Column: Holy Hogwash Batman!
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Most would concede the assessment's overall fairness. Yet, while doing no injury to the strategist's originality, there is a more telling way to phrase it: "Every group that the previous president kept faith with, this president double-crosses."
The rephrasing better captures past and present circumstances. In the fatal end, Bush I did right by workaday America by dissing the hard right and raising taxes to stem a mushrooming deficit -- an economic time bomb for all but the very well cushioned. Bush II, unburdened, as he is, by good sense, independent thought, or any consideration for working Americans is content to whistle his way through an expanding economic graveyard and comfort only the affluent. By nature he is attracted to the right's simplism of mind, which ignores with malice the complexity of America's afflictions. He dwells in the belly of the malicious beast.
The beast loves him for it, and as deep as its parental love is its understanding of him and his changing needs.
The New York Times touched on this last week when it reported with breathtaking banality that the president "appears to have built up enough good will with his party's right wing to provide him significant latitude as he seeks to appeal to moderate voters by taking positions that might roil conservatives."
Yes, it "appears" that way, indeed. The real silliness in the reportage, however, was the implication that Mr. Bush might actually honor his newfound moderate positions; that having made campaign promises that appealed to moderates, he would feel duty bound to live up to those promises afterward; and that despite Bush's political necessity to adopt positions that "might roil conservatives," those conservatives are forgiving him beforehand chiefly because George has been such a capital fellow.
In short, the NYT piece suggested that right wingers, out of pragmatism and gratitude, are willing to accept a few authentic modifications of Bush II's fundamental plutocratic anarchism in return for what W. has thus far delivered unto them.
Holy hogwash, Batman. And the reason is simple.
The right wing was around in 2000 to hear Mr. Bush talk like a moderate to appeal to moderates to swindle moderates out of their critical votes. And it was around in 2001 to witness Mr. Bush's cynical reversal of nearly every moderate position taken during the campaign con of 2000.
Think back on the various and immediate instances of Bush II's campaign-to-post-campaign flipping and flopping. For example, candidate Bush promoted the value of limiting carbon dioxide emissions; Bush as president failed to see any. The candidate touted more progress on nuclear nonproliferation programs with Russia; the president cut funding for those programs. The candidate -- courting even more red states -- loved (ethanol) bioenergy; the president wasn't so enamored. The candidate talked and talked … and talked … of more education funding; the president scaled back his own proposals. The candidate pushed a huge tax cut because the economy was so good; the president pushed a huge tax cut because the economy was so bad. Even in the realm of political aesthetics, such as the beauty of bipartisanship, the candidate perfunctorily promised one thing and the president delivered another.
Bush's moderate talk of 2000 was pure puffery. It'll mean nothing this time around, either. The right knows that, so it's giving him all the "latitude" he needs to appear reasonable again -- till inauguration day, 2005. Mr. Bush will then resume full-time residence in the belly of the beast.
© Copyright 2003 P. M. Carpenter
Mr. Carpenter's column is published weekly by History News Network and buzzflash.com.