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Bush to World: Get Real

The consensus on President Bush's second inaugural address seems to be that it was a very idealistic speech, which it was. As to its meaning, however, the president's critics and supporters alike are divided. The New York Times editorial board yawns that Bush simply fulfilled his "role, which was to summon the generalities that unite us":

Once in a long while, a newly sworn-in president moves beyond the deeply felt but slightly bland oratory and says something that people will repeat long after he has moved into history. Mr. Bush's speech did not seem in danger of becoming immortal, but its universal intent suited the day.

The Times' news story, however, says that Bush delivered a memorable speech--but says it in a hilariously backhanded way:

His speech was infused with a deliberate sense of timelessness, and it often seemed as though his words were directed as much to history as to the crowd of invited Republicans, who huddled on the snow-covered lawn beneath the West Front of the Capitol.

And of course it's true that many of the themes the president sounded have been heard in inaugural addresses before, including JFK's in 1961 and Bill Clinton's in 1993. (Homer nods: Yesterday's item, since corrected, erroneously said 1997.)

Yet in part because Bush's rhetoric went further and in part because he has already undertaken so many deeds to match his words, others are accusing him of overreaching. Agence France-Presse reports on British media reaction:

The liberal Guardian summed up the concern in a commentary under the headline "Fireworks in Washington, despair around the world."

It compared the massive fireworks display used in the inauguration celebration to the ordnance US "occupation forces" would expend in Iraq in 24 hours.

"The contrasts between this uninhibited triumphalism and the real world are as wide as the American continent," it said. . . .

In its lead editorial, the conservative Daily Telegraph also wondered whether Bush's brave words could survive the test of reality.

Bush's "ringing encomium of freedom in his inaugural address yesterday faces a cruel and immediate test in Iraq," the Telegraph said.

Also among the skeptics is our own Peggy Noonan:

[Bush declared:] "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world."

Ending tyranny in the world? Well that's an ambition, and if you're going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn't expect we're going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it's earth. . . .

One wonders if [those in the White House] shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.

Carping from the antidemocrats and anti-Republicans who make up the left is to be expected, but criticism from the likes of the Telegraph and Noonan can't be easily dismissed. A couple of points, though, seem worth making.

First, those who fault Bush for an excess of idealism, or an insufficiency of realism, are not grappling with the conceptual breakthrough of his speech, which is to declare the idealism-realism dichotomy a false choice. A key passage:

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

The lesson Bush drew from Sept. 11 is that "realism" is unrealistic--that the "stability" that results from an accommodation with tyranny is illusory. To Bush, there is no fundamental conflict between American ideals and American interests; by promoting the former, we secure the latter. Maybe he'll turn out to be wrong, but for now the burden ought to be on those who, in the wake of Sept. 11, hold to a pre-9/11 view of what is "realistic."

Noonan is right that "ending tyranny in the world" is a fantastically ambitious aspiration, one that isn't going to be realized anytime soon. But Bush didn't promise to do it in the next four years or even in our lifetimes. He said it was "the ultimate goal" and "the concentrated work of generations."

"We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery," Bush said--not the only point in his speech in which he invoked the struggle against slavery. And it isn't the first speech in which he made that connection. As he put it in a July 2003 speech at Senegal's Goree Island:

My nation's journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over. The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all. . . .

With the power and resources given to us, the United States seeks to bring peace where there is conflict, hope where there is suffering, and liberty where there is tyranny.

Slavery was once an accepted fact of life, and ending it even in America was an epic struggle. Today, however, slavery has been legally abolished everywhere in the world, and it is still practiced only in a few backward lands. One could argue that slavery still exists, in different forms: child labor, prostitution, communism. Perfection is indeed impossible, but progress is still worth pursuing.