It's Not Personal

A Washington tell-all book is seldom a good place to look for political wisdom. But, whether he meant to or not, former White House speechwriter Matt Latimer’s new book, “Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor,” makes at least one important point: politics should be about ideas, not personalities.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case recently. Conservatives coined a term, Bush Derangement Syndrome, to explain the fierce opposition many liberals had to George W. Bush personally. It wasn’t simply his policies they opposed, it was him.

They hated the way he walked, the way he talked. He exhibited “faux cowboy swagger and mangled prose,” wrote commentator Leonard Doyle in Britain’s The Independent. “I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it,” wrote Jonathan Chait in The New Republic in 2003. There was a book and a movie (not based on the book) about assassinating Bush.

Here’s the big problem, though. Liberals also managed to paint Bush as the face of conservatism, when in fact he was the face of the Republican Party. There’s a big difference.

Latimer seems to slip into the same trap, taking pointless swipes at Bush advisors including Ed Gillespie, John Bolton and, prominently, Karl Rove. “His operation went on a power trip -- and was ineffective at advancing conservative ideals,” Latimer wrote in a Sept. 20 Washington Post op-ed to promote his book “After Rove took over policy chores, the administration passed no significant conservative legislation through a Republican Congress.”

That’s correct, but misunderstands why Rove failed. It wasn’t a lack of intelligence. It was because he was attempting the impossible: Build a permanent (Republican) governing coalition.

On issue after issue during the Bush administration (Medicare part D, earmarks) Republicans moved to the center or the left. Too many abandoned their conservative principles and embraced big government, hoping that would keep them in office forever. Small wonder voters disposed of so many GOP incumbents in recent elections.

Of course, it’s now liberals who seem to think they’ll be in power forever. Although, of course, they won’t.

“A few months ago, it seemed as though the GOP had been decimated by an ascendant President Obama,” as Latimer writes. “It appears, for the moment, that Republicans have a new opening. And critical to Republicans’ efforts to reintroduce themselves to the American people is a clear discussion of what became of the conservative movement over the past eight years.”

But, again, it wasn’t conservative ideas that failed in recent years. It was big-government Republican strategy. Where Bush acted conservatively, by cutting taxes, pressing for free trade and passing the PATRIOT Act, for example, he succeeded. Those measures boosted the economy and helped protect the homeland. Where Bush promoted big government, he failed.

Of course, this trend toward making politics personal goes far beyond Bush. You can also see it when a newspaper seems to support a candidate because of the letter after his name. Take this year’s race for governor in Virginia. During the spring primary, The Washington Post endorsed R. Creigh Deeds over two other (better-funded) Democratic candidates. That endorsement was seen as a big factor in his upset victory.

The newspaper said a key reason it backed him was that, “Deeds has made clear that he would make transportation his first priority.” But many months have rolled by, and Deeds still has no transportation plan.

Just this week, he admitted as much in a Post op-ed. “The day after I’m elected, I will begin assembling a bipartisan commission to craft a comprehensive transportation package,” Deeds wrote. But that’s too late.

A Virginia governor’s strongest day is Election Day. Because the incumbent can serve only one term, lawmakers know they can run out the clock once the governor is in office. Deeds seems to be preparing to repeat the mistake made by current governor Tim Kaine, who was elected without a traffic plan but immediately convened a “listening tour” that, predictably, failed to accomplish anything.

Kaine grew so bored with Virginia that, in January, he accepted a second full-time job as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He’s spent much of the past year traveling the country. He’s promised to fight for his party “now and forever” in all 50 states. But Virginians wish he’d do less fighting and more governing. After all, that’s what we’re paying him for.

In any event, look for the Post to endorse Creigh Deeds (although it may say it’s doing so “reluctantly”) in the weeks ahead. If it does, it will have put party affiliation ahead of political ideas.

Conservatives aren’t always the most photogenic of people. We sometimes stumble over syntax and, yes, even have been known to “swagger” a bit. But that’s because our ideas are sound, and seem to work whenever they’re tried. Conservatism isn’t personal. But (unlike tell-all books) it makes for good politics.

If the author is trying to explain why the left hates George Bush, he missed the mark. Their reaction to Bush was echoed in their reaction to Sarah Palin and for the same reason. Their reaction is irrational and too visceral to be but an involuntary revulsion. That produces hatred and hatred is but another word or bigotry.

The left viscerally hates both George Bush and Sarah Palin because they are both unapologetic Christians and their lives betoken their faith. George Bush conquered his alcoholism through an epiphany experienced with no less A hated Christian figure than Billy Graham. Sarah Palin committed the unforgivable sin, she knowingly carried a mongoloid baby to term. Both people are walking, living expressions of their faith. Why does generate such hatred? Because they are also living, walking reproaches to the very eschatology of the leftist.

Some time ago I published the following reply which starts off considering the elements of humility as those elements might apply to George Bush. Rather than edit out references to my interlocutor in that reply, I leave the piece unedited. The essential point is that Christian humility, properly understood, reveals the God playing of the leftist to be grotesque. That messenger must be killed. Here is that reply:

"Christians are often mischaracterized, sometimes deliberately so, on these issues that have to do with humility. The best definition I ever heard of humility is, "knowing your place in line and taking it." I like this definition because it expresses an affirmative duty as well as a negative passivity. It is in the latter expression of humility that Christians are often tangled up by their critics. Sniveling handwringing is not humility. If one has an acquaintanceship with the whole of the Sermon on the Mount one sees A Christ who is manly and virile in defense of his father's righteousness.

The Father-son relationship suggests a vertical component. I find it useful to think of these things along a vertical and horizontal axis. If I lay your questions on this axis with the putative answers which are self evident it is apparent that you have the matter of humility right side up. True humility comes from surrender to a higher vertical power which, contrary to the false notions of atheists (read leftists), does not enfeeble the humble man but frees him, enriches him, and wonderfully empowers him.

A humble man who is surrendered vertically has a polar star with which to find his way. It then becomes possible for him to place others in their proper position in the world around him. He knows where his place in line is. George Bush, for example, knew his place when it came to restoring the dignity and honor of the office of the President of the United States.

But if our subject has no vertical component, he must key off his fellow man to establish his place and find his way. In this circumstance the temptation to manipulate your fellow man to enhance your own position becomes nearly irresistible. If you are a narcissist, as many believe Barak Obama is, your horizontal world becomes a happy hunting ground for manipulation. He becomes so good at it that he put out all the signals which so deceived those who believe that humility is a matter of horizontal adjustment.

So to put the Teddy Kennedy example on the graph, you are quite correct, George Bush even as President, and certainly as titular head of the Republican Party, had no warrant to forgive Teddy Kennedy's bitch slaps against Republican cheeks. George Bush's proper role was to defend his father's righteousness, that is, to defend the principles of the party and the country which he undertook to defend and protect. Even the slurs against himself might arguably be the kind that he must react against because in that case he must take his place in line protect the office of president of the United States of America.

So the corollary to this answers your second question, we have no right to arbitrate another man's vertical alignment. We cannot insist that someone else turn his cheek. You are right, that is socialism because it is at the very root of the socialist mentality: they would be God.

The socialist operates purely on a horizontal plane except when he is trying to impose his will on others in which case he usurps the ultimate vertical position because he is a stranger to the first and second commandments. In fact that is why he is an atheist in the first place, so that he can play God. That is why he viscerally hates Sarah Palin-because she has got herself so manifestly aligned properly on a vertical- horizontal axis. She is a walking reproach to his grotesquely miss-positioned self. It is noteworthy that leftists had the same reaction to George Bush.

The Christian call to humility is a vertical adventure between God and man and it is an individual activity-not a group effort. There is no wholesale salvation in my Christian dogma, each man must come to it on his own. Socialism is essentially a group activity in which ultimately the individual disappears into the mass.

I do not think Christianity offers the slightest hope to socialism. But it is interesting to know that the Great Revival of the 1740s created a climate of individual freedom in colonial America which led directly to the Declaration of Independence."

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.