Posted on 07/21/2004 6:42:20 AM PDT by dead
Here are some things that Christopher Nunneley, a conservative activist in Birmingham, Alabama, believes. That some time in June, apparently unnoticed by the world media, George Bush negotiated an end to the civil war in Sudan. That Bill Clinton is "lazy" and Teresa Heinz Kerry is an "African colonialist." That "we don't do torture," and that the School of the Americas manuals showing we do were "just ancient U.S. disinformation designed to make the Soviets think that we didn't know how to do real interrogations."
Chris Nunneley also believes something crazy: that George W. Bush is a nice guy.
It's a rather different conclusion than many liberals would make. When we think of Bush's character, we're likely to focus on the administration's proposed budget cuts for veterans, the children indefinitely detained at Abu Ghraib, maybe the story of how the young lad Bush loaded up live frogs with firecrackers in order to watch them explode.
Conservatives see it differently.
"He's very compassionate," says Chris, an intelligent man who's open-minded enough to make listening to liberals a sort of hobby. "If you look at the way he's bucked the far right: I mean, $15 billion for AIDS in Africa!" He speaks at the church services of blacks, and "you don't fake that. That's not just a photo op."
Of course, two years after Bush made his pledge, only 2 percent of the AIDS money has been distributed (in any event, it will mainly go to drug companies). And appearing earnest in the presence of African Americans has been a documented Bush strategy for wooing moderate voters since the beginning.
So what does a conservative say when such "nice guy" jazz is challenged? Say, when you ask whether a nice guy would invade a country at the cost of untold innocent lives on the shakiest of pretenses? Or, closer to home, whether he would (as Bush did in late 2000) go on a fishing trip while his daughter was undergoing surgery, and use the world's media to mockingly order her to clean her room while he was away? Doesn't signify with Chris. "If you're in one camp, the idea of being firm, 'tough love,' is very popular. If you're in another, you can say, 'Well, that's just mean!' On my side, well, I like the whole idea of 'tough love.' "
This is a journey among the "tough love" camp. The people who, even in the face of evidence of his casual cruelty, of his habitual and unchristian contempt for weakness, love George Bush unconditionally: love him when he is tender, love him when he is tough—but who never, ever are tough on him.
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On July 15, the Bush-Cheney campaign organized 6,925 "Parties for the President" in supporters' homes nationwide. I chose to attend in Portland, Oregon. The right love to believe the whole world is against them. In a county where Ralph Nader got a quarter of the votes of George Bush and Al Gore well over double, the sense of martyrdom is especially fragrant: Portland's conservatives are like others anywhere, only more so. One leader told me that here, it's the conservatives who are oppressed by the gays.
They certainly love them some George Bush.
Twelve people gather on the houseboat of Bruce Broussard, a perennially failed candidate popular among local conservatives for, well, his race: He is African American. First the group hears Laura Bush on a conference call. ("All of us know what makes George a great president. He has the courage of his convictions, the willingness to make the tough decisions and stick with them.") Then, they get a bewilderingly disjointed address from their host (he hits some key points from his recent Senate platform: presidential terms of six years instead of four, a cabinet-level Department of Senior Citizens with himself as secretary). Finally, beef-and-cheese dip loading down a plateful of Mrs. Broussard's homemade tortilla chips, I open the floor to the question of why they personally revere George Bush.
Ponytailed Larry, who wears the stripes of a former marine gunnery sergeant on his floppy hat, bursts into laughter; it's too obvious to take seriously. "Honesty. Truth. Integrity," he says upon recovering. "I don't think there's any difference between the governor of Texas and the president of the United States."
Gingerly, I offer one difference: The governor ran for president on a platform of balanced budgets, then ran the federal budget straight into the red.
Responds Larry (of the first president since James Garfield with a Congress compliant enough never to issue a single veto): "Well, it's interesting that we blame the person who happens to be president for the deficit. As if he has any control over the legislature of the United States."
Larry's wife, Tami Mars, the Republican congressional nominee for Oregon's third district, proposes a Divine Right of Eight-Year Terms: "Let the man finish what he started. Instead of switching out his leadership—because that's what the terrorists are expecting."
Larry is asked what he thinks of Bush's budget cuts for troops in the field. He's not with Bush on everything: "I hope he reverses himself on that."
I note that he already has, due to Democratic pressure.
Faced with an existential impossibility—giving the Democrats credit for anything—he retreats into a retort I'll hear again and again tonight: Nobody's perfect. "I don't think we're going to find a situation in which we find a person with which we're 100 percent comfortable."
Then he reels off a litany of complaints about Bush. "Horrible underemployment situation . . . the big-business aspect of the Republican Party I have some issues with."
The next thing I hear is the last refuge of the cornered conservative: a non sequitur fulmination against the hippie Democrats.
"Having said that, what's your option? To have more bike trails?"
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The vibe at my next stop is different. None of the people at Kitty and Tom Harmon's bungalow are stupid. Instead they are the kind of "well-informed" that comes from overlong exposure to conservative media: conservatives who construct towers of impressive intellectual complexity on toothpick-weak foundations. My hosts are Stepford-nice (Mom sports "Hello Kitty!" seat covers in her car and loads me down with shortbread for the flight home; Dad shows off the herb garden he'll use to season my eggs if I consent to stay the night). But everyone present shows a glint of steel when their man's character is challenged.
"One of the reasons I respect this president is that he is honest. I believe that after eight years, the dark years of the Clinton administration, we finally have a man in the White House who respects that office and who speaks honestly."
The speaker is Christina, an intense, articulate, and passionate publicist.
"Such a refreshing change for the country. People believe in the president."
I don't mention recent poll figures suggesting that more Americans believe John Kerry than Bush when it comes to terrorism.
After affirming "I still believe that there are weapons of mass destruction"—the commonplace is beyond challenge—Christina displays another facet of the conservative fantasy: Going into Iraq, she says, "is not the sort of thing one does if one wants to be popular. . . . He doesn't stick his finger in the wind." I don't challenge that point, either—though if I did I might ask why Bush scheduled the divisive debate over the intervention for the height of the 2002 campaign season, more certain of what Andrew Card called "new products" than his father, who held off deliberation on the first Iraq war until after the 1990 congressional elections.
Instead I challenge the grandmotherly lady sitting on the piano bench.
Says Delores: "There is an agenda—to get rid of God in our country."
Chirps the reporter: Certainly not on the part of John Kerry, who once entertained dreams of entering the priesthood.
I'm almost laughed out of the room.
I ask why Kerry goes to mass every week if he's trying to get rid of God. "Public relations!" a young man calls out from across the room. "Same reason he does everything else." Cue for Delores to repeat something a rabbi told her: "We have to stand together, because this is what happened in Europe. You know—once they start taking this right and that right. And you have the Islamic people . . . "
She trails off. I ask whether she's referring to the rise of fascism. "We're losing our rights as Christians: yes. And being persecuted again."
I ask why so many liberals believe the administration lies, if there might be anything to the suspicions. What about the report of the Los Angeles Times that morning, that the State Department dismissed 28 of the claims the White House demanded Colin Powell bring before the U.N. as without foundation in fact?
Delores: "You make mention of a paper in Los Angeles that made such and such a report; well, that doesn't mean it's accurate or complete or unbiased."
I respond that the report came from a memo reproduced in the recent report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican-dominated. I'm not sure whether she hasn't heard me or just has decided to change the subject. "John Kerry attended a party in which there was bad language, bad humor, being evidenced in all quarters!" she cries. Kitty chimes in: "And Kerry said it reflects American values!"
I ask Tom what role he sees in America for nonbelievers. "Well, if people are of an opinion that their God is supreme and are willing to burn your house down to prove it or dismantle your car to prove it or make all sorts of loud noises, disturbing the peace, and say that they have a right to do that in the name of God. . . ." he begins, in his best Mr. Rogers voice. Later I parse out what the hell he was talking about. I was asking about atheists. But Tom understood "nonbeliever" according to the premise that God is exclusively Judeo-Christian. It wasn't about whether you believe in anything, but whether you dared diverge from his belief.
Walking me to my car (he insisted), Tom, who works for a construction conglomerate, reaches for a favorite metaphor to describe George Bush: linoleum. "You know: Usually you get a microfilm of the color, and if you drop a plate on it you discover it's an ugly-looking floor. Then linoleum came out—the pattern goes through the entire one-eighth of material. You can drop a plate on it, and the color is true all the way down!"
His face glows. He gets a far-off look in his eyes. That's his Bush.
It's like a scene from a John Waters movie.
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What all does it mean? The right-wing website Free Republic is infamous for galvanizing harassment campaigns against ideological enemies, but it also has a lighter side: a robust culture of George W. kitsch. "Freepers" display and study the famous photograph of Bush embracing Ashley Faulkner, whose mother perished on 9-11, a woeful, iconic look on his face ("The protective encirclement of her head by President Bush's arm and hand is the essence of fatherly compassion," Freeper luvbach1 writes); the ladies exchange snaps of the president in resolute pose, rendering up racy comments about his sexiness; they reference an image of Bush jogging alongside a soldier wounded in Iraq like it's a Xerox of his very soul. "He's the kind of guy who's going to remember to call a soldier who's lost a leg," one citizen of the Free Republic reflects, "and go jogging with him when he gets a replacement prosthetic." Revering Bush has become, for people like this, a defining component of conservative ideology.
Once I interviewed a Freeper who told me he first became a committed conservative after discovering the Federalist Papers. "I absolutely devoured them, recognizing, my God, these things were written hundreds of years ago and they still stand up as some of the most intense political philosophy ever written."
I happen to agree, so I asked him—after he insisted Bush couldn't have been lying when he claimed to have witnessed the first plane hit the World Trade Center live on TV, after he said the orders to torture in Iraq couldn't have possibly come from the top, all because George Bush is too fundamentally decent to lie—what he thinks of the Federalists' most famous message: that the genius of the Constitution they were defending was that you needn't base your faith in the country on the fundamental decency of an individual, because no one can be trusted to be fundamentally decent, which was why the Constitution established a government of laws, not personalities.
"If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary . . . "
Conservatives see something angelic in George Bush. That's why they excuse, repress, and rationalize away so much.
And that is why conservatism is verging on becoming an un-American creed.
I don’t know why he doesn’t post his articles himself, but I don’t mind doing it. He amuses me.
Huh?
You choose to characterize the stated reasons, and the implied ones, as "shaky". No one can stop you from thinking so; the will to believe is enough to overcome facts most of the time, for most of us. That is why it is silly to take anyone's objectivity on faith - yours or mine. "Trust but verify."Or, closer to home, whether he would (as Bush did in late 2000) go on a fishing trip while his daughter was undergoing surgery, and use the world's media to mockingly order her to clean her room while he was away?"I wonder why you characterize the number of innocent lives as "untold." Is that because anyone is preventing an accounting, or is it because you wouldn't be happy with a conservative's definition of "innocent"? Probably it is not because you recognize that Saddam's henchmen were raping and murdering "innocent" Iraqis - and their children - at such a rate as to make the "untold cost in innocent life" of stopping that horror null or negative.
It seems that most of the children of presidents find that status to be limiting, and have some tendency to break the mold just as preachers children tend to do. For example, R. Prescott Reagan has never gone out of his way for political "Reaganites," and is expected to speak at the Democratic convention. But it is reported that the Bush twins have decided to campaign for their father's reelection. Notwithstanding the obvious opportunity which would beckon to either of them to profit from opposing their father's politics.One is left to wonder whether his daughter's surgery was life-threatening or quite otherwise - and whether his daughter took the order to clean her room not as "mocking" but as a loving, self-depracatory jest.
I think he must have been banned.FReeper Perlstein (since August 16, 2003) posted here as recently as 5/18/04
For your benefit, Rick.......
The goodness of George W. Bush, through his faith in God, and redemption through His Son, Jesus Christ, shines a light into the dark world of the left.
The fact that they are offended, and write articles such as this one, reveals much more about their own weakness than it accuses President Bush and those who have a deep respect for him.
I haven't come across Perlstein before, but IMO this hatchet-job article is far beneath the standard of the Village Voice, which also employs some truly great journalists such as Sydney Schanberg. Yes, it is a liberal paper with a point of view, but it has also run a lot of stories that poked some big holes in the liberal establishment (some very unflattering stories about Andrew Cuomo and even Hillary Clinton come to mind.) So I hope people reading this will not dismiss the paper, just this writer. He is hopeless.
HAH!! 'Tis Lib'ralism that is anti-American and un-Constitutional and in the process of being rejected by more and more good Americans...and the writer appears to be somewhat of a Village idiot...MUD
"...People who support Bush and also believe that Bill Clinton is "lazy" and Teresa Heinz Kerry is an "African colonialist" are obvious retards. Yet the myriad leftists who believe that George Bush coordinated 911 with the help of Mossad are nothing less than enlightened Kerry supporters." ~ dead
Cognitive Dissonance is the number one hallmark of a relativist. And a relativist, by definition, makes up his own *truth* as he goes along ; basing his *changable ideas of right and wrong* on *the situation*. Relativists are the biggest danger to the undermining of our Constitution because the Constitution was only put into place to guard ABSOLUTE (UNchangeable) TRUTH. It is a meaningless document otherwise.
Below is an example of Cognitive Dissonance - (the mental confusion that results from holding polar opposite ideas, beliefs, and attitudes simultaneously) - in action.
It mirrors Perlstein's confusion perfectly.
Now the confused, but intellectually honest person, who actually does sincerely hold the polar opposite beliefs that are depicted below - is seriously in need of taking some classes to develop critical thinking skills (his/her emotional maturity being the criteria that will determine the degree of success).
There is only one other catagory of mentality that would promote the polar opposite ideas depicted below. They are the intellectually DIShonest -- the liars - those who *deliberately set out to mislead* those who are incapable of critical thought.
Perlstein falls into one of those two catagories above. The intellectionally honest reader capable of critical thought will know which catagory that is. The opinions of the others are meaningless in the real world.
The double binds of George W. Bush - by Rich Lowry
July 19, 2004
Sometimes a political figure becomes so hated that he can't do anything right in the eyes of his enemies.
President Bush has achieved this rare and exalted status.
His critics are so blinded by animus that the internal consistency of their attacks on him no longer matters.
For them, Bush is the double-bind president.
If he stumbles over his words, he is an embarrassing idiot. If he manages to cut taxes or wage a war against Saddam Hussein with bipartisan support, he is a manipulative genius.
If he hasn't been able to capture Osama bin Laden, he is endangering U.S. security. If he catches bin Laden, it is only a ploy to influence the elections.
If he ignores U.N. resolutions, he is a dangerous unilateralist. If he takes U.N. resolutions on Iraq seriously, he is a dangerous unilateralist. If he doesn't get France to agree to his Iraq policy, he is ignoring important international actors. If he supports multiparty talks on North Korea, he is not doing enough to ignore important international actors.
If he bombed Iraq, he should have bombed Saudi Arabia instead, and if he had bombed Saudi Arabia, he should have bombed Iran, and if he had bombed all three, he shouldn't have bombed anyone at all. If he imposes a U.S. occupation on Iraq, he is fomenting Iraqi resistance by making the United States seem an imperial power. If he ends the U.S. occupation, he is cutting and running.
If he warns of a terror attack, he is playing alarmist politics. If he doesn't warn of a terror attack, he is dangerously asleep at the switch. If he says we're safer, he's lying, and if he doesn't say we're safer, he's implicitly admitting that he has failed in his core duty as commander in chief.
If he adopts a doctrine of pre-emption, he is unacceptably remaking American national-security policy. If the United States suffers a terror attack on his watch, he should have pre-empted it. If he signs a far-reaching anti-terror law, he is abridging civil liberties. If the United States suffers another terror attack on his watch, he should have had a more vigorous anti-terror law.
Bush's economy hasn't created new jobs. If it has created new jobs, they aren't well-paying jobs. If they are well-paying jobs, there is still income inequality in America.
If Bush opposes a prescription-drug benefit for the elderly, he's miserly. If he supports a prescription-drug benefit for the elderly, he's lining the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies. If he restrains government spending, he's heartless. If he supports government spending, he's bankrupting the nation and robbing from future generations.
If he opposes campaign-finance reform, he's a tool of corporate interests. If he signs campaign-finance reform, he's abridging the First Amendment rights of Michael Moore (whose ads for "Fahrenheit 9/11" might run afoul of the law).
If he accuses John Kerry of flip-flopping, he is merely highlighting one of the Massachusetts senator's strengths -- his nuance and thoughtfulness. If he flip-flops on nation-building or testifying before the 9/11 commission, he proves his own ill-intentions, cluelessness, or both.
If he doesn't admit a mistake, he is bullheaded and detached from reality. If he admits a mistake, he is damning his own governance in shocking fashion.
If he sticks with Dick Cheney, he is saddling himself with an unpopular vice president, giving Democrats who can't wait to run against Cheney a political advantage. If he drops Cheney, he is admitting that the Democratic attacks against his vice president have hit home, thus giving Democrats who have made those charges a political advantage.
If he loses in November, the voice of the American people has spoken a devastating verdict on his presidency. If he wins, he stole the election.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/richlowry/rl20040719.shtml
George Bush is selling out Iraq. Gone are his hard-liners' dreams of setting up a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic republic, a light unto the Middle Eastern nations. The decision makers in the administration now realize these goals are unreachable. So they've set a new goal: to end the occupation by July 1, whether that occupation has accomplished anything valuable and lasting or not. Just declare victory and go home. The tyranny of Saddam Hussein will be over. But a new tyranny will likely take its place: the tyranny of civil war, as rival factions rush into the void. Such is the mess this president seems willing to leave behind in order to save his campaign.
Correct me if I am wrong, but do we not still have troops in Iraq? And did we not turn over the government to the Iraqi people? And are not elections slated for January? And is Iraq not now conducting its own foreign policy, has free speech, children in schools, and a functioning, democratic government? We have not abandoned the people, and as far as I know the administration is still aiming for a democracy in Iraq as a way to make the Middle East safer.
Now I am wondering who is stupider...Freepers who like President Bush or someone who was completely wrong about the course of affairs in Iraq?
See #28 above. BTTT!
Dick Cheney gored my personal ox quite thoroughly when he was SecDef under Bush41. I still believe that that decision which damaged me personally, was as matter of technology imprudent. And military history has confirmed my opinion on the merits of his decision. I was afterwards quite confident that I would never vote for him for anything, ever.By styling himself a "compassionate conservative," Bush43 insinuated that, in contrast to my own opinion as expressed in my screen name, there was some reason to doubt the compassion of a person if you learned that they were conservative.
I don't see Bush as "angelic" except in comparison with an administration which perpetrated two thousand felonies in the WH basement - and is noted for having been impeached for something else.
I don't see Bush as "angelic" - but at least if he were found morally wanting no one would suggest that he could not be impeached because his vice president would be a disater for the country.
I don't see Bush as "angelic" - but I don't see anyone in his administration who would have trouble getting a better-paying job outside of government. I don't, that is, see anyone who has to be grateful for his/her position and is unable to resign in protest if Bush were to do anything they did not wish to be associated with.
I don't see Bush as "angelic" - but at least he wasn't forced to hire someone of the other party as SecDef to have any chance of being taken seriously on military issues.
Ronald Reagan, of blessed memory, will be recognized as a historically great president because the problems which most bore on the fate of the Republic were history so quickly after he addressed them. And also because those problems - inflation, unemployment, the energy crisis, Soviet expansionism - seemed so intractable and debilitating until he took office. No predecessor of a great president ever looks good to history. Any president with a sense of decency would look good after the one George W. Bush succeeded.
"he retreats into a retort I'll hear again and again tonight: Nobody's perfect. "I don't think we're going to find a situation in which we find a person with which we're 100 percent comfortable."
Then he reels off a litany of complaints about Bush. "Horrible underemployment situation . . . the big-business aspect of the Republican Party I have some issues with."
The next thing I hear is the last refuge of the cornered conservative: a non sequitur fulmination against the hippie Democrats.
"Having said that, what's your option? To have more bike trails?"
How has he 'cornered' this guy? Here is someone open-minded enough to not just blindly agree with everything the president does, and he is mocked for it. Elsewhere in the article, people are mocked for enthusiastically supporting everything the president does.
Coming to the conclusion "I may not agree with the president 100% of the time, but on balance I'd rather he be in office than a Democrat" is not a non-sequitur from a cornered nutjob. Did Pearlstein support everything Clinton ever did as President? Did he vote for him twice because, even with all the baggage, he would still rather see him in office than the Republican? So does that make him a dimwitted lunatic forced to resort to non-sequiturs as well?
Folks, I can't hack through all the misreprepresentations and fantasies about what I believe above, but I do want to call attention to what OhioWfan says:
"Perlstein, as does the rest of the left, has a problem that is fundamentally spiritual.
George W. Bush's goodness shines a light into their dark world, and they are offended."
This is what my article is about. The founders of our republic CLEARLY intended--read Federalist 51, which one conservative friend of mine wisely called "Genesis codified" for its brilliant application of the religious doctrine of man's inherent sinfulnes to politics--not to rely on the inherent goodness of leaders, because no man is inherently good. Again and again, I see conservatives defending Bush based on a sense of his inherent goodness. This dismays me, because I think the most profound thing conservatism has to offer America is its grasp of man's inherent sinfulness. But I see this patrimony slipping away in the worship of George Bush, and it dismays me.
Rick Perlstein
This stuff ain't worth sticking down my pants.
Forgive me if I don't believe your concern about conservatives, since I have never seen evidence of that before.
Would you care to explain your complete and total misreading of the Bush administration in the January article (which Ron Dog graciously linked us with)?
How about your inconsistency in the article, where those who believe in Bush 100% are mocked, while those critical but still supportive are mocked as well?
I maintain that you think that Bush supporters are a bunch of ignorant rubes, and that you think that if you can simply show us how stupid we are we will change our minds.
Care to comment on the Clinton groupies who follow him from book-signing to book-signing? How about the Deaniacs? I am waiting for your dissection of liberal hero-worshippers.
But it is clearly your intent to tar the intellectual and thoughtful people who support Bush with the rantings of the fawning.
Believe me, most Bush supporters know he has flaws and disagree with him strongly on various topics. But given the choices before us, many of us have weighed the positions and the character of the two men in this coming election and have reached the rather obvious conclusion that Bush offers the more decisive leadership and a vision that is more closely aligned with our own.
But you can't debate the election without trying to smear your opposition as a drooling bunch of knuckledraggers. The Democratic Party is bereft of ideas and has a serious disconnect with a growing number of people in this nation. And they have no leader now or on the horizon who is going to reverse that trend.
That is the source of your hatred and rage.
And the problem is.......??????
Gee the author must be smart, witty, and oh so much better than other people...for instance he says: "They certainly love them some George Bush." ha ha, when I read that I can feel so damn superior... ha,ha.
Gang, I would love nothing more than to stick around and argue. Really, it's my greatest joy in life, going toe to toe with people I disagree with (in Portland I had the pleasure of debating gay marriage with their smart talk radio host Lars Larsona0.
But I REALLY have to finish another article this week. Then I'm off to Boston for the Democratic convention. What I'd love to do is set aside an entire day after that to take on all comers: just set up a thread where people have at me, and I type away in defense, all alone, like one of those, kung fu movies.
For now I'll only respond to one point, Miss Marple's: "Forgive me if I don't believe your concern about conservatives, since I have never seen evidence of that before." I spent three years contributing to the history of the conservative movement, my book BEFORE THE STORM, on Barry Goldwater, which received glowing reviews in National Review, Weekly Standard, LewRockwell, Human Events, Buckley's column, and many other conservative outlets, grateful for my contribution to the their understanding of the movement. If that's not evidence for concern about conservatives--three years of toil, over which I lost a lot of money--I don't know what is.
So: when shall we have our throwdown thread? Tuesday, August 3 is perfect for me.
Rick Perlstein
rperlstein@villagevoice.com
What I'd love to do is set aside an entire day after that to take on all comers: just set up a thread where people have at me, and I type away in defense, all alone, like one of those, kung fu movies.
So: when shall we have our throwdown thread? Tuesday, August 3 is perfect for me.
Your Kung Fu is no match for Master Wu's Kung Fu!
I'll be there, Rick. I'll even post the thread when you're ready to get started.
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