Victor Davis Hanson: A Few Modest Suggestions for Our President
1) Calling for bipartisanship seems contradicted when you then allege that those who disagree are being "partisan", and you preface almost every major issue with a blanket invective against the past eight years, even when you seem to adopt many of the past policies, from rendition to FISA. Perhaps try to raise the debate from one of your opponents seeking cheap advantage to one of innate philosophical differences, and then try to cease the campaign mode. The election is over. Bush is gone. Like it or not, the executive responsibility of the U.S. is now yours alone.
2) Those who will embarrass you the most are not the Republican minority, but your own Congressional majority. That majority will shortly, no doubt, attempt to have an inquisition of past administration officials, to repeal the fairness doctrine, to move to politicize the census, and to so expand the government that taxes will at some point bother even the upscale professionals who now so welcome your presidency. Remember, the same instinct that makes a Wall Street pirate want a Citation X also drives Speaker Pelosi to enjoy a Congressional jet; mutatis mutandis, what drove a Richard Fuld or Franklin Raines also drove a Charles Rangel and Chris Dodd. The difference was not in the intent, but only in the means.
3) We got the message already of a new horizon, new dialogue, new partnership, novus ordo seclorum, etc. overseas with our allies and a new reaching out to our enemies. They get it too. All that is fine and psychologically reassuring. But Bush 2005-8 was about as multilateral as you could get; governments in Europe are pro-American. Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, China, etc. offer challenges that transcend American politics. The chances are likely that, for all the utopian visions, you will quietly conclude that the Bush second term, faced with bad and worse choices, did about what you will do now. So perhaps a little more tragic, quiet, and calm acceptance of the fact human nature is, well, human nature, and a little less soaring rhetoric of the summer-2008 style. Reexamine what Jimmy Carter said from November 1976 to January 1977—and what he learned of the world by late 1979.
4) Remember that the more you claim unprecedented morality (cf. the higher the rhetorical bar of ethics was raised to the skies, the easier Daschle, Geithner, Richardson, Solis, et al. pranced under its material form), the easier it is for facts to belie the rhetoric. Bush learned that with the smoke 'em out, bring 'em on lingo that was countered by the looting, the pullback from Fallujah, etc. For Bill Clinton to appoint a Daschle is a misdemeanor, for you it's a felony.
5) When it comes to town meetings and press conferences: One-minute answers with direct tough talk designed to frame not so easy choices are worth 10 minutes of Harvard Law Review recall and Great Society idealism. Perhaps read just a bit more Sophocles and less Reverend Warren. If one must repeat one's self, a five-second "Don't worry, we're going to make it fine," or "We've been through far worse together" is worth hundreds of long convuluted Chicken-Little riffs on "worst since the Great Depression", "catastrophe," and "impending disaster." Markets are not always rational, and, as reflections of human nature, they can be lectured into psychological depression.
Read entire article at National Review Online
2) Those who will embarrass you the most are not the Republican minority, but your own Congressional majority. That majority will shortly, no doubt, attempt to have an inquisition of past administration officials, to repeal the fairness doctrine, to move to politicize the census, and to so expand the government that taxes will at some point bother even the upscale professionals who now so welcome your presidency. Remember, the same instinct that makes a Wall Street pirate want a Citation X also drives Speaker Pelosi to enjoy a Congressional jet; mutatis mutandis, what drove a Richard Fuld or Franklin Raines also drove a Charles Rangel and Chris Dodd. The difference was not in the intent, but only in the means.
3) We got the message already of a new horizon, new dialogue, new partnership, novus ordo seclorum, etc. overseas with our allies and a new reaching out to our enemies. They get it too. All that is fine and psychologically reassuring. But Bush 2005-8 was about as multilateral as you could get; governments in Europe are pro-American. Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, China, etc. offer challenges that transcend American politics. The chances are likely that, for all the utopian visions, you will quietly conclude that the Bush second term, faced with bad and worse choices, did about what you will do now. So perhaps a little more tragic, quiet, and calm acceptance of the fact human nature is, well, human nature, and a little less soaring rhetoric of the summer-2008 style. Reexamine what Jimmy Carter said from November 1976 to January 1977—and what he learned of the world by late 1979.
4) Remember that the more you claim unprecedented morality (cf. the higher the rhetorical bar of ethics was raised to the skies, the easier Daschle, Geithner, Richardson, Solis, et al. pranced under its material form), the easier it is for facts to belie the rhetoric. Bush learned that with the smoke 'em out, bring 'em on lingo that was countered by the looting, the pullback from Fallujah, etc. For Bill Clinton to appoint a Daschle is a misdemeanor, for you it's a felony.
5) When it comes to town meetings and press conferences: One-minute answers with direct tough talk designed to frame not so easy choices are worth 10 minutes of Harvard Law Review recall and Great Society idealism. Perhaps read just a bit more Sophocles and less Reverend Warren. If one must repeat one's self, a five-second "Don't worry, we're going to make it fine," or "We've been through far worse together" is worth hundreds of long convuluted Chicken-Little riffs on "worst since the Great Depression", "catastrophe," and "impending disaster." Markets are not always rational, and, as reflections of human nature, they can be lectured into psychological depression.