Texan of the Year.
Posted on 01/03/2004 4:31:47 PM PST by Maria S
We name George W. Bush, the president of the United States, Texan of the Year.
You may be thinking: yep, saw that coming. Any Lone Star native sitting in the White House can't help being the most consequential Texan of the year. We initially thought the same thing, and began our deliberations determined to avoid the obvious choice.
As we debated, though, we found that the most plausible candidates for the distinction – the Texas-based soldiers who helped liberate Iraq, for example – would not have accomplished the deeds that recommended them to our consideration without Mr. Bush. Like it or not, Mr. Bush is dramatically reshaping the world, the nation and – via tacit support of redistricting – Texas.
In the end, George W. Bush was not just the obvious choice for an editorial board looking for the newsworthy Texan who in 2003 most stared down adversity and exercised leadership, vision, independence and a gift for trailblazing. Given the dramatic events of this past year, Mr. Bush was the only choice.
To understand precisely how large Mr. Bush looms over 2003 think back to how the year started. America's military was massing for war on Iraq. Mr. Bush had a few nations standing with him, but France, Germany, Russia and others would not. The president and his advisers repeatedly made the case for war, to little avail in the United Nations Security Council, whose approval he sought.
The intense diplomacy in the prewar period was a watershed moment for the international community and the institutions painstakingly built to stabilize world order. Would those institutions be able to adequately meet the threat posed by international terrorism and rogue states in a world in which weapons of mass destruction are becoming increasingly available? As National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told us on a visit last year to Dallas, this moment in history is the most decisive for the future of the planet than any since 1945, when the ruins of World War II gave birth to a new world order that suffered a near-fatal blow when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and which collapsed with the Twin Towers in 2001.
The president last year made a momentous decision, the echoes of which will likely be heard in every corner of the globe for at least the first half of this century. When it became clear that the Security Council wouldn't budge, Mr. Bush decided that America would go without it.
Led by Texas-born Gen. Tommy Franks, the American armed forces struck Iraq on March 19. Twenty-six days later, Iraq was free, and its wealthy and all-powerful dictator driven into a hole in the ground, from which American troops eventually dragged him, disheveled, disgraced and utterly defeated.
Saddam Hussein now sits in a cell, its walls bare except for a couple of images. Every waking minute of every single day, he has to look upon a photograph of George W. Bush affixed to the wall. It's a beautiful thing.
Saddam's capture was an early Christmas present and a much-needed morale boost for an occupation that has not been going as well as Mr. Bush and America hoped. Iraq has not been fully pacified. The promised weapons of mass destruction that were central to the administration's war rationale have not been located, and may not exist. The plans for managing Iraq's postwar future have been inadequate, and there is justified concern that the flow of America's blood and treasure into the vanquished desert nation will not soon cease.
This is part of Mr. Bush's 2003 legacy as well. If Iraq in fact becomes the quagmire that the war's opponents predict, it could cost him his presidency, our nation much more, and the world incalculably.
International relations have changed The entire structure of international relations – specifically rules governing warfare, in place since the 17th century, and refined and strengthened by the evolution of the United Nations in the last century – has been severely undercut by the Bush Doctrine.
Critics at home and abroad charge that Mr. Bush has returned the world to the "law of the jungle." To Mr. Bush, though, the barbarians of al-Qaeda had already made anarchy a fait accompli, that the old order had proven itself incapable of handling the new threats to it, and the greater risk to America would have been allowing the considered wishes of France, Syria, China and others favoring the status quo to guide U.S. foreign policy. Only time will tell which view was the correct one.
Whether one favored or opposed the war on Iraq, one cannot fail to appreciate the magnitude of the risk Mr. Bush has taken, as well as the reasons why he took it. This president staked everything on his quest to liberate a nation as the first step to setting free an entire region shackled by tyranny, fanaticism and despair. He didn't do so out of the goodness of his heart, necessarily, but because he knows that after Sept. 11, the status quo both in the Middle East and in the international arena will inevitably lead to more mass murder and catastrophic destruction in our homeland.
No permission, no apology
Thus the Bush Doctrine: the principle that the United States reserves the right to strike any nation that threatens it, imminently or not, without permission and without apology. The year just past saw the first major test of the Bush Doctrine in the war on Iraq, a massive military operation almost entirely carried out by the United States. What does Mr. Bush have to show for it? Consider:
• Saddam Hussein is gone, and with him a serious threat to regional and world peace. The Arab Muslim world now has the opportunity to join the modern world by establishing its first real democracy.
• Iran, Syria and Libya – terror-supporting nations pursuing weapons of mass destruction – have become dramatically more cooperative with the West. They have seen the alternative. • France and Germany, the chief Western opponents of the Bush Doctrine, saw their scheme to build a counterweight to American power dissolve in the face of Mr. Bush's resolve. The United States' role as leader of the West has been reaffirmed in light of European weakness and vacillation.
If this were simply a matter of international power politics, it would still be impressive. To be sure, we have been troubled at times by the bluntness with which this president has pursued international relations, particularly his regrettable distaste for America's treaty obligations.
A worthy moral goal
Nevertheless, it can't be denied that Mr. Bush has been effective in achieving his foreign-policy goals, despite tremendous obstacles that would have discouraged a less determined man. Moreover, it is laudable how he, in the best tradition of American presidents, has bound his foreign policy not to self-interested cynicism, but to a worthy moral ideal: the liberalization of the Middle East, and the draining of its fever swamps of virulent barbarism.
The president was bold enough to confess last year to the world that the nation he leads had sinned in years past by endorsing cruel Middle Eastern regimes for the sake of stability, and to vow that we would no more. By committing the United States to rebuilding Iraq into a country of law, order and democracy – a beacon of light to a region shrouded in the darkness of despotism – the president launched America's most ambitious and idealistic project since the Marshall Plan to reconstruct war-devastated Europe.
Plainly, he might not succeed in this risk-fraught mission. Even if he does, that victory over terrorism will not come during his presidency, perhaps not even during his lifetime, and then only after a long, hard slog for America and her people, especially those men and women under arms. But this almost certain guarantee that the fruits of his fight won't be his to savor only clarifies the nobility of Mr. Bush's undertaking. Though he was not as consequential a presence in 2003 domestically as internationally, Mr. Bush's achievements on the home front solidified his party's position as the dominant force in contemporary American politics. Despite being thwarted by Democrats on his judicial nominations, the big domestic political story of the year was the passage of the mammoth Medicare reform bill by a Republican-led Congress. That entitlement legislation expanded Medicare to a degree not seen since the days of the Great Society. More to the point, it provided what Washington columnist Tony Blankley called "by far the most convincing evidence to date that the political center of gravity in Washington is shifting definitively to the GOP for the first time since the pre-FDR era."
Institutionalized revolution
The Republicans, led by Mr. Bush and his canny congressional lieutenants – Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, House Speaker Denny Hastert and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (another Texas Republican) – have institutionalized the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions. From the Roosevelt era until virtually yesterday, the Democratic Party controlled the real power in Washington, using (as columnist David Brooks pointed out) its control over the federal budget and the permanent institutions of the U.S. government to establish its own dominance – even under a series of Republican presidents. Today, Democrats seem relatively weak and ideologically spent. That is, they are more or less where Republicans were for most of the 20th century.
Oh, sure, they howl about their treatment, just as principled conservatives wail and gnash their teeth over how Mr. Bush and the congressional Republicans have betrayed the conservative commitment to fiscal prudence and limited government (the Medicare reform will cost $2 trillion over 20 years). It is legitimate to worry that the Bush administration has burdened our grandchildren with the cost of such expansion. But as the Arab proverb goes, "The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."
The qualities that guided Mr. Bush on the course he has set for his presidency and his nation are the gift of his West Texas heritage. During the 2000 campaign, he spoke of his hometown to reporters, telling them, "I would say people – if they want to understand me – need to understand Midland, and the attitude of Midland. The values Midland holds near to its heart are the same ones I hold near to my heart. The slogan 'The Sky's The Limit' was meant for everyone, not just a select few. Midlanders believed if you work hard and believe it will happen, anything can happen."
Courage of the wildcatter
There is in Mr. Bush the perhaps-reckless courage of the wildcatters that made Midland famous. This is abetted by faith in God and country, the hope that all those who work hard and live right will prosper, and the conviction that good men are honor-bound to stand against evil, no matter what the odds – simple but enduring virtues also honored by the people of Midland. They are the virtues that sustain American civilization.
Those who loathe Mr. Bush, his style and his policies deride him as a "cowboy." They have a point. This president doesn't stand on ceremony and the traditional niceties of diplomatic protocol. But to many Americans, this is one of his signal virtues.
Consider: Mr. Bush is not a man of rhetorical gifts, but if actions speak louder than words, then 2003 demonstrated that the president possesses an oratorical eloquence unmatched on the world stage. Last year, Mr. Bush made sure that America's enemies as well as her friends got the message loud and clear: This great nation will defend herself, and fight for the ideals she stands for. Or, as a cowboy might put it: Don't mess with America.
Not universally popular
This is not universally popular, nor is it popular with many Americans, and not even with all Texans. As should be clear, in naming Mr. Bush as Texan of the Year we don't necessarily endorse all his policies, nor his governing style. We do, however, recognize that there was in the past 12 months no more important Texan, and that the principles informing his fateful decisions over the course of a fateful year came from the mind of a man with roots deep in the heart of Texas.
Mr. Bush's father, also once president, spoke of a "new world order." But this President Bush, tested by adversity faced by no president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, caused one to be born.The Dallas Morning News Editorial BoardWe are proud to name George W. Bush, the president of the United States, Texan of the Year.
You may be thinking: yep, saw that coming. Any Lone Star native sitting in the White House can't help being the most consequential Texan of the year. We initially thought the same thing, and began our deliberations determined to avoid the obvious choice.
As we debated, though, we found that the most plausible candidates for the distinction – the Texas-based soldiers who helped liberate Iraq, and the Texas Republicans reshaping state and national politics for better or for worse – would not have accomplished the deeds that recommended them to our consideration without Mr. Bush. He is the indispensable figure in the indispensable nation.
In the end, George W. Bush was not just the obvious choice for an editorial board looking for the newsworthy Texan who in 2003 most stared down diversity and exercised leadership, vision, independence and a gift for trailblazing. Given the dramatic events of this past year, Mr. Bush was the only choice that made sense.
To understand precisely how large Mr. Bush looms over 2003 – and because of this, over the history of his time – think back to how the year started. America's military was massing for war on Iraq. Mr. Bush had a few nations standing with him, but France, Germany, Russia and others would not. The president and his advisers repeatedly made the case for war, to little avail in the United Nations Security Council, whose approval he sought.
The intense diplomacy in the pre-war period was a watershed moment for the international community and the institutions painstakingly built to stabilize world order. Would those institutions be able to adequately meet the threat posed by international terrorism and rogue states in a world in which weapons of mass destruction are becoming increasingly available? As National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told us on a visit last year to Dallas, this moment in history is the most decisive for the future of the planet than any since 1945, when the ruins of World War II gave birth to a new world order that suffered a near-fatal blow when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and which collapsed with the Twin Towers in 2001.
The president last year made a momentous decision, the echoes of which will likely be heard in every corner of the globe for at least the first half of this century. When it became clear that neither the quality of the evidence nor the relentlessness of the logic would sway Security Council obstructionists, Mr. Bush decided that America could not afford to stake its security on an institution – the United Nations – paralyzed by indecision, denial and what looked an awful lot like the same delusional optimism that led Neville Chamberlain to return from Munich on the eve of World War II, claming he had won "peace in our time." America, Mr. Bush affirmed, would have to go it largely alone.
Led by Texas-born Gen. Tommy Franks, the American armed forces struck Iraq on March 19. Twenty-six days later, Iraq was free, and its wealthy and all-powerful dictator driven into a hole in the ground, from which American troops eventually dragged him, disheveled, disgraced and utterly defeated.
Saddam Hussein now sits in a cell, its walls bare except for a couple of images. Every waking minute of every single day, he has to look upon a photograph of George W. Bush affixed to the wall. It's a beautiful thing.
Saddam's capture was an early Christmas present, and a much-needed morale boost for an occupation that has not been going as well as Mr. Bush and America hoped. Iraq has not been fully pacified. The promised weapons of mass destruction that were central to the administration's war rationale have not been located, and may not exist. The plans for managing Iraq's postwar future appear to have been inadequate, and there is justified concern that the flow of America's blood and treasure into the vanquished desert nation will not soon cease.
This is part of Mr. Bush's 2003 legacy as well. If Iraq in fact becomes the quagmire that the war's opponents predict, it could cost him his presidency, our nation much more, and the world incalculably. It is much more difficult to say what the cost would have been had the president allowed the considered wishes of France, Syria and China to guide U.S. foreign policy on Iraq, and done nothing.
The entire structure of international relations – specifically rules governing warfare, in place since the 17th century, and refined and strengthened by the evolution of the United Nations in the last century – has been severely undercut by the Bush Doctrine. Critics at home and abroad charge that Mr. Bush has returned the world to the "law of the jungle." To Mr. Bush, though, the barbarians of al-Qaeda had already made anarchy a fait accompli, and the greater risk to America would have been allowing the considered wishes of France, Syria, China and others favoring the status quo to guide U.S. foreign policy. Only time will tell which view was the correct one.
Whether one favored or opposed the war on Iraq, one cannot fail to appreciate the magnitude of the risk Mr. Bush has taken, as well as the reasons why he took it. This president staked everything on his quest to liberate a nation as the first step to setting free an entire region shackled by tyranny, fanaticism and despair. He didn't do so out of the goodness of his heart, necessarily, but because he knows that after Sept. 11, the status quo both in the Middle East and in the international arena will inevitably lead to more mass murder and catastrophic destruction in our homeland.
Thus the Bush Doctrine: the principle that the United States reserves the right to strike any nation that threatens it, imminently or not, without permission and without apology. The year just past saw the first major test of the Bush Doctrine in the war on Iraq, a massive military operation almost entirely carried out by the United States. What does Mr. Bush have to show for it? Consider:
Saddam Hussein is gone, and with him a serious threat to regional and world peace. The Arab Muslim world now has the opportunity to join the modern world by establishing its first real democracy.
Iran, Syria and Libya – terror-supporting nations pursuing weapons of mass destruction – have become dramatically more cooperative with the West. They have seen the alternative.
France and Germany, the chief Western opponents of the Bush Doctrine, saw their scheme to build a counterweight to American power dissolve in the face of Mr. Bush's resoluteness. The United States' role as leader of the West has been reaffirmed in light of European weakness and vacillation.
If this were simply a matter of international power politics, it would still be impressive. Don't get us wrong: We have been troubled by the maladroit bluntness with which this president has pursued international relations, and his insufficient attention to the legitimate concerns of other nations, to say nothing of his regrettable distaste for America's treaty obligations.
Nevertheless, it can't be denied that Mr. Bush has been effective in achieving his foreign-policy goals, despite tremendous obstacles that would have discouraged a less determined man. Moreover, it is laudable how he, in the best tradition of American presidents, has bound his foreign policy not to self-interested cynicism, but to a worthy moral ideal: the liberalization of the Middle East, and the draining of its fever swamps of virulent barbarism.
The president was bold enough to confess last year to the world that the nation he leads had sinned in years past by endorsing cruel Middle Eastern regimes for the sake of stability, and to vow that we would no more. By committing the United States to rebuilding Iraq into a country of law, order and democracy – a beacon of light to a region shrouded in the darkness of despotism – the president launched America's most ambitious and idealistic project since the Marshall Plan to reconstruct war-devastated Europe.
Plainly, he might not succeed in this risk-fraught mission. Even if he does, that victory over terrorism will not come during his presidency, perhaps not even during his lifetime, and then only after a long, hard slog for America and her people, especially those men and women under arms. But this almost certain guarantee that the fruits of his fight won't be his to savor only clarifies the nobility of Mr. Bush's undertaking.
Though he was not as consequential a presence in 2003 domestically as internationally, Mr. Bush's achievements on the home front solidified his party's position as the dominant force in contemporary American politics. Despite being thwarted by Democrats on his judicial nominations, the big domestic political story of the year was the passage of the mammoth Medicare reform bill by a Republican-led Congress. That entitlement legislation expanded Medicare to a degree not seen since the days of the Great Society. More to the point, it provided what Washington columnist Tony Blankley called "by far the most convincing evidence to date that the political center of gravity in Washington is shifting definitively to the GOP for the first time since the pre-FDR era."
The Republicans, led by Mr. Bush and his canny congressional lieutenants – Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, House Speaker Denny Hastert and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (another Texas Republican) – have institutionalized the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions. From the Roosevelt era until virtually yesterday, the Democratic Party controlled the real power in Washington, using (as columnist David Brooks pointed out) their control over the federal budget and the permanent institutions of the U.S. government to establish their own dominance – even under a series of Republican presidents. Today, they seem relatively weak and ideologically spent. That is, they are more or less where Republicans were for most of the 20th century. Oh sure, they howl about their treatment, just as principled conservatives wail and gnash their teeth over how Mr. Bush and the congressional Republicans have betrayed the conservative commitment to fiscal prudence and limited government (the Medicare reform will cost $2 trillion over 20 years). It is legitimate to worry that the Bush administration has burdened our grandchildren with the cost of such expansion. But as the Arab proverb goes, "The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on." Their complaints are, for the time being, useless. Though it was not all his doing, Mr. Bush, as leader of the governing party, became in 2003 the most powerful Republican president in living memory.
The qualities that guided Mr. Bush on the course he has set for his presidency and his nation are the gift of his West Texas heritage. During the 2000 campaign, he spoke of his hometown to reporters, telling them, "I would say people – if they want to understand me – need to understand Midland, and the attitude of Midland. The values Midland holds near to its heart are the same ones I hold near to my heart. The slogan 'The Sky's The Limit' was meant for everyone, not just a select few. Midlanders believed if you work hard and believe it will happen, anything can happen."
Like it or not, there is in Mr. Bush the perhaps-reckless courage of the wildcatters that made Midland famous. This is abetted by faith in God and country, the hope that all those who work hard and live right will prosper, and the conviction that good men are honor-bound to stand against evil, no matter what the odds – simple but enduring virtues also honored by the people of Midland. They are the virtues that sustain American civilization.
Those who loathe Mr. Bush and the course he has set for the nation deride him as a "cowboy." They have a point. This president doesn't stand on ceremony, and the traditional niceties of diplomatic protocol. Don't forget, though, that cowboys, however rough they appear to the effetely mannered, are the good guys.
Last year, Mr. Bush reminded us of Gary Cooper's town marshal in High Noon. Marshal Will Kane worked with patient endurance to rally the townspeople against an approaching villain and his gang. Nearly all found reason to avoid risking their lives to fight the terror; when put to the test, they made their accommodation with evil. Marshal Kane, facing the enemy armed only with his gun and faith in himself, held firm, and delivered the people he was pledged to protect.
Like the marshal, Mr. Bush this year laid everything he had on the line to fulfill an obligation he saw as sacred. Like the marshal, Mr. Bush is not a man of rhetorical gifts, but if actions speak louder than words, then 2003 demonstrated that the president possesses an oratorical eloquence unmatched on the world stage. Last year, Mr. Bush made sure that America's enemies as well as her friends got the message loud and clear: this great nation will defend herself, and fight for the ideals she stands for. Or, as a cowboy might put it: Don't mess with America. This is not universally popular, nor is it popular with many Americans, and not even with all Texans. To honor Mr. Bush as Texan of the Year is not necessarily to endorse all his policies, nor is it to approve without question his governing style. It is, however, to recognize that there was in the past 12 months no more important Texan, and that the principles informing his fateful decisions over the course of a fateful year came from the mind of a man with roots deep in the heart of Texas.
Mr. Bush's father, also once president, spoke of a "new world order." But this President Bush, tested by adversity faced by no president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, caused one to be born.
| Rank | Location | Receipts | Donors/Avg | Freepers/Avg | Monthlies | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 42 | Panama | 25.00 |
1 |
25.00 |
5 |
5.00 |
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Move your locale up the leaderboard!
Why?
(steely)
God Bless Texas :-)
Texan of the Year.
so cool, it had to be repeated
Indeed.
Thanks for the ping, hoosiermama, and the great post, Maria!
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