The Northern Agrarian

For a glimpse into exactly what is wrong with the modern Right, all one has to do is make a quick visit to The Weekly Standard and take a brief sampling of the major stories for the week. We have support for a major stimulus plan involving an increase in federal spending (on national defense, of course), two gushing pieces on our favorite sneering snake and a piece mourning the return to a constitutional role for the Vice President that may come with Biden, and a piece outlining the shocking revelation that Russia may use energy policy to influence other countries (“We’ll use our influence to protect the homeland”).

But the piece by which the rest pale in comparison is bespectacled Barnes’ recent revisionist defense of the Bush presidency (a sequel to “Rebel in Chief“?). In it he lists the ten major things President Bush “got right” and one can tell this is going to be the chorus on the Right amongst Bush apologists. Half of them refer in some way to Bush’s global terrorism crusade, four of them praise major expansions in the federal government. Let’s examine them (with my comments in bold):

1. Bush had ten great achievements (and maybe more) in his eight years in the White House, starting with his decision in 2001 to jettison the Kyoto global warming treaty so loved by Al Gore, the environmental lobby, elite opinion, and Europeans. The treaty was a disaster, with India and China exempted and economic decline the certain result. Everyone knew it. But only Bush said so and acted accordingly. In this case Barnes is right. Of course, he couldn’t make an intelligent point without referring to “Al Gore, the environmental lobby, elite opinion, and Europeans.” Bush’s bucking of international pressure to support a damaging environmental policy that allowed opt-outs for other major powers was admirable.

2. Second, enhanced interrogation of terrorists. Along with use of secret prisons and wireless eavesdropping, this saved American lives. How many thousands of lives? We’ll never know. But, as Charles Krauthammer said recently, “Those are precisely the elements which kept us safe and which have prevented a second attack.” It didn’t take long for Barnes to get to one of Bush’s most frontally dangerous policy legacies. In support of this policy Barnes cites the one case it may have actually worked (Crucial intelligence was obtained from captured al Qaeda leaders, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, with the help of waterboarding). He also suggests that whether it is torture or not is irrelevant, because it is necessary. Yikes. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. More power to the central state to “protect us” from boogie-men. This is conservative?

3. Bush’s third achievement was the rebuilding of presidential authority, badly degraded in the era of Vietnam, Watergate, and Bill Clinton. He didn’t hesitate to conduct wireless surveillance of terrorists without getting a federal judge’s okay. He decided on his own how to treat terrorists and where they should be imprisoned. Those were legitimate decisions for which the president, as commander in chief, should feel no need to apologize. “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it,” James Madison cautioned. “It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.” Chief Justice John Marshall asserted that, even in times of hostility, a president’s decision to act militarily beyond what Congress had authorized was “unlawful.” The Bush Doctrine hopes to overturn this American tradition.

4. Achievement number four was Bush’s unswerving support for Israel. Reagan was once deemed Israel’s best friend in the White House. Now Bush can claim the title. He ostracized Yasser Arafat as an impediment to peace in the Middle East. This infuriated the anti-Israel forces in Europe, the Third World, and the United Nations, and was criticized by champions of the “peace process” here at home. Bush was right. He was clever in his support. Bush announced that Ariel Sharon should withdraw the tanks he’d sent into the West Bank in 2002, then exerted zero pressure on Sharon to do so. And he backed the wall along Israel’s eastern border without endorsing it as an official boundary, while knowing full well that it might eventually become exactly that. He was a loyal friend. No comment.

5. His fifth success was No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the education reform bill cosponsored by America’s most prominent liberal Democratic senator Edward Kennedy. The teachers’ unions, school boards, the education establishment, conservatives adamant about local control of schools–they all loathed the measure and still do. It requires two things they ardently oppose, mandatory testing and accountability. Is Barnes so indifferent towards small-government conservatives that he believes they ardently oppose NCLB because of “mandatory testing and accountability”? I think conservatives are a bit more concerned with the gross expansion of executive power and the erosion of American federalism.

6. Sixth, Bush declared in his second inaugural address in 2005 that American foreign policy (at least his) would henceforth focus on promoting democracy around the world. This put him squarely in the Reagan camp, but he was lambasted as unrealistic, impractical, and a tool of wily neoconservatives. The new policy gave Bush credibility in pressing for democracy in the former Soviet republics and Middle East and in zinging various dictators and kleptocrats. It will do the same for President Obama, if he’s wise enough to hang onto it. The free election and democracy building experiment has been a huge success, says Barnes, without too much evidence to support such an audacious claim (other than Bush’s ability to “zing[?]” dictators). Never mind the victories had by Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Hezbollah through free elections in the Middle East. We are meant to believe this is all good for America and her interests.

7. The seventh achievement is the Medicare prescription drug benefit, enacted in 2003. It’s not only wildly popular; it has cost less than expected by triggering competition among drug companies. Conservatives have deep reservations about the program. But they shouldn’t have been surprised. Bush advocated the drug benefit in the 2000 campaign. And if he hadn’t acted, Democrats would have, with a much less attractive result. How about the possibility of Republicans offering a conservative alternative to big-government prescription drug plans? Barnes seems uninterested in this alternative. Instead, a plan sold as costing 400 billion when in reality it cost at least 534 billion is heralded as a success by the “conservative” Barnes. Skepticism of entitlement programs, be damned! This isn’t Reagan we’re talking about.

8. Then there were John Roberts and Sam Alito. In putting them on the Supreme Court and naming Roberts chief justice, Bush achieved what had eluded Richard Nixon, Reagan, and his own father. Roberts and Alito made the Court indisputably more conservative. And the good news is Roberts, 53, and Alito, 58, should be justices for decades to come. While recent decisions regarding treatment of detainees have been disappointing, this is another Bush success in my eyes, though Barnes seems afraid to bring up the life issue. Roberts and Alito are two avowed pro-lifers, and despite Bush’s shaky attempt at cronyism, he deserves credit for his two picks.

9. Bush’s ninth achievement has been widely ignored. He strengthened relations with east Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea, Australia) without causing a rift with China. On top of that, he forged strong ties with India. An important factor was their common enemy, Islamic jihadists. After 9/11, Bush made the most of this, and Indian leaders were receptive. His state dinner for Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2006 was a lovefest. This is another claim that is lax on details. What has Bush done to strengthen the relationship other than host a “lovefest”? A common enemy can bring allies together, but how much of the credit belongs to Bush then? How are our relationships with Japan, South kroea, and Australia significantly better than they were under Clinton, and how is Bush responsible?

10. Finally, a no-brainer: the surge. Bush prompted nearly unanimous disapproval in January 2007 when he announced he was sending more troops to Iraq and adopting a new counterinsurgency strategy. His opponents initially included the State Department, the Pentagon, most of Congress, the media, the foreign policy establishment, indeed the whole world. This makes his decision a profile in courage. Best of all, the surge worked. Iraq is now a fragile but functioning democracy. To readers of the Standard, Barnes doesn’t ened to present evidence that the surge has “worked.” But this has been thoroughly repudiated a million times over, least of all by yours truly. Read that for a significant response.

Bush critics on both spectrums should get used ot this type of defense. Like the president it hopes to defend, the defense lacks detail and substance, and is built on rhetoric and misleading half-truths, if not outright lies. But what should concern traditional conservatives is this world we seem to live in, where Bush was an ultra-conservative president, and his defenders just as conservative. This is a world where big is better than small, new is better than old… left is right and up is down. We have resided in this world for years, but with Republicans and neocons intent on forgetting or outright ignoring the mistakes of the past eight years, there is no end in sight.