was willing to pander to the likes of Teddy Kennedy, what did Senator John McCain have to fear from him? Bush has utterly failed in his role as head wrangler of the Republican Party.

Other subjective reasons for the debacle involve Bush's personal character. He is essentially a nonconfrontational man who would rather operate through collegiality than through power. This is reinforced by his Christian belief and he will almost literally turn the other cheek. So, his loyalty to family and friends affects his appointments and produce mediocrities like Brown at FEMA and Ridge at Homeland Security and Harriet Meirs. It makes him shrink from prosecuting the crimes of his enemies even to the point of overlooking real security lapses committed by The New York Times. It makes it very difficult for Bush to discipline his troops and fire incompetent or disloyal subordinates. Instead he soothes them with the Medal of Freedom.

George Bush is a singularly inarticulate man. When he is not delivering a prepared speech, his sincerity and goodness of character come through, but his policies often die an agonizing death along with the syntax. The truth is that Bush has never been able, Ronald Reagan style, to articulate well the three or four fundamental issues which move the times in which we live. One need only cite the bootless efforts to reform Social Security as an example. His inability to tell America why we must fight in Iraq to win the greater worldwide war against terrorism, or how we are even going to win in Iraq, has been fatal to the Republicans' chances in this election. Of course, one can carry this Billy Budd characterization too far and it is easy to overemphasize its importance, but it is part of the general pattern which has led us to this pass. It is a very great pity that the bully pulpit has been squandered in the hands of a man so inarticulate. That the bully pulpit was wasted means that there are no great guiding principles for the country, for the party, for the administration, for Congress to follow, or for the voters to be inspired by. If the voters went into the booth confused about what the Republican Party stands for, the fault is primarily George Bush's.

There are structural problems for the Republicans as well. By the demographic breakdown of the Northeast and the ambitions of senators such as McCain, there was no coherent Republican policy in the Senate. It is in the nature of the Senate that wayward senators are difficult to bring to heel in any circumstance and Bush's inability properly to act as party leader has given Mavericks a green light to commit terrible damage to the Republicans' electoral posture. This demographic trend is destined to get worse and the self survival instincts of what is left of the Republican Party outside of the South will only become more acute and lead to more defections. Other senators, even when not motivated by personal ambition or demographic problems in blue states, felt free to engage in an extravaganza of corrupt spending to benefit their districts and soothe their contributors. There is a regrettable tendency to underemphasize the demographic handicap under which we conservatives struggle. Here is what I posted, before the election:

Perhaps now is not the time but certainly after Santorum is defeated we conservatives must face the reality that the electoral map is shrinking. We are unable to make inroads into the blue states (these New Jersey an anomaly due to parochial corruption) while we remain vulnerable and virtually all of the border states, Tennessee, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland (actually a lost cause). Now even the Old Dominion is threatened. Ohio may be as difficult as Pennsylvania after this cycle.

Demographics will soon turn Florida and Texas away from us and, with the loss of either one of them, conservatism has no hope of putting a president in the White House

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1724335/posts?page=17#17

Bush failed to provide leadership on spending. Merely cutting taxes is only one leg of the stool, fiscal discipline must be maintained. Failing to impose party discipline is a grave sin, but Bush magnified it exponentially with the mindless prescription drug entitlement, farm supports, and educational spending. If Bush can have his prescription drug program that nobody wanted, why cannot Senator Stevens in Alaska have his bridge that nobody needed? Bush not only failed to set the proper example in fiscal discipline, he affirmatively set the wrong example of profligacy.

In December of 2008 I published the following reply the bulk of which appears below. This was prompted by the most astonishing press conference conducted by Karl Rove in which he said is that George Bush explicitly forbade Rove from actively defending the administration as the Democrats ginned up the mantra, "Bush lied and people died" after no WMDs were found in Iraq. This decision to play rope a dope was a mortal turning point in the administration's history and it was, alas, only too typical of George Bush. Here is that reply:

As a result of the Bush administration's rope- a- dope strategy, we very nearly lost the war in Iraq, we are isolated in the world, we lost both houses of Congress in 2006, we have put an extreme leftist who could actually be a Manchurian Marxist in the White House and, finally, we have so damaged the Republican brand and the legitimacy of conservative principles that we are probably condemned to wander in the wilderness for a generation.

So your question, why in heaven's name did George Bush fail so pathetically to defend his administration and fight his corner, is apposite and one that I have been asking on these threads for four years. You can imagine my astonishment when I witnessed here in Germany a Karl Rove press conference, I think on CNN international, in which he replied to a question about why the administration did not defend itself against charges such as, "Bush lied and people died." He said he actually went to President Bush and told him that the administration must fight back that it was threatening its entire agenda domestically as well as in Iraq. As inconceivable as it sounds, Bush forbade Rove to wage such a campaign saying that it would divert the administration from other agenda items.

Here is another post which I wrote several years ago and for which I drew considerable flak at the time. I doubt I will receive much flak for the same post today:

The problem with George Bush is that he is not primarily a conservative, he is primarily a Christian, and he does not have a calculus that is congruent with yours or mine, even though both of us might be Christians. George Bush sees partisan politics as petty and ultimately meaningless. We see partisanship as the indispensable stuff of freedom. At election time the Bushes will hold their nose and dip into partisanship. But it is not in their essential nature to wage war for tactical political advantage.

George Bush wants what Bill Clinton wanted: To fashion a legacy. He does not want to be remembered as the man who cut a few percentage points from an appropriation bill but as the man who reshaped Social Security. I've come to the conclusion that the Bushes see politics as smarmy, fetid. It must be indulged in if one is to practice statesmanship but it is statesmanship alone that that is worthy as a calling.

They are honest, they are loyal, they are patrician. There would've been admired and respected if had lived among the founding fathers. But it is Laura Bush and Momma Bush who really and truly speak for the family and who tell us what they are thinking and who they are. There's not a Bush woman who does not believe in abortion. They believe in family, they live in loyalty, they believe in the tribe, but they do not believe in partisan politics.

I believe it is time for us to decide no longer to be used by the Bush family as useful idiots and instead to begin to use the Bushes as our useful idiots . I say this with the utmost admiration and respect for everything the Bushes stand for. Who would not be proud beyond description to have a father or an uncle who was among the first and youngest of naval aviators to fight in the Pacific and to be twice shot down. Not a stain or blemish of corruption or personal peccadillo has touched the family(except for the brother whom I believe was cleared of bank charges). They are the living embodiment of all that is good and noble in the American tradition.

But they are not conservative.

here is a post written just before the 2008 election:

I agree with your sentiments and echo your exhortation for all conservatives to gird up their loins and vote for McCain.

That being said, I would like to address a few of the reasons why we have found ourselves in a Hobson's choice where we must vote for the lesser of two evils because the greater evil- Obama- is so radical that he represents a real and present danger to the Republic.

Much of the blame for our dilemma can be laid at the feet of George Bush. I have published a vanity some years ago in which I asserted that George Bush regarded partisan politics as smarmy and that the true calling of the Christian- which animates Bush's calling to public service- is statesmanship. I think Bush regarded party politics as something that he must hold his nose and descend into if he were to be elected so that he could practice statesmanship which is something which is conducted above party. To the degree that I am right in this assessment, George Bush committed a fraud on the Republican Party. He solicited votes, support, volunteers, and money as a party man and a conservative but broke the bond with those people when in office. His acknowledgment while a candidate that he was a "compassionate conservative" does not in my judgment exonerate him.

Karl Rove conducted a press conference in which he was amazingly candid. He said that the greatest failing of the Bush administration was not to fight back after the WMDs were not found in Iraq in response to the Democrat attack that, "Bush lied people died." He further said that he advised Bush to fight his corner on this issue but Bush declined saying it was not worth it and would only distract from more important issues. I think this is fully in keeping with Bush's conception of himself as a Christian who rises above partisanship. He was content to let history judge him. But historians have very few votes. One can see much the same detachment play out in the comic bouffe around hurricane Katrina.

We all know about Bush's failure to wield his veto pen to halt spending and, worse, his actual affirmative support, for example, of massive entitlement programs and for sending billions to Africa. In his accumulated actions, Bush destroyed the philosophical foundation of his party and left Congress unled, undisciplined, and ripe for the corruption of K street. Under these circumstances, it was easy to predict the loss of the Congress in 2006 and many of us did predict it.

By the time the primary process rolled around, our party was philosophically and doctrinally bankrupt. We would not accept Romney because he was a Mormon, Giuliani because he wore a dress, Thompson because he was sleepwalking, Huckabee because he was insufficiently pure. Enter John McCain who's personal courage and tenacity won him the nomination but also put in place a man who, however sublime his character, is simply not a movement conservative.

So we have gone from a president who was ex officio titular head of the Republican Party who could give it no fixed pole and permitted it to disintegrate philosophically, fiscally, and morally. I believe that a president who does not behave in a partisan manner to protect his party is simply unpatriotic for without the party, there is no effective governance.

Now we have a nominee who is the titular head of the party who believes that it is a higher calling to be a maverick than to be a Republican just as George Bush believed it was a higher calling to be a statesman. I believe that McCain's commitment to bipartisanship is real and that it is the proximate result of the Epiphany he experienced in his cell in the Hanoi Hilton when he had a flash of insight: "I am no longer my own man, I am my country's". The result of this real and genuine Epiphany has moved the titular head of the party to a place where he cannot wholeheartedly wage partisan warfare on behalf of his ticket against some very scurrilous radicals. The moment might even be passed for such a strategy to work, even if McCain could bring himself to do it. Moreover, because Bush played rope a dope until his approval ratings went down into the 20th percentile, McCain risks defending a lost cause and being tainted by the Bush legacy should he become aggressively partisan. Unbelievably, we are handcuffed to the financial crisis and the scoundrels who are responsible are still in charge of the asylum. We are impotent because of the box we are in.

Such are the wages of Bush's elitism and detachment.

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