Posted on 05/22/2006 6:16:18 PM PDT by M. Thatcher
A much-esteemed, long-neglected friend sent an email this morning, which was delightful to recieve. At one point he mentioned this post from yesterday and wrote: I think (President Bush) has lost his bearings. but then, so did Moses from time to time, it’s quite understandable.
That made me wonder a little - has President Bush lost his bearings, or have we? Is it President Bush who has broken faith with “his base” or have they?
When I read my friend’s line, I thought of a line from Pride and Prejudice, in which Elizabeth Bennett says in new appreciation of Mr. Darcy, “In essentials, I believe, he is very much what he ever was.”
Perhaps I am a dim bulb, but President Bush has never surprised me, and that is probably why I have never felt let down or “betrayed” by him. He is, in essentials, precisely whom he has ever been. He did not surprise me when he managed, in August of 2001, to find a morally workable solution in the matter of Embryonic Stem Cells. He did not surprise me when, a month later, he stood on a pile of rubble and lifted a broken city from its knees. When my NYFD friends told me of the enormous consolation and strength he brought to his meetings with grieving families, I was not surprised. When the World Series opened in New York City and the President was invited to throw the first pitch, there was no surprise in his throwing (while wearing body armor) a perfect strike.
He did not surprise me when he spoke eloquently from the National Cathedral, or again before the Joint Houses of Congress, when he laid out the Bush Doctrine. He did not surprise me when he did it again at West Point, or when he went visionary at Whitehall (don’t try to find a tape of it, honey, that was ONE SPEECH C-Span never re-ran and the press quickly tried to move along from).
There were no surprises in President Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan to battle AlQaeda. There were no surprises when he went after an Iraq which everyone believed had WMD, an Iraq that had tried to assassinate an American President, an Iraq whose NYC consul did not lower its flag to half-mast after 9/11.
Actually, there was one surprise. He did surprise me by going back to the UN, and back to the UN, in that mythical “rush to war” we heard so much about. But then again, the effort in Iraq was never as “unilateral” as it had been painted.
President Bush did not surprise me when, faced with the scorn of “the world community” and those ever-ready A.N.S.W.E.R. marches which sprang up condemning him and Tony Blair, he stood firm. A lesser man, a mere politician, would have folded under such enormous pressure. I was not surprised when Bush did not. (Aside - it’s funny how they just can’t get a good-sized crowd together for those protests these days, innit? Everything about Iraq was “wrong” and everything about Iraq is “failure and quagmire” and yet, somehow, we all breathe a sigh of relief that the job is done, that Saddam is out of power and that Iraq, save a very small piece of troubled land, is - in remarkably short order (and despite the wild pronouncements of John Murtha) - tasting its first morsels of democracy and liberty, and showing promise.)
It never surprised me that Yassar Arafat, formerly the “most welcomed” foreign “Head of State” in the Clinton White House was not welcomed - ever - to the Bush White House.
I wasn’t surprised by the, not one, but two tax cuts he got passed through congress, or the roaring economy - and jobs - those tax cuts created. I wasn’t surprised when he killed the unending farce that is the Kyoto treaty (remember, the thing Al Gore and the Senate unanimously voted down under Clinton?), or when he killed U.S. involvement in the International Criminal Court, or when he told the UN they risked becoming irrelevent, or when he told the Congress and the world, “America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.” Not surprising.
I wasn’t surprised at all to watch him - in a foreign and hostile land - go rescue the Secret Service agent who was being detained and kept from protecting him. Or to see him shoot his cuffs, afterwards, and greet his host with a smile.
I was never surprised that he tried to “change the tone” or tried reaching across the aisle to invite onesuch as Ted Kennedy to help draft education reform, something none of his predecessors dared touch. Just as they never dared to try to reform social security or our energy policies. The feckless ones in Congress wouldn’t get the jobs done, unfortunately, but he is a president who at least tried to get something going on those “dangerous” issues. His senior prescription plan was unsurprising and it is helping lots of people.
I was not at all to surprised to see President Bush forego the “trembling lip photo-op” moment in which most world-leaders indulged after the Christmas Tsunami of 2004 in order to get real work done, to bring immediate help to that area by co-ordinating our own military (particularly our Naval support) with Australia and Japan. Stupid, stingy American. I was surprised, actually, to see him dance with free Georgians. I didn’t think he danced.
Let me tell you what has surprised me about George W. Bush. I have been surprised by his ability to keep from attacking-in-kind the “public servants” in Washington who - for five years - have not been able to speak of the American President with the respect he is due, by virtue of both his office and his humanity, because they are entralled with hate and owned by opportunism. I have been surprised that he has kept his committment to “changing the tone” even when it has long been clear that the only way the tone in Washington will ever change is if everyone named Bush or Clinton or Kennedy is cleared out and “career politicians” are shown the door and - it must be said - every university “School of Journalism” is converted to a daisy garden, maaaan. We are stardust. We are golden.
I wasn’t surprised when President Bush thought that New Orleans had dodged a bullet after Hurricane Katrina, and therefore let down his guard. After all, we all thought NOLA had done so. I wasn’t surprised that he had - similarly to his actions the year before, re Hurricane Charlie - asked the Democrat Governor of Louisiana (and the Mayor) to order evacuations and suggested to her that she put the issue under Fed control to speed up processes (she did not, btw for a long while). But I was surprised that, when the press picked and choosed their stories while launching an unprecedented, emotion-charged, often completely inaccurate (10,000 bodies!) attack on the President - the rising waters were all his fault and he was suddenly “the uncaring racist attempting genocide by indifference” the President did not fight back against the sea of made-up news and boilerplate, fantastic charges against him.
I was surprised, and what surprised me was the sense I had that Bush’s heart was broken. That he had done everything he could to keep faith with the nation, and that he could not believe that in a time of such terrible need, all some people could think of was, “how do we use this politically, how do we break Bush with this?” It can’t have helped that some of the hysteria was coming from the right as well as the left. Things changed after that, didn’t they? The press and the left doubled up their attacks, the far-right went very smug, and President Bush never has seemed to have regrouped his spirit.
A month later, I wasn’t surprised (although some - mostly the hard-right “I’m a Conservative before I’m anything and he’d better serve me” types - clearly were) when he nominated Harriett Miers to the SCOTUS. In fact, I’d predicted it. Up until that moment, every person President Bush had nominated to pretty much any position had won accolades from the beamish far-right, but Miers did not. She wasn’t one of their guys or gals. She wasn’t Luttig, she wasn’t Rogers-Brown. Harriet Miers? Damn that Bush! The denouncements came fast and furious and suddenly “the base” with which George W. Bush had not broken faith…broke faith with him. Suddenly they were as willing to call him a moron and an idiot as any KozKid.
Imagine that. Imagine being the guy who has given his base one splendid nominee after another, in all manner of posts, make a nomination he thinks appropriate only to find that “base” coming out with both guns, defaming his nominee and directing all manner of insult at himself. President Bush is nothing if not loyal; his loyalty is often his downfall. When he asked for a little trust (which he had surely earned) a little loyalty and a little faith, from “the base,” he got kicked in the groin, over and over again, for daring to think differently, for falling out of lockstep with his policy-wonk “betters.”
That had to be bitter, for him. At that point Bush, unchanged in essentials, might have wondered if his conservative “base” had become a bit over-confident and loose-hipped, so cock-sure of their majority (not that congress used it) so certain of their own brilliance that they were beginning to believe they didn’t need him; that he wasn’t conservative enough, after all, and that the next president was going to be the solid, “uncompassionate” conservative they’d really wanted all along. The president who had delivered one gift after another to his base asked them to trust him, and his base sneered.
Then of course, the DPW debacle was launched and once again the far-right, his “base” went beserk, again, for very dubious reasons. Buster was the one who pointed out to me, then, that in this matter President Bush was being entirely consistent with who he had always been and that his defense of the sale was not unsound, nor unprecedented. The right didn’t care! They stomped their feet and went DU again. Even Rush Limbaugh couldn’t control them. The left, on the other hand, which should have supported the president - they would have had he been anyone else - simply exploited what they could of it.
And now, the Great Big Immigration Imbroglio of ‘06 has turned “the base” quite vicious. President Bush is no longer simply a moron or an idiot to his base, he is a bad man. He is a bad American. He is a bad president. Everything he does now, is wrong. As yesterday’s WSJ pointed out, Bush is closer to the deified Ronald Reagan on this issue than anyone on the right wants to admit. And they’d never do to Reagan what they are doing to Bush. Let’s look at a few Reagan quotes on the nature of those “far-right” conservatives, mmkay?
‘When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn’t like it.
‘Compromise was a dirty word to them and they wouldn’t face the fact that we couldn’t get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don’t get it all, some said, don’t take anything.
‘I’d learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: ‘I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.’
‘If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that’s what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.’
Mr. Reagan, I salute you. I did not vote for you. Twice. I came too late to appreciation of you. But sir, some of us have been saying the same thing to “the base” for a few weeks now. They’re still not listening. They won’t, I imagine, until they absolutely must. And perhaps it will take a staggering defeat for that to happen.
President Bush’s immigration policies have not changed materially since he was Governor of Texas. You folks knew that when you elected him, twice. He has not changed, cannot change, because his policies arise not from his poll numbers but from his convictions and his conscience. You used to love that about him. Can everything, everything that needs to be done BE done, and all as you would have it done, in the real world, a world of bitter bipartisanship and a corrupted press?
Some say that the GOP should consider “losing in ‘06 to win in ‘08.” Some conservatives say that they’re going to not vote - to sit out an election or vote for a third party candidate to “teach the GOP a lesson.”
The far-right gwwwwarks like a cracker-obsessed parrot: Bush has abandoned the base, he’s abandoned the base, he’s abandoned the base.
Ever stop to think maybe the president feels his base has abandoned him, that uncontent with 75%, they’ve simply moved beyond reason? Ever stop to think that while you’re calling the president every despicable name in the book and demanding his fealty or you’ll “teach him a lesson,” that perhaps there is a lesson you need to learn? That a good man, disinterested in merely laughing or crying for the camera for 8 years and looking to do a difficult job in the face of unprecedented hate, unprecedent speed of communication, unprecedented global instability, unprecedented backstabbing from within his own CIA, deserves some loyalty and the benefit of a doubt as he tries to bring you the 75% you so callously spit back at him as insufficient?
We do not know everything we think we know. Nothing is static; everything is in flux, and it is very likely that more is at work here, on many levels, than any of us can dream. There are things seen and unseen. Think about it.
Here is a question, and I’ll be writing on it some more during the week, but start thinking about it, now: HOW DO YOU RECEIVE A GOOD?
How you receive a good has a lot to do with whether any more “good” comes your way. The Conservatives got a “good” in 2000 and 2004; they’re receiving it very badly, indeed. I think the throwing-under-the-bus-of-George-W-Bush by “the base” is one of the most shameful things I have ever witnessed in all my years of watching politics, from both sides of the political spectrum. How do you receive a good?
President Bush has never surprised me. He is, in essentials, the man he ever was. It does not surprise me that he is a Christian man living a creed before he is a President, that he is a President before he is a Conservative. It seems to me precisely the right order of things.
You “base” have received a great good. You’ve forgotten it. Continue to do so at your - at all our - great peril.
"Yes or no answer please: On September 12, 2001, did it ever even cross your mind that we would go over four and a half years without getting hit again?"
Yes or no. Did it ever occur to you On September 12, 2001 that our border would be left open to an invasion of terrorists, thieves, and welfare scrounges?
The prosecution of the WOT by itself is worth having him around.
Second...to point out just one area, he's the best pro-lifer we've had in office since Roe vs. Wade. Even better than Reagan. But then, we even have pro-lifers on this board who want to treat him like Satan.
To your paras:
No, it's not at all asinine! The "BS meter" is in fact raging on posts such as yours, not mine. Reagan faced the Cold War which had been going on for decades and knew how to defeat it. He didn't allow communists to fester within our nation. Bush has done a great job, phenominal in fact, led by military members as it should be, in Iraq and Afghanistan! But he's been absolutely pathetic here at home.
He's created an entire department with a name suggesting that it targets the same goals here at home, yet sees most of its funding going towards things utterly unrelated to even basic safety let alone terror safety and protection from terrorism. He doesn't appear to care who crosses our southern border.
Lincoln as well knew the threat to the nation but also didn't leave the back door open and executed the plan to success. Bush seems more concerned that Iraq and Afghanistan become a democracies than whether or not the United States continues to remain a viable Republic!
To para 2: It's a real shame that we're only doing a fraction of that prosecution of the WOT here at home, eh! Or perhaps your plans are to move to Iraq at some point?
At this rate there may be no nation to protect in 25 years. Do you honestly believe that if we have 150 millioin Mexicans and other foreigners actually living within the CONUS that our nation won't become some sort of socialist mecca? Please! Spare us both.
To para 3: He's been a great pro-lifer. But you know, at last check abortions were still legal in all 50 states! Or am I missing something.
Talk about a one-issue stance in a tug-o-war that isn't budging! Meanwhile, will it even matter whether this nation is pro life or not if we're overrun by Mexicans and the soon to be influx of other people from nations around the world that will be using Mexico as a "gateway to the US?" Or don't your sensibilities allow you to see that that's coming?
Probably wouldn't have cottoned to them very well.
Still doesn't get GWB an invite to the big table with Reagan, Washington, Jefferson, and Madison.
...McCain and GWB would've both though been reprimanded by Thomas J for their parts in establishing the CFR charade.
I do not, sir, because these comments do not apply to me personally. 'Twas only venting steam. :O)
IF you consider liberlism and his liberlism that great, then boo hooie for you dude. I am not impressed.
On my honor, I say the following: If you answer my question first, I will answer yours in an honest and straightforward manner.
Let's see if you can do the same.
But it's not reality, and meanwhile your purity of "principle" makes it easier for Democrats to gain power. that's a sucker game. If you ewant party discipline, make it stick in the primaries and support the guys in the House instead of throwing your vote in the trash.
They were nowhere near the same scale, the Al Qaida connections are dubious or non-existent and they were all situations that were virtually impossible to detect with the intel apparatus that has been preventing the larger attacks. 9/11 was like Pearl Harbor redux; the attacks you've named here would not even be remarkable if the perps had not been Muslims and had instead been "lone nut" types. In fact, it should give you pause that we have only been hit a few times by these individuals in four and a half years; despite my endorsement of the president's security performance, I've been expecting waves of suicide bombers since about the time I realized Al Qaida was having trouble pulling off big time ops in the U.S.
We're getting hit on a daily basis in Iraq as well; I don't necessarily agree with taking so narrow a view as to say that just because we've outsourced terrorist targets to Iraq and that it is military personnel that are bearing the brunt of it, that we aren't getting hit.
I say the following as a veteran: It's as much our job to do the dying as it is our job to do the killing. Nobody would ever have said FDR was a failure because Nazis were killing U.S. troops on the fields of Normandy instead of killing civilians in New Jersey. We went somewhere that the enemy used for training, harbor and funding. If that costs us lives that is the nature of war, and the warriors are professional volunteers who know exactly what they're getting into.
Lastly, you know I wasn't asking about some idiot driving an SUV into something or Marines getting killed on a battlefield when I asked my question. Let's try again: On september 12, 2001, did you think wee'd go four and a half years without Al Qaida launching another mass casualty attack on our soil? I know I expected them to hit us again in days or weeks.
Sure you don't. I'm sure Will Pitt wasn't bluffing either...
Well, if anybody said Dubya was as good as Washington and Madison, they're nuts. But they're not any less nuts than people who are willing to throw him under the bus right now.
Fair enough!
Oh, I'm sorry, I made the mistake of thinking someone who served in the Army long enough to retire would be smart enough to grasp a subtle point. Actually, that wasn't even a subtle point, so that makes it even more sad that you didn't get it.
Lincoln expanded the federal government and you can find plenty of Freepers who'll tell you he killed federalism and might as well have been a Democrat. TR expanded the federal government even more and made our foreign policy much more interventionist. Both of them in their time had detractors just like you who focused on one failing or another and couldn't see that they were good men doing a good job. And they were great. So is Dubya. And someday, the prattle of people like you will look as silly as the prattle of those who called Lincoln "the original gorilla" and other such names.
tThe fact remains that considering his job performance without 9/11 and the WOT is like considering Reagan without the Cold War, FDR without WWII, or Lincoln without the Civil War. For eaxmple, if one considers Reagan without the Cold War, there's some tax hikes and amnesty to deal with...but only an idiot would boil Reagan down to that.
But he's been absolutely pathetic here at home.
You're pegging the BS meter again. Go back and read the article, and tell me all those domestic decisions are "pathetic."
It's a real shame that we're only doing a fraction of that prosecution of the WOT here at home, eh! Or perhaps your plans are to move to Iraq at some point?
Um...are you aware we've gone four and a half years without a terror attack on our soil?
Do you honestly believe that if we have 150 millioin Mexicans and other foreigners actually living within the CONUS that our nation won't become some sort of socialist mecca?
I honestly believe my point was that his performance overall is very good. Sell your "immigration is not what it should be therefore he's a bad president" story somewhere else. In fact, while you're at it, let me know what any other president since Eisenhower has done to improve the immigration situation.
He's been a great pro-lifer. But you know, at last check abortions were still legal in all 50 states! Or am I missing something.
Oh, do you have a suggestion for what the Prez could do to outlaw abortion tomorrow? I'd love to hear it! I'd also love to hear where you think the abortion debate will be in 50 years if we can't get constructionists through the Senate because people like you handed the Congress to the Dems on a silver platter.
Instead of regaling us with stories of the fortunes you're going to spend defending your honor from charges of insanity (not a little too worked up over that at all, are you?) why don't you give us some evidence that you have some small measure of guts and answer the following question:
Yes or no: On September 12, 2001, did it ever even cross your mind that we would go over four and a half years without getting hit again? (Note, if you think that wording is a trick, you can feel free to answer this question instead: Did you think we'd even go a year before being hit again?)
Just wear a hat that says "Administration Talking Points" on it, would ya. LOL
I really don't feel like even reasoning with you anymore. I have no idea where you're drawing some of these notions from implying my positions, but it ain't me.
You're a perfect case-in-point as to what's wrong with our entire system. Your utterly one-dimensional reasoning and narrowmindedness have reduced you to a stooge.
I'm mystified..where did I imply any position on your part in post 675? most of my post is questions, not descriptions of what you supposedly believe.
As for being a stooge and not wanting to reason with me...Seeing that, especailly after I asked you to cite some of those "pathetic" domestic failures, makes me think of the phrase "Declare victory and withdraw." I think this is more about you reaching for the ejection handle than anything else, but if it floats your boat...
Yes'm...
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