The New
Yorker
magazine
cover for Independence Day (5 July 2004 issue) showed two nations waving
flags, releasing balloons, and shooting fireworks. The Blue nation
scowled and screamed from the left at the Red nation scowling from the
right, each equally represented. Some national celebration. Nothing
I’d seen in the polemical storms of the presidential campaign season
caught the state of the Union so simply and graphically. This sardonic
cartoon of our nation on its birthday said better than any pundit’s
piece how polarized we are, or at least appear to be.
David Brooks in the 5 June 2004 New York Times explained that the
current state of polarization in the body politic rests upon an age-old
reality: "politics is a tribal business" not a product of reasonable
argumentation. Political allegiance is like religious affiliation,
acquired early and adhered to life-long. People don't become
Republicans or Democrats, Brooks said, after they think through a set of
political values for themselves. Instead, they personally adopt the
values of the parties to which they belong out of custom. As tribal
members, Americans tend to cultivate "one-sided attitudes and
perceptions." That, Brooks concluded, "suggests that political
polarization is the result of deep and self-reinforcing psychological
and social forces."
Although political polarization may be a hoary reality in American life,
as Brooks suggests, the intensification of it in the Clinton and Bush
administrations has now reached a chronic level. Nicholas Kristof,
another Times columnist, on 30 June 2004 declared that it is
making governance itself increasingly difficult. "Insults and rage
impede understanding," he said. Speaking as a liberal, he said that his
fellow liberals were doing to conservatives what conservatives had
already done to liberals with the rise of radical right-wing talk radio:
they were demonizing the opposition. It's time to stop, Kristof
insisted, for the sake of the Republic.
Since America faces unprecedented homeland danger and needs to solidify
as a nation at risk, Kristof's call for a halt to demonization and a
lessening of polarization should reach all of us. The dreadful tone of
the 2004 presidential race threatens to sour all of us by election
day—if a terrorist attack does not cause a postponement of it. Citizens
could do a public service by pausing and trying to place their opinions
about the opposition in fresh perspective. In doing so, they might in
their
small way help to sweeten the atmosphere and to soften the ugliness
created by name-calling, exaggeration, and distortion. They might help
the body politic to look at the real state of affairs rather than at the
fright-filled virtual realities conjured by opposing parties.
How would they do that? As a start, they could suspend their belief in
the bad intentions of the other side. They could make an effort to get
inside the moccasins of the adversary. This would require them to avoid
the derogatory slogans and personal epithets foisted on the public by
the spin factories of right and left. It would compel them, for
the sake of argument, to grant
decency to the opponent. They would have to
control their personal distaste for the style of the person they
oppose. They would have to stop laughing at the most malicious
over-the-top jokes about the opponent. They would have to forego the
fizzy feeling of satisfaction when fellow partisans over drinks and
snacks yuck-yucked their way into seamless group-think. By doing so,
they might hope to stall the ever-escalating game of
black-or-white—“with us or against us.”
Such an exercise would not aim to dismantle their political
convictions. It would aim to eliminate from those convictions the
irrational excess that rigidifies them into unyielding dogma. It would
work to objectify their political convictions in the realm of rational
discourse where they belong.
Mainly, they would be acknowledging the “radical fallibility” at the
heart of social and political experience--a
concept espoused by George Soros. That is, they would be
admitting that there is no complete or permanent answer to the national
condition, not even their own. The opposition in principle could have
something right.
In this new frame of mind, they ultimately would be allowing themselves
to run the risk of coming to believe in policies that they have been
rejecting out of hand heretofore. They would be forcing themselves to
reach for the inner strength to hold onto their main convictions--even
while admitting that these convictions may not be perfectly suited to bring
everlasting success to the national political enterprise.
People fighting the demonization of their political opponents of course
would have to draw a line somewhere. Fervent liberals should not have
to pay serious attention to Rush Limbaugh’s daily diatribes—or to his
interviews with Dick Cheney. Solid conservatives should not have to try
on the sneakers of Michael Moore. Let them engage with relatively sane
voices on the right or the left. Let them see how well they could filter out
partisan extremism and ad hominem animus—from themselves as well as from
their adversaries. Let them seek the substance of arguments and let
the rest go.
Suppose, for example, that a well-meaning liberal read John Podhoretz’s
Bush Country with some such objective. Grant that so far
that liberal reader has
been unable to find anything to like about George W. Bush’s style or
policies; but he would like to resist the urge to keep on demonizing “Dubya.”
He would like to distil his differences to reasonable argument.
Podhoretz is an unabashed partisan for President Bush. He has
credentials from Fox News, the Hoover Institution, and the conservative
Weekly Standard. His parents, Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz,
are senior citizens of the neoconservative right. But John is no Rush
Limbaugh; he earnestly tries to show liberals why they are wrong when
they demonize George W. Bush.
An open-minded liberal reader of Bush Country first would have to
face up to Podhoretz’s admiration for Bush’s personal style. He
approves of Bush’s aggressive approach to the duties of office. In
fact, at the outset he compares him favorably to the image of the chief
executive envisioned in Federalist Paper 70 by that muscular Founding
Father, Alexander Hamilton, who wanted to see “energy in the
executive.” Podhoretz admires Bush’s big and bold approach to problems
and his abhorrence of expedient dodges and delays on important issues.
He admires his “remarkable self-discipline” and the complementary
instincts of a “successful riverboat gambler.” (6)
Our liberal reader probably would be surprised to find that Bush, in
Podhoretz’s eyes, is a brilliant, powerful, and intellectually serious
speaker. (8) He believes that Bush is the best speaker in the office
since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (9) Podhoretz confesses that during
the 2000 campaign, he, like many fellow journalists, believed that Bush
was a lightweight. (9) But Bush's performance through the hard times of
the past several years changed his mind. He saw Bush make a remarkable
transformation in style worthy of great admiration.
The liberal reader would at least have to grant that, since his painful
inaugural speech in the rain in January 2001, Bush has indeed developed
a speaking style suited to his limited register. Those who learned in
rhetoric class that simplicity is a virtue see him employing it in
almost every utterance. It isn’t grand, but it often works.
Podhoretz goes on to debunk other “crazy” liberal ideas about Bush's style that
our reader probably would have entertained at some point.
(1) The moron: If typical, our reader would sometimes have
allowed himself to think of Bush as a "moron"—too intellectually shallow
and too incurious to lead the nation. On the contrary, Podhoretz says,
Bush is a reader (he cites several specific books that he knows the
president has read). More important, Podhoretz warns liberals not to "misunderestimate"
(a classic Dubya malapropism) Bush's skill at feigning ignorance while
being "whip-smart" at the nasty game of politics. (24-26)
Podhoretz tells an interesting anecdote about the origin of Bush's brash
and unapologetic Texan style, which liberals often see as boorish and
unsophisticated. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth in Texas, Bush
was shipped east by his parents to Andover and Yale. At Yale, the
incoming freshman introduced himself to liberal guru William Sloan
Coffin, chaplain of the university, as the son of alumnus George H. W.
Bush. Acknowledging that he remembered Bush senior, Coffin reportedly
made an insulting comment about him. This so offended the younger Bush,
according to Podhoretz, that it helped sour him on the Eastern
Establishment that he was by birth destined to join. "If Coffin was the
best the East had to offer, then Dubya would be what he had been as a
child—a Texan." (37) The anecdote has a believable ring.
(2) The fanatic: So, grant that our liberal reader might see some merit in Podhoretz’s explanation of the "amiable dunce" style of Bush.
He surely
would have seen him speak simply and effectively in his Texan twang on
the stump with friendly audiences. But would he give up another crazy
liberal idea, that Bush is a "religious fanatic" who divides the world
unreflectively into good and evil categories?
Podhoretz argues that, contrary to liberal fears, Bush is not
“born-again”—he was not rebaptized after he woke up to his Christian
calling in 1985 and 1986 and reformed his personal life. He does not
present himself as a fundamentalist believer in the “Rapture” story of
Christ’s second coming laid out in the book of Revelations. Rather, he
was raised in the Episcopal church and now attends a mainstream
Methodist church.
Fair enough, our liberal reader could say. But he would balk, I’m sure,
when Podhoretz tries to show how religious faith gave Bush the clarity
and certainty to frame accurately the historic conflict of geopolitical
good and evil that began with the 9-11 attacks. Regrettably, Podhoretz
descends to the now-tiresome rhetorical tactic of trivializing or
vilifying the opposition’s criticism of the president’s religious
convictions. He brushes aside the substance of their criticism.
Critics of Bush’s oversimplified conception of the conflict were “so
immensely sophisticated (or so full of hatred of America) that they were
unable to understand that the threat posed by terrorists and their
mentors was something evil.” (84) He accuses Bush critics of being
fanatics for hating Bush and praises the president for the moral clarity
based on his faith. (84)
Our liberal reader would surely want Podhoretz to address the
substantive question: did the president’s simple understanding of
Christian religion unduly influence the way he conceptualized the highly
complex geopolitical conflict between the West and radical Islamists?
To ask the question is not to express hatred for the president.
(3) The Cowboy: When Podhoretz takes on “crazy liberal idea
#7,”—that Bush is a cowboy--he again refuses to grant that it is fair to
question Bush’s style and its effect on policy actions. (192) He is
right, of course, to point out that Bush is not a cowboy, no matter how
one defines the term. His critics, he says correctly, have revived the
caricature from Reagan days because they detest his foreign policy. And
Podhoretz deftly deconstructs several critics with an acid tone typical of the
current polemical wars.
Our liberal reader, seeking understanding of Bush, however, would not
find a reasoned defense of substantive issues that evoked the “cowboy”
epithet. Where critics see Bush’s peremptory dismissal of the Kyoto
treaty on global warning, for example, as an arrogant “cowboy” gesture, Podhoretz sees it as the straight talk of an adult talking to adults.
(199) Where critics see Bush rushing into the Iraq war as soon as
troops were assembled in the region, regardless of unfinished work by
the UN inspectors, Podhoretz sees Bush making “indefatigable efforts at
diplomacy.” (200) His tendentious treatment of these instances would
not be likely to sway our liberal reader; but his approach to the
criticisms at least would give the reader fresh understanding of why the
residents of Bush country feel that the president’s style of behavior is
just fine.
Podhoretz is at pains throughout to show that Bush is his own man and in
command on his own terms. He is not, as crazy liberals think, a
“puppet.” The author deals reasonably well with various purported
puppeteers—Bush senior, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Big Oil chiefs. (53-57)
Our liberal reader, however, would find him unpersuasive and shrill when
he tries to show that Bush is not a puppet of the neoconservative hawks.
First he voices a doubt that a neoconservative “cabal” even exists,
though he goes on to acknowledge that the people he names are friends,
college and graduate school mates, and fellow believers in a “muscular
American foreign policy.” (58) He does not mention the Project for the
New American Century, which, nearly everyone knows, articulated that
policy and whose members moved into pivotal positions in the new Bush
administration (most notably the office of Vice President). Nor does he
explain the peculiar position of the Defense Advisory Board in the
Pentagon or the special intelligence operations set up in the Defense
Department with neoconservatives in command.
Instead, he says, the crazy liberal idea that Bush is a puppet of
neoconservatives is motivated by “vicious anti-Semitism.” (60) Many
known neoconservatives are Jewish; the liberal myth, Podhoretz says, is
that they are causing Bush to use American power in the Middle East not
to further US interests but those of Israel. With this charge, he feels
excused from the obligation to explain the influences—perfectly
consistent with neoconservative ideology--on Bush’s evolving stance on
preemptive war and the logic of his run-up to the decision to go to
war. Our liberal reader surely would wish for a fairer and more
balanced assessment of the neoconservative influences on Bush.
When Podhoretz turns to Bush’s initiative to give $15 billion for AIDS
in Africa (“America, the Good Samaritan” [147-165]), the liberal reader
would find a more expansive treatment of Bush’s leadership behavior.
He would find Podhoretz describing a sagacious and compassionate leader, motivated by the
highest humanitarian ideals based on Christian faith, urging America to
do the right thing because it is the right thing, not because it has
political benefit. Moreover, he would find a president who is not
stubbornly fixed in the ideology of his party or completely beholden to
the religious right. The magnitude of the foreign aid program coming
from a Republican “was very nearly unprecedented.” (155) Bush’s
willingness to take the offensive in the complex cultural politics of
AIDS takes Podhoretz’s breath away. And he marvels at the rhetorical
finesse with which Bush used the Good Samaritan parable from the New
Testament to outmaneuver his evangelical supporters who might object to
an offensive on such a morally and politically charged issue.
Our liberal reader could reasonably appreciate Podhoretz’s portrayal of
Bush’s courage to mount a humanitarian program, even when it might
upset his own base. The reader might be less enthusiastic than
Podhoretz, however, if he understood that the US program would have the
classic Bush stamp: it would stand alone and apart from any cooperative
international efforts on AIDS, thus reinforcing the impression of
imperial hauteur. And, at this writing, funding has lagged, another
classic Bush stamp, and complaints have increased.
Podhoretz’s glorification of George W. Bush reaches its highest pitch in
his final chapter, “Our Mission and Our Moment.” (235-250) Here, our liberal
reader would find “the splendor of Bush’s rhetoric” (239) as he spells out his
vision of universal freedom and America’s mission to bring it to Iraq
and Palestine and the rest of the Muslim world. The liberal reader
would doubtless affirm Podhoretz’s praise for Bush’s balanced words
immediately after 9-11. He might even feel moved by Podhoretz’s
celebration of the way Bush, through grit and self-discipline,
transformed his stumbling speaking style into an effective one, tuned to
a wounded nation in need of reassurances:
The speaker who has emerged from these exercises is a solemn man who
wishes to make sure his listeners understand and com/prehend every
word. And yet he does not talk down to them. The language he uses in
his major addresses is elevated, formal, and elegantly rendered. He
delivers them conversationally. There is a lot of God-talk, but he does
not sound preachy….the key impressions he conveys…are earnestness and
gravity—the perfect tone for an uncertain and frightening age. (242-243)
Podhoretz ends with a rousing defense of Bush’s decision to go into
Iraq. With events there moving rapidly since publication, and with
investigations and resignations dogging the administration, this defense
now would enlighten our liberal reader but little. It would remind him,
however, that Podhoretz throughout the book has tried to show liberals
that Bush is a fully human leader, that he does not deserve to be
depersonalized by ideological extremists of the left:
This disease (to which ideological conservatives, alas, are as
susceptible as ideological liberals) distorts perception, destroys
reason, and makes rational discussion very nearly impossible. (249)
Podhoretz sometimes falls victim to the disease himself when putting the
president’s ideological antagonists in their places. Still, our liberal
reader, wishing to find a common ground where unhysterical people might
civilly disagree and sometimes agree, could perhaps feel assured of
Podhoretz’s kindred wish—despite the author’s unrestrained desire to
declare and worship a hero of historic proportions.
And in the end, that desire could last longest in our liberal reader’s
impressions of this book. Reflecting on the whole presentation of Bush
Country, he could come to worry about the transformative power of
executive activism that Podhoretz so admires. Podhoretz exults that
Bush “has made extraordinary use of the powers of the presidency and has
changed the United States, its government, and the world in ways that
have made an indelible mark on the new century.” (15) Our liberal
reader could agree with this assessment and then worry that the change
of the United States into Bush Country portends a future more ominous
than promising.
But perhaps he could set those longer-term worries aside and for a
moment enjoy the effort he made to discover a piece of common ground
where his voice and that of Podhoretz could meet without shouting the
canards of the Red from the right and the Blue from the left.
