Vision, Honor, Action

IN the course of one of those inevitable “Whither conservatism?” panels two or three NATIONAL REVIEW cruises ago, I remarked of George W. Bush that it requires a perverse genius to get damned day in day out as the new Hitler when 90 percent of the time you’re Tony Blair with a ranch.

I’ll stand by that. For good or ill, Bush was the real Third Way deal Bill Clinton merely genuflected towards. The ranch certainly matters-the brush-cutting, the cowboy boots, the swagger, the Texacisms that so grated on East Coast newspaper columnists, the wanted-dead-or-alive rhetoric that had Continental foreign ministers deploring American “simplisme.” But underneath the scary tone was a Blairy Tone, a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Without the inaugural poison of the Florida recount and 9/11’s end to the “end of history,” we would now be recalling a presidency distinguished at home by the largest new entitlement since the Great Society and abroad by PEPFAR-the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, mostly to Africa. The latter may or may not be a good thing, and the prescription-drug entitlement certainly isn’t. But both would be unlikely priorities for the extreme right-wing madman of Euro-Dem caricature.

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Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human-rights activist.

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IN the course of one of those inevitable “Whither conservatism?” panels two or three NATIONAL REVIEW cruises ago, I remarked of George W. Bush that it requires a perverse genius to get damned day in day out as the new Hitler when 90 percent of the time you’re Tony Blair with a ranch.

I’ll stand by that. For good or ill, Bush was the real Third Way deal Bill Clinton merely genuflected towards. The ranch certainly matters-the brush-cutting, the cowboy boots, the swagger, the Texacisms that so grated on East Coast newspaper columnists, the wanted-dead-or-alive rhetoric that had Continental foreign ministers deploring American “simplisme.” But underneath the scary tone was a Blairy Tone, a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Without the inaugural poison of the Florida recount and 9/11’s end to the “end of history,” we would now be recalling a presidency distinguished at home by the largest new entitlement since the Great Society and abroad by PEPFAR-the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, mostly to Africa. The latter may or may not be a good thing, and the prescription-drug entitlement certainly isn’t. But both would be unlikely priorities for the extreme right-wing madman of Euro-Dem caricature.