A Return to the Present

Well, below are some political opinions that I wrote during the dark days of the George W. Bush administration. Sadly, quite a few of the problems that Bush left us with don’t seem to be going gently into that good night. Closing the off-shore prisons in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, looks like it won’t make Barack Obama’s January 22, 2010, deadline. Also, Bush’s “faith-based” initiative — in other words, Bush’s funneling of government money to religious institutions, effectively a government subsidy of sectarian religion — isn’t going to meet its maker any time soon. But I never expected Obama to undo all of Bush’s catastrophes in one fell swoop.

The conservative political forces that Obama is up against were made clearer to me by Neal Gabler’s October 2 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times. Titled “Politics as Religion in America,”Gabler’s point was that political conservatism has reached a kind of absolutist mind-set that ignores evidence of its own shortcomings and refuses to question its own questionable political beliefs out of blind faith:

Perhaps the single most profound change in our political culture over the last 30 years has been the transformation of conservatism from a political movement, with all the limitations, hedges and forbearances of politics, into a kind of fundamentalist religious movement, with the absolute certainty of religious belief.

I don’t mean ”religious belief” literally. This transformation is less a function of the alliance between Protestant evangelicals, their fellow travelers and the right (though that alliance has had its effect) than it is a function of a belief in one’s own rightness so unshakable that it is not subject to political caveats. In short, what we have in America today is a political fundamentalism, with all the characteristics of religious fundamentalism and very few of the characteristics of politics.

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Rationality won’t work [when arguing with conservatives] because their arguments are faith-based rather than evidence-based.

That explains a lot. One thing it explains is why so many are uncritical that Bush inherited a peaceful, prosperous nation with a surplus in its treasury, and proceeded to drive the country into a ditch, leaving a warring, economically troubled nation with a record deficit — and many conservatives think that he was a better president that his predecessor, Bill Clinton.

Of course, Gabler’s article drew some dissenting opinions. One that caught my eye was a letter, published October 8, by Anne Kaufman of Los Angeles:

I abhor behavior such as [Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.)] shouting out “you lie” at the president during his [September 9 health-care] speech, but people on the left are hardly in a position to criticize after the ugly and uncivil behavior they engaged in toward George W. Bush.

But since Ms. Kaufman didn’t cite any examples, I’m left to ask, What “ugly and uncivil behavior” is she talking about? I’m sure that there were some nasty screeds about Bush from the fringe of the political left, but the ugly and uncivil behavior that is currently directed against President Obama is coming from mainstream Republicans, like Rep. Wilson, and high-profile conservatives, like Rush Limbaugh — the two aren’t equivalent. So, what is the “ugly and uncivil behavior” towards Bush of which Ms. Kaufman speaks?

Is it the unanimous way that the Senate in 2000 confirmed Bush’s presidency, after he lost the popular vote and won the Electoral College under dubious circumstances, without letting any Democratic congressional representatives voice any objection? Is it the way that CBS fired Dan Rather after documents about a story on Bush’s National Guard service turned out to be bogus? (Limbaugh accused Clinton of murder and other despicable crimes, but he still has his job.) Is it the way that the new Democratic majority in Congress in 2006 took impeachment of Bush off the table in their investigation of the build-up to the Iraq War, after their Republican predecessors rushed to impeach Clinton on a far more trivial matter? Is it the way that liberal audience members shouted vulgar things at Bush during his speeches? Wait a minute — most of Bush’s speeches were in front of pre-screened conservative audiences, so there were hardly any catcalls.

I’m stumped. I would certainly like a better idea of what Ms. Kaufman considers “ugly and uncivil behavior” by liberals against Bush. And by that, I mean disrespectful behavior by the Democratic establishment which would be comparable to the clearly ugly and uncivil behavior now directed against Obama by the conservative and Republican establishments.