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Column: Can Conservatives Who Trashed Clinton Really Defend Bush with a Straight Face?

by P. M. Carpenter

Mr. Carpenter is a historian and syndicated columnist.

Dear friends on the right:

How do you live with yourselves?

For years you fumed and sputtered about a dissembling Democrat occupying the White House, a man so vile and unprincipled that from his wretched beginnings he evaded service to his country and experimented with illegal substances. Later, in the nation's highest office, he was willing to say anything and do anything to hold power. The pattern never varied. He was corrupt to the bone. From start to finish, Slick Willie's career disgusted you. You demanded change; good, old-time-values conservative change.

Now ponder what you have. Reflect for a moment, with as much soul-searching as you can muster, on how in heaven's name you can tolerate George W. Bush. From youthful indiscretions to presidential abuses, here's a man who has surpassed his predecessor in every way. Yet you offer Dubya nothing but thumbs up.

How is that? No kidding, most of us on this side are sincerely baffled.

Your stock apology for Bush, I suppose, might be that politics is a rough game requiring considerable corner cutting, compromises and occasional sell-outs. George does nothing that Bill didn't practice, if not pioneer, from triangulating his little heart out to vulgarly catering to his base to shifting positions at will. The question then becomes one of two wrongs and all that. That's not a smart defense and I doubt you want to go there.

But the apologies get even stickier, don't you think, when one contemplates modern conservatism's philosophical foundations that George W. is supposed to uphold. Its bedrock principles were laid down in the late 1950s and early 1960s, an era in which conservative strategists melded the right's theretofore competing philosophies of economic libertarianism and Christian traditionalism. In the realm of libertarianism alone, however, Bush has chucked even the pretense of adherence.

From committing free-trade apostasies to promulgating big-government programs, he has bounced around with only self-serving politics as his guide. If you're a true believer in individualism and free markets – the holy grails of conservative economic doctrine – over collectivism and protectionism, you have got to think that W. is the last man on Earth to be leading your charge.

And then there's Christian traditionalism, a big part of which, naturally, entails the Christian creed, a big part of which just as naturally entails the unwavering belief that truth shall set you free. Truth – the whole ball of wax, including speaking it and upholding personal integrity in dealing with others. Really, fellows, it's hard to write about this in relation to W. with a straight face.

We needn't review all of Mr. Bush's abortive encounters with the truth to make the point. There aren't enough megabytes of memory on this website for that anyway. But if nothing else, one would think merely the most recent revelation of his programmatic dishonesty would be enough to make honest members of the right finally – finally – give Bush a thumbs down.

I speak of course about former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's disclosures on the timing – or should I say scheduling – of the Iraq War; disclosures that are, in a word, irrefutable. Not even the White House has attacked O'Neill's message. It has, true to form, only attacked the messenger.

By now the story is well known. As O'Neill related the out-of-school tale, the president lied about the causes and timing of his preemptive military planning against Iraq . It makes no difference that you believe it was right to take down Saddam Hussein. The essential point is that Bush lied – to us and the world – every pre-invasion step of the way. He didn't lie to save American lives or deceive a legitimate foe; he lied to achieve a predetermined goal established with no national debate and formulated with the most questionable of motives. His was a dictatorial act at variance with every democratic impulse and the entire spirit of personal integrity at the heart of Christian precepts.

So again I ask you members of the right: How do you justify support for a man so steeped in the Clintonian kind of politics you once claimed to despise? – and so at odds with the most basic conservative foundations you claim to revere?

Extolling hypocrisy and praising crass violations of principle aren't customary rallying cries in a presidential campaign, but what are you left with? Excuse the naivete, but a lot of us would really like to know.

Mr. Carpenter's column is published weekly by History News Network and buzzflash.com.