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I began swooning for George W. Bush during the Republican primaries,
my friends warned me that I was going
to have to eat my words. It's now a month into his presidency, and
I'm even more doe-eyed about Bush than ever. Among other feats,
Bush has figured out how to talk to liberals. This has solved one
of life's eternal mysteries, like "How high is up?"
The liberal's highly complex and intellectual argument against principled
conservatism is this: Republicans are mean. Republicans always figured
that since they weren't mean, that should be enough. But the facts
were irrelevant. These were devil words muttered by a political
cult, not reasoned arguments.
One of the most arresting examples of the sophisticated Republicans
Are Mean argument occurred in reference to Pat Buchanan. If you
ever actually tuned in to CNN's Crossfire when Buchanan was
on, he'd be smiling, laughing, telling jokes — generally while
sitting next to a scowling, bitter Bill Press. (In the interest
of not only honesty but also irony, I should rush to add that off-air,
Bill Press is one of the nicest people on TV.)
But for reasons that only the faithful can understand, it simply
became a part of the liberal orthodoxy that Buchanan was an "angry
white man." In case any of the cult members missed the memo on Pat
being angry, William Schneider used the word "angry" four times
to describe either Pat or his supporters in one single short column
in the National Journal.
So we knew liberals would not believe their own eyes if what they
saw conflicted with their political orthodoxy. Since actual evidence
wouldn't suffice, and arguments citing facts and evidence were even
more useless, it was difficult for Republicans to know where to
begin with these liberals.
This put conservatives at a distinct disadvantage. For the last
couple of decades now, name-calling has been the principal argument
liberals have deployed against conservative arguments.
If Republicans opposed the National Endowment for the Arts, they
were said to hate art. If Republicans opposed the
| “What
it took George Bush to figure out was that to counter
the left's intricate Republicans Are Mean argument, all
you had to do was to go around calling yourself nice.” |
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Department of Education, they were said to hate teachers. If Republicans
opposed the Environmental Protection Agency, they were said to hate
the environment. Opposition to the government spending money on
anything was invariably attacked as hatred for the thing money was
to be spent on.
What it took George Bush to figure out was that to counter the left's
intricate Republicans Are Mean argument, all you had to do was to
go around calling yourself nice.
I could have thought about that for 50 years and still have been
stumped.
Not only does George Bush's strategy have the virtue of simplicity,
but it is also a distinct improvement over the typical Republican
method of wooing Democrats, which is to give away the store.
To the contrary, President Bush has been like a runaway train pushing
through his campaign promises to support tax cuts, a missile defense
system and faith-based social service programs. When one of his
conservative Cabinet nominees came under attack and was forced to
withdraw, Bush found yet another minority female for the post--even
more conservative than the last.
As a New York Times reporter described Bush's approach to
political opponents: "Mr. Bush is a bipartisan love machine." At
the same time, his tax cut proposal "does not bow even a millimeter
to many Democrats' concerns," and it is not clear "whether all his
smooth, sweet talk truly signals any inclination toward ideological
flexibility" — a.k.a., giving away the store.
Admittedly, when Bush first began with the "compassionate conservatism"
theme, many of us took umbrage. In a typical soliloquy on "compassionate
conservatism," Bush said: "I know this approach has been criticized.
But why? Is compassion beneath us? Is mercy below us? Should our
party be led by someone who boasts of a hard heart?"
If you didn't happen to be a Democrat, you were likely to sit back
scratching your head wondering what the heck Bush was talking about.
Who criticizes compassion? Who exactly boasts of having a hard heart?
Which Republican candidate maintains compassion is beneath us? Of
whom, pray tell, was he speaking?
The answer, of course, was: no one. No real corporeal being, that
is. He was referring to Republican ghosts haunting liberal imaginations.
Bush treats liberals like small children having their first nightmare:
Don't worry, honey, I'll just wave a magic wand and make all
the ghosts go away. I'm a compassionate conservative.
And darn if it didn't work. As evidence that it did work, observe
that liberals still use their second favorite principled epithet
against Republicans: They call Bush dumb — just like Dwight
Eisenhower and that old bumbling guy who won the Cold War. But they
don't call Bush mean.
It was always so simple. The mistake Republicans have been making
was to treat liberals like adults. It took George Bush to treat
them in an age-appropriate manner and start arguing with liberals
at their own level.
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