Morphing Bush into Mahogany


My first reaction upon completing the opening pages was, 'Surely he's doesn't really believe this?' Ah, but Barnes does believe it or at least he appears to for the purposes of political expediency. We find that despite our President's family spending decades in the nation's capital, Bush the Younger is 'an alien in the realm of the governing class.' The author gives a plethora of reasons for why this is the case such as the President's refusal to wear a tuxedo to social events more than once a year, and the way in which he called a terrorist a terrorist by delegitimizing the authority of Yasser Arafat. Some of Barnes' contentions are persuasive. Certainly, one can buy that George Bush is assertive in his interpersonal relationships along with his not being an intellectual captive of his cabinet. That he never had any desire to be part of the beltway 'in crowd' is also convincing, but concluding that he is a rebel is a non sequitur.


There have been many unusual things about the Bush presidency, but perhaps the oddest is why the political left hates him so. It is rather bewildering for those of us who see that, aside from foreign policy, he is more Jimmy Carter than Calvin Coolidge. He is the big spending liberal your parents warned you about. He even stands out within a Republican Party filled with '95 percenters''meaning guys who self-righteously denounce the Leviathan while eagerly embossing their names to $180 billion 'Republican' federal ventures which are reportedly far more liberty friendly than the Democrats 190 billion dollar versions of the same bill. Many of these Nixonians have never seen an airport flunky they didn't want to pin a badge to, yet W, a 105 percenter, makes them look like Ron Paul. Our President stares down the Democrats with steely determination while announcing, 'I'll see your 12 expanded district offices and raise you 70 new Directors of Diversity.' Bush may not be a Washington society man, but he certainly is a government man. Barnes spins against such conclusions by attempting to contrast him with another devotee of state coercion:



George W. Bush is the greatest boon that the Libertarian Party has ever had. His fiscal profligacy has made conservatives like myself alter our self-descriptions from conservative or conservative-libertarian to libertarian alone. It's hard to stand behind a man whose increases in discretionary spending surpass those of Lyndon Johnson. You knew the true extent of Bush's contamination of the right when John Kerry campaigned under the sober auspices of government having to let the people know what they could and could not afford. Far worse, this 'rebel-in-chief,' has enabled Washington to play 'daddy' to our states and localities by allowing bureaucrats to intrude on community practices.

Barnes concedes that Bush does not meet everyone's definition of conservative. He figures that on a 1 to 3 scale of conservatism, W rates a 2 as he supports traditional values and a hawkish foreign policy but is a promoter of obese government. Yet, this is a very skewed way in which to rate conservatism. No conservative worthy of the label would ever think that officialdom promotes the public good, which is exactly the view Bush endorses when he bloats the budgets of the civil service.


Bush is not a conservative in any real sense of the word. To corrupt that famous phrase by William F. Buckley, he jogs alongside history and yells, 'If we hurry, we can get in another mile before sundown.' He has done more to level differences between the two major parties than any other politician in recent memory. It is becoming progressively more difficult to argue with the opinion that there's not 'a dime's worth of difference' between them.

There was one more aspect to Barnes' fantasy-based initiative which made one feel that the text was more PR than historical analysis. The author's favorable comparison of Bush to Reagan was absurd and manages to offend. The current President'a glad-handing, all-things-negotiable, former cheerleader'is as close to the 40th President as Cold Duck is to Veuve Clicquot. Had Reagan led between 2000 and today, his desk would have large indentations on it from stamping a veto upon Congresses' porcine expenditures of the public's wealth. That Reagan was unsuccessful in stopping legislative spendthrifts of his era is more reflective of Democratic supremacy in both Houses than it was due to Bushian delusions about the efficacy of government intervention.


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Columns on STR: 33

Bernard Chapin is a writer from Chicago.