When "Reason" Rings Hollow

Nick Gillespie, who I've never heard of before today, has a piece up for Reason entitled, Beyond the Politics of Personal Destruction: What the Bush tapes reveal about policy disputes.

Once I was done reading it I found myself appalled by the lack of any reason to this piece. His arguments are almost all torn down by reality. Let's begin this dissection, shall we?

His first paragraph I'll quote verbatim: "If Ronald Reagan was the Teflon president, and Bill Clinton was the Kevlar president (and Jimmy Carter the irrevocably stained Polyester president), what 21st-century wonder material describes George W. Bush, who is surely the most underrated—and seemingly invulnerable—politician in recent memory?"

"Oh, really," I gently mused to myself. "He's the most 'seemingly invulnerable politician in recent memory,' eh? Is that why he lost the popular vote?" And yes, I know he's President and Al Gore isn't, but Gore beat Bush and lost the Presidency through what some would call "bad luck" (damn Ralph Nader, damn the electoral college!) and what others would call "fraud" (damn Katherine Harris, damn the protestors who stormed the canvassing board, damn Jeb Bush and damn the Supreme Court!). But George Bush didn't beat Gore. Our system did, if we want to be nice, and for the sake of being reasonable I will be nice.

And underrated? I thought it was the Bush White House that has always made it a top priority for Bush to be underrated? You know, to help make him "folksy." It's always been a joke amongst Democrats, like myself, that if George Bush throws a press conference and doesn't drool on himself the press will talk about how he's mastering the office.

"[Bush] never even gets knocked down in the first place," says the author, describing why Bush is better than the Comeback Kid (Clinton). "One needn't be a Bush loyalist to appreciate his unparalleled political sense of balance." To which I say this: I thought Al Gore knocked him on his ass and Bush was carried over the finish line by a rather diverse group of people from all walks of life? Or maybe I'm just too cynical? But wait, there's a book about that very subject.

He says, "At every step of his career, Bush has been written off as a lightweight and a loser, a dim bulb whose grasp exceeds his reach and whose I.Q. is stuck somewhere in the high double digits. Recall that he wasn't supposed to beat Ann Richards for the governorship of Texas, and he wasn't supposed to beat Al Gore for the presidency of the United States. The non-U.N.-sanctioned invasion of Iraq was going to do Dubya in, then the poorly prosecuted war itself would deliver the death blow, and finally the botched occupation would boot him from the White House."

The underlined parts are pieces he has a point on, but the boldened piece is one I've elaborated on before, but will make one more passing comment on: George didn't.

"On the policy front, Bush's early, "irresponsible" tax cuts—or his wild domestic, discretionary and defense spending—were supposed to be the death of him. (If the past is prologue, then pundits predicting that his push for Social Security privatization will be his version of Bill Clinton's health care reform debacle are almost certainly wrong)[.]"

Could I get a soft "wow" from everyone? He's got a point! Unless, of course, you cut through the spin and then he doesn't have much to stand on.

When Bush started with his tax cuts, and began showing that he wasn't a fiscal Conservative, the public didn't have enough time to react to the deficits. Then something called 9/11 happened, which meant we'd be going to war, which meant that it would cost a lot of money, but, because we were at war in response to the most heinous strike against America the public, myself included, didn't mind deficits. It wasn't until the Bush White House kept spending big domestically, refused to roll back any tax cuts, and then decided to invade Iraq. That's when the deficits really began to bother people.

But, looking back, I don't recall anyone saying his tax cuts would be the death of him. I think many people believed it was good to have those cuts, and people treated his tax cuts as, basically, the first historic piece of his Presidency. And, by the way, I firmly believe that George Bush would've been dead meat walking if he were judged only on domestic policy by the voters. The 9/11 attacks, as well as the instability in Iraq, kept him above six feet during the Presidential election.

About the "Health care comparison," well, let's just say there's no way in hell George Bush can get his Social Security plan passed with major compromises. Harry Reid is a fighter, and he's not going to lay down for Bush. He's not going to say, "All right, let's get this passed" like Daschle did with tax cuts. And Democrats are fighting now, unlike the first term. Unless five Democrats join every Republican in Congress on Bush's plan it's toast, and the odds of that are as good as the odds that George Bush will invite John Kerry to be Secretary of Defense.

He then spends a little bit of space talking about how congruent Bush's personal discussions are with his public statements, and he has a point there, I admit it. Then he says this and gets me all pissed off again.

"But this latest episode is not simply a win for Bush politically. It may actually have a salutary effect on political discourse more generally. Over at least the past decade or so, American politics have often been fought in a strange No Man's Land between the personal and the public. One of the ways that Republicans attacked Bill Clinton's policy proposals was by rifling through his mostly tawdry personal life. Democrats did something similar—including going after Newt Gingrich and short-lived Speaker of the House (and phone-sex freak) Bob Livingston in similar fashion."

First thing I'd like to say is that Gingrich's Congress adopted "personal is political," which they took from the 1960s radicals they so deplore, and used it on Democrats everywhere. Read "Language is a key mechanism of control.

Then I'd like to say that Gingrich, Livingston and Henry Hyde, Dan Burton and Helen Chenoweth were all more than fair game on their sex lives. You can't challenge someone's morality if you're not abiding by those same rules of morality you seek to enforce on someone else. All these Republicans that were attacking Clinton for being a "pervert" and a "scumbag" that were carrying on affairs at the same time deserved humiliation. At least Clinton didn't go around trying to pass judgements on other people's personal shortcomings.

"There was—and perhaps still is—a strange non sequitur at the heart of many political battles: If Politician A has an unseemly personal life, then his or her policies simply must be bad. This wasn't new to the 1990s—it's a tried-and-true political strategy, but it seemed to dominate an era where the last years of the Clinton administration revolved around Monicagate."

Only it wasn't successful on Clinton. I know we're getting down to some silly bickering, "Their attempts to damage him weren't successful! You're wrong!" but inaccuracies are inaccuracies.

The sex hunt against President Clinton drove his ratings through the roof, made him more popular and did nothing to really damage him. People loved Clinton even more when they learned he was a wily old man. You can say the battle plan of, "If Politician A has an unseemly personal life, then his or her policies simply must be bad" has been tried-and-mostly-true, but not always. They backfired dramatically on the Republicans, that's for sure.

"What the Bush tapes suggest is that, at least with regard to the White House's current occupant, there's simply no political advantage to be had by trying to dig up personal dirt. Which means that the president's opponents will have to argue against Bush's policies solely on policy grounds, not personal ones." I've always been a policy fighter rather than a personal fighter, frankly.

But I really don't know of anyone who has personally attacked Bush to try and get forward politically. The Democrats haven't launched investigation to see how much cocaine the President has done in his lifetime. They never asked if he's ever abused his wife, or cheated on her. The Democrats haven't even really argued - just said, "we're at war, can't offend" and laid back or compromised. But just you wait. The policy battles are coming and are starting as we speak.

"That may make the news less sexy, but in an age of ubiquitous smut, we hardly need to turn to politics for titillation, do we? We might even benefit from focusing on something approaching pure political disagreements." You know, I just might agree with that, but I'll bet the Republicans continue to question Democratic patriotism in the 2006 elections, and I'm sure they'll have a few dirty tricks up their sleeve. This guy's tone insinuates that it's Democrats who fight dirty, but it's not. He hopes the President's enemies can fight him only on policy. I hope the President doesn't changing the subject again and becoming Nixonian. But I'm not going to hold my breath.