An Unreflective Man
by Patrick J. Buchanan
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
With his public approval where Harry Truman’s stood when he left office, George W. Bush gave his last press conference yesterday.
And like that predecessor he often identifies with, Bush showed a Trumanesque defiance of his critics—and a Trumanesque failure to understand what ruined his presidency.
He denounced protectionism, as he has with dismissive contempt since he went to New Hampshire a decade ago. But nowhere in his defense of free trade was there any explanation for how Middle America lost 3 million manufacturing jobs in his first term and a million more in the last year.
Nowhere does there seem an awareness that the ideas he absorbed at his father’s knee and the Harvard Business School had resulted in the de-industrialization of his country, an enormous and growing dependency on Japan, China and Asia for the essentials of our national life, and, now, for the borrowed money to pay for them.
Someone once defined tragedy as what happens when a beautiful theory collides with a fact. And this is what has happened every time a great empire—be it the Spanish, British or American—embraced free trade as its salvation.
President Bush says it was freedom that prevailed when he rejected the pleas of weak-sister Republicans and backed the surge. But what spared us a debacle in Iraq was an infusion of 30,000 combat troops, an uprising against the murderers of al-Qaida and a U.S. decision to buy off the Sunni tribes, a strategy besieged empires have pursued for centuries.
Nor does there appear in Bush’s self-assurance any awareness of the cost of his Freedom Agenda. In Iraq, it is 4,000 U.S. dead, 30,000 wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, millions of refugees, a pogrom against an ancient Christian community, and a strategic victory for Iran and its Shia allies across the Middle East. When last heard from, the Ayatollah Sistani—the chief Shia cleric in Iraq, who has welcomed Iranian but not American visitors—was calling for Muslims to stand up against Israeli criminality in Gaza.
Like Woodrow Wilson before him, Bush appears to believe that the nobility of his goals—expanding freedom and bringing an end to tyranny in our world—validates and will sanctify his decisions.
Like Wilson, he is a utopian. He fails to understand that idealism has its delusions and disasters.
The war Wilson led us into “to make the world safe for democracy” gave us Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and 70 years of the most barbaric empire in all history. The peace Wilson brought home led straight to Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich and a second world war far worse than the first.
The West’s road to hell has been paved with good intentions.
President Bush rightly denounces Europeans who see Israel as always wrong. Yet he behaves as though Israel can do no wrong. Sixteen days into the Gaza war, with the Palestinian dead and wounded near 5,000, and a humanitarian catastrophe at hand, has our “compassionate conservative” president uttered one word of compassion for those whose losses outnumber the Israelis’ 100 to one?
In defending his rejected immigration reform, President Bush clearly sees himself as in the vanguard of decency, and admonishes his party against being perceived as anti-immigrant.
But is this president oblivious to what is happening in his country because of his and his father’s failure to secure the border? Even in rich, liberal Montgomery County, Md., one reads over the weekend that there is a hardening of attitudes toward illegal immigration after a spate of crimes and killings. Working-class Americans pay the price of the idealism around the dinner table at the Crawford ranch.
In his first five years, Bush himself has admitted, 6 million aliens were arrested at the border, breaking into this country. One in 12—500,000—had criminal records. Is it anti-immigrant to demand a halt to this invasion, even if it means troops on the border? Is it truly compassionate, or an act of cravenness, to insist that the answer is amnesty for 12 million to 20 million illegals and absolution for the businesses that hired them?
Choleric and cocky Harry Truman may be Bush’s role model. But it was Dwight D. Eisenhower who had to clean up the mess Harry left behind.
Six months into office, Ike had ended the Korean War. He had the courage no president has since shown to tell the Israelis they must get off occupied land. They did.
While surely repelled by Nikita Khrushchev, especially for the Hungarian bloodbath of 1956, Ike had him up to Camp David in 1959 because, wicked as the Bolsheviks were, they had nuclear weapons, and one must talk to them.
Prudence is the mark of the true conservative. Ike and Ronald Reagan had it. Neither Bush nor Truman did. And that is why the former left the country so much better off than did the latter.
Goodbye, Mr. President, and God bless.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
1 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 13 January 2009:
Although one can argue with Pat Buchanan on the wisdom of Dwight Eisenhower as president(this is not the place and many men Buchanan’s age, like my father, feel the same way), it is mind-numbing how obtuse George W. Bush is regarding his failings as president. Buchanan details Bush’s greatest failings and I will not rehash them. However, I can only come to the conclusion that Bush’s attitudes are shaped by his growing up an arrogant plutocrat with no real feeling for the lives of 95 % of his fellow countrymen. He’s like a man in a bubble, as alien to his countrymen as a monk is to the world around him. George W. Bush has led the Republican Party to disrepute, two consecutive election hidings with a probable third straight political shellacking to come, the record being the 1930-32-34-36 mass rejection of the Herbert Hoover Republicans. By its being tied to the Bush presidency, the official conservative movement and its edifices are now mired in a swamp of failure.
2 Comment by pablo H on 13 January 2009:
George Bush is only one man. As shown by their selection of McCrazy, the Republican party supports all of Bushes Failures. “Invade the world, invite the world, in hock to the world” isn’t just a slogan – its the Republican Party platform.
And other than a few brave souls, I see no willingness on the part of the Republicans or even conservatives to change.
3 Comment by Robert on 13 January 2009:
“Gentle as a dove and wise as a serpent” has a totally different meaning than “arrogant, pompous, ass.” Pat is talking here about the qualities of a statesman and W.Bush is talking about politics. A statesman is possessed with a character strong enough to admit weaknesses, but a politician is always too weak to allow for anything but strength in his own character. If nothing else, the Clintons and Bushes have been shining examples of this permanent truth.
4 Comment by Bill Wilder on 13 January 2009:
If Bush and Clinton are the measuring, the list of other politicians who qualify as statesman could be quite long.
And I think Derek is overstating Bush’s appreciation for the American public by stating that he understands 5 percent of it.
5 Comment by Robert on 13 January 2009:
Bill,
I botched the written word to such an extent that nobody could understad what I was saying. Bush and Clintons are a long,long way from statesmen. They are simply the garden variety of the vulgar side of politics. Sorry if that was not clear in my previous post.
6 Comment by Joseph Salemi on 13 January 2009:
Yes, George Bush is leaving as a highly unpopular president. But who here believes that the American people will ever elect anyone with radically different policies?
We’re playing with a rigged deck here, friends.
7 Comment by David Wihowski on 13 January 2009:
Most emperor’s have been arrogant, pompous asses. The current US emperor, whose feigns simple American good sense as his mien, will be replaced by another pompous ass who actually thinks he’s got some sophistication and intelligence. Obama is probably just a Clinton with dark skin.
The deck is rigged because either party’s real agenda is expansion of the American Empire (“invade the world, invite the world…”) and the fluff they put in their platforms is mostly a distraction from the real agenda.
8 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 13 January 2009:
However, the Empire is broke. It might be fun for Chronicles to dedicate an issue to the coming cataclysm. Gosh, I’d like to know what gentlemen like Professor Lukacs and Professor Wilson think about what is going on in this crazy world.
9 Comment by polemicscat on 14 January 2009:
More unreflective habits:
Bush 2 never internalize the idea that the United States has borders. He never showed any belief that the Constitution is important in defining the nation. He never noticed that the oath
of office is just to preserve and defend the Constitution.
Given these facts, all kinds of harm were possible in his
tenure.
10 Comment by george on 15 January 2009:
123
I know Chronicles probably won’t publish this comment but I can prove there is a conspiracy by predicting a future event.
I originally estimated that it would happen sometime between mid January and February the 10th but it might even happen TOMORROW 16TH January 2009 when Putin travels to Berlin.
There will be an attempted terrorist attack on NATO headquarters in Brussels with a nuclear bomb or dirty bomb that will be linked or traced back to Russia justifying intervention against Russia by “terrorists” or claimed links to Russian intelligence.
Of course it will be a false flag attack and the evidence will be fabricated orchestrated by Zbignew Brezinski.
Brezinski’s puppet Obama will come to the forefront and the media will hype up the new Cold War threat escalating further support for terrorism inside Russia, NATO expansion and a foreign policy specifically targeted towards Russia.
11 Comment by george on 15 January 2009:
Has anyone recently tried to comment on any articles on TakiMag?
I used a different computer IP address and even went to the site through a proxy website on my own computer but I am still unable to comment on any of the articles.
Have they permanently closed down the comment sections on the articles or is it just me.
12 Comment by T. Chan on 15 January 2009:
george: Yes, TakiMag has shut down all commenting, until they deem it ok to re-open, which may never happen.
13 Comment by george on 15 January 2009:
I dont know where you would post comment on the website layout but I would appreciate it if Chronicles would reintroduce like they did before the heading for the article in the Recent Comment section that people are posting comments about.
Other than that great layout.
14 Comment by george on 16 January 2009:
“While surely repelled by Nikita Khrushchev, especially for the Hungarian bloodbath of 1956, Ike had him up to Camp David in 1959 because, wicked as the Bolsheviks were, they had nuclear weapons, and one must talk to them.”
Like Trotsky (Soviet Unions first mass murderer) the media views a degree of praise on Khrushchev as somewhat of a reformer circumvented by right wing forces in the Communist government yet it was Khrushchev who built the Berlin wall and shipped missiles to Cuba and was heavily involved in Stalin murder program that he latter denounced.
“After the death of Stalin, his successors kept up the tradition, for a report in the B’nai B’rith Messenger relates: “To show that Russia treats its Jews well, Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev this week remarked at a reception at the Polish Embassy that not only he himself and Soviet President Klementi Voroshilov, but also half the members of the Praesidium have Jewish wives. Mr. Kruschev made this remark to Israeli Ambassador Joseph Avidar, who was amongst the guests.” (Kruschev’s wife was yet another Kaganovitch.)”
15 Comment by slim on 16 January 2009:
Why is he so upset about the pogrom against Iraqi Christians?
Isn’t he happy that we liberated the Islamists? What could be further from his horrible fear that we’d accidentally spread zionism?
Does he have this concern with Balkan Christians? How about the ones that live freely in the ME, unless of course the US accidentally helps spread sharia again.