Time, and the ever-creeping, always-predictable degradations of the present, have a way of afflicting even the best minds with what I would call nostalgic pixilation, a pitiable state of delusional cognition, which I see has struck E.J. Dionne bad -- indeed, in the worst way.
Perhaps I should thank the current crop of Republican presidential candidates for providing me with an experience I never, ever expected: During this week’s debate in New Hampshire, I had a moment of nostalgia for George W. Bush.
Children of the Light: Let us pray for Brother Dionne.
I quite agree with him that a panel of befuddled Bachmanns and grinchy Gingriches was enough to turn one's historical head -- to look backward, wistfully, and with near delight, at the mere constitutional horrors of a Dick Nixon, or the simple, reactionary travesties of a Ronald Reagan. But George W. Bush? That George W. Bush, of "compassionate conservatism"? No. Never. One might as well long for the decisiveness of James Buchanan, or the humility of Andrew Jackson, or the stand-up comedy of George Washington.
Dionne falls freshly for one of Karl Rove's oldest tricks: that of recognizing one's greatest political weakness -- in 1999 and 2000, Rove saw it in his party and candidate's debilitating compassion-deficit -- and then, out of whole rhetorical cloth, simply declaring the opposite to be one's greatest strength. Thus George W., who cared deeply about further comforting his own socioeconomic class, became the working class' "compassionate conservative."
As proof of Bush's sincerity, Dionne, for evidential reasons unknown, quotes from a Bush speech, from 1999: "We have always found our better selves in sympathy and generosity, both in our lives and in our laws." To this, Dionne remarks, "Amen." My response would be somewhat less favorable: "Bullshit." Classic Barnum-Bushian bullshit, that is, QED.
The same shell game applied to candidate Bush's murmurings about a "humble" foreign policy. In reality he itched to be a war president -- they and only they go down in the history books as the "great" ones, Condi had schooled him -- and soon enough, he scratched. Defenseless Afghanistan wasn't near enough of a challenge; he needed a crippled, third-rate power he could nevertheless believably market as a formidable and necessary target. The boogeyman of Saddam's was a chickenhawk's dream.
Dionne admirably concludes with a sobered implication:
Bush nostalgia takes you only so far. The 43rd president, who might have given life to a constructive sort of moderate conservatism, instead unleashed the Tea Party furies that now engulf the Republican Party and threaten to turn Michele Bachmann, of all people, into a political giant.
I profoundly disagree with his tentative Bachmann hypothesis -- she's a sideshow of the GOP's currently running freakshow, destined perhaps to lead a dependably insignificant third party of Tea, but nothing more -- yet Dionne suggests a probable historical truism: It wasn't so much a black, quasi-progressive Democratic president who laid the groundwork for Tea Party lunacy as it was the infinite stupidities of the pseudoconservative George W. Bush administration.