If some disturbed individual were to plot my political posts on this blog – They could be forgiven for thinking that I'm a bomb-throwing lefty.
But the common thread (in my head, at least) was a belief that the administration of the past eight years was dangerously incompetent.
I have moved left – but not that far. I began my political involvement as a clueless disciple of the Reagan bandwagon. In the beginning, I was for him because he won, because he was good on television, and for very little else.
Regan thumped his chest to cheering crowds: "Tear down this wall!!" and we all felt good about America. Then came PATCO, and I applauded his audacity. Then came Grenada, and I cheered our flattening of a few hundred ill-equipped Cubans.
U-S-A! U-S-A!
It felt good to be associated with a winner. And Reagan kept winning.
When Iran/Contra broke out, I defended Regan's actions long and loud. Not because he was right – but because he was my guy. Ollie North was entertaining and I watched him unabashedly admit his actions and dare congress to do something. When congress did nothing – I was happy. My guy won.
That was pretty much the depth of my political thinking back then. A few unexamined allegiances – strongly held.
I remember a few cracks in the dam while watching (of all people) Lou Reed expressing his opinion on the Iran/Contra. Reed was not eloquent, but he pointed out the obvious fact that laws
were broken. For some reason – that was the first time that really got through. This wasn't some grandstanding politician, this was just some idiot musician making sense.
We have rules, they were broken. The rules should be enforced – or else why have them at all?
Reagan turned to Bush I and I was a bit warier – but given the cartoonish figures on the left- there was little danger I'd leave the fold. Bush's forgettable domestic policies were overshadowed by a masterfully orchestrated Gulf War.
Bad guy attacked [country I'd barely heard of]. We drew a line in the sand and said we'd drive him out.
I waved the flag, and lustily denounced the wanna-be hippies carrying peace signs and chanting "no blood for oil."
Of
course blood for oil, dammit. I still believe that.
The Gulf War wasn't going to be any f-ing Vietnam, I told anyone who would listen. There are no bambies in this one – just an army in the field that we are going to annihilate.
And we did. Better still, we came home in triumph. The highway of death bothered some people, but not me. When you make war, you make war. Killing combatants is the point. I thought then (and still do) that we should have allowed VII Corps to smash the Republican Guard before pulling the plug on the whole affair – a lot would have been different.
But, as far as I was concerned, it was an unsullied triumph.
The "mother of all press conferences" is still a memory that makes me smile.
For once, we kicked ass. We were the good guys.
Hooray for us.
I distinctly remember a Newsweek ticker blurb with a notional Pres. Bush addressing the Democrats: Look upon my poll numbers and despair…
He was a winner. And he was my guy.
-for about a year and a half.
I remember the precise moment I stopped being a loyal Republican. The GOP National convention, August 1992.
You had the economy skidding off the road and some southern governor comes along and tells everyone he's going to fix it. And the people were buying.
Pres. Bush was behind in the polls and needed to take the reins hard. Show his mettle in the face of a national and political crisis. I'd been digging into the details of what I could understand and tuned into the convention to watch the GOP knock one out of the park.
Instead, they gave me two words: Family Values.
I've forgotten how many conversations I've had about that moment, but I recall my initial reaction was "What the f*ck? We have real problems and you idiots want to play house?"
The more I listened the more convinced I was that the GOP had lost its mind. Buchanan disgraced himself and his party – and everyone in the hall loved him for it.
I remember thinking "This? This is who you are?" and I was certain Bush was going to lose.
The wanna-be hippies would have their day – and (In my mind at least) perhaps the GOP would learn something.
I held my nose and voted for Bush anyway.
When that southern governor marched onto the stage, it was hard not to smile for him. Well played, Bill. It
was the economy, and Bush
was stupid.
The following years found a few more reversals: Homophobia, for example. It was the classic reason, too: someone I knew came out of the closet. Once I realize that hating gay people involved hating a real person that I knew – it was like, "wow, that's really stupid."
I was always pro-choice – from the first moment I understood the issue, so here I was: a rule-of-law, pro-gun, pro-choice, pro-military, fiscal conservative, who thought gays should be treated fairly.
Political discussions with self identified republicans became awkward. Why? Because they were total @ssholes. At least the ones who were politically active.
I had joined a group of interns for the state legislature - and made the mistake of going with my party. I was decidedly in the minority and my fellow interns asked my why on earth I would work for a republican. "Because I am a republican," I'd say, and then I'd get the same look they'd give this guy I'll call Red.
Red was the loud republican intern – one of three (including me) and he was a colossal @ss. An empty headed, knee-jerk ideologue who spoke like someone force fed him talking points every morning.
He supported the death penalty for children as young as 11, believed that democrat was a fancy name for subversive. There was no debate with him, there was just war. His minion was no better.
Talking to either of them was like lighting a stick of dynamite. They would always get around to shouting at you.
I've always been opinionated, and I know I talk a lot – but I genuinely enjoy a debate, because both sides can learn things.
Red did not enjoy debating, or learning – he enjoyed pissing people off with his "zingers." The problem was, most of the time, he was demonstrably wrong. Whenever someone would point out a factual inaccuracy – he'd change the subject, usually by insulting someone.
The most intelligent conversations I had about politics were with the democratic interns – who were generally well informed, and fun to talk to. We worked the issue over good – but we could disagree and keep the discussion going. Minds didn't change much – but it was genuinely enlightening.
The same could not be said of the College Republicans I tried to deal with. They were not partisan, they were militant. People you genuinely thought might be unstable. I was not welcome (I was pro-choice and thought gay people were human beings) nor did I feel any desire to be welcome.
(Now, I know there are plenty of rational folk out there who self identify as conservative who are nothing like Red or the whackjobs I met in the College Republicans – but you have to wonder what is going through their minds when they see their party wildly cheering something like Pat Buchanan's culture war speech.)
Despite my shift on some social issues, I could not bring myself to vote for Clinton. Vestigial loyalties, or what have you, I simply could not do it.
Whitewater was not the issue – the more I looked into Whitewater, the less I believed there was anything there.
Nor was it Paula Jones.
[The Paula Jones suit was an abomination of a Supreme Court ruling. A sitting president should not be sued over conduct that occurred prior to their assuming office. You wanna sue them after they leave office? Fine. But the nation's business comes before your petty crap.]
When Lewinsky arrived on the national stage – I was just appalled by how arrogant Clinton was. Stonewalling at every turn. Denying everything and then walking it back, parsing it down and eventually admitting conduct that he'd denied under oath.
Perjury. A felon in our White House.
Yes, the GOP was out for blood. This
was a partisan witch hunt – but Clinton gave the GOP all the excuse they needed when he lied in his deposition. If he fesses up, there's still a scandal, but no crime.
Clinton chose perjury – then acted as if his newfound parsing of words was his intention from the beginning.
I didn't buy it – and was praying that he would go down in flames. As the Democrats had too many seats in the Senate and no one willing to break ranks – there was no conviction. Some call it a principled stand – I thought of it as cronyism.
Yes, Clinton presided over a lot of good things – but I won't forgive him for perjury.
Then came G.W., a man who simply cannot be as foolish as he comes across on TV – but sounded an awful lot like Red to me. Empty headed phrasings, with no substance behind it.
I recall his "Compassionate Conservatism" slogan – which bombed, and (a week later) its laughable sequel "A reformer with results."
The only thing that had changed in that week was the slogan. There had been no reform, no results – but that was the slogan, and it was a full court press.
G.W. started with one thing going for him: name recognition. He quickly acquired a second – uncritical repetition of everything he said.
At the time, I remember looking into the "Texas Miracle" that Bush brought to schools when he was governor. Virtually any independent analysis of the program showed it to be:
- teach students how to take a test,
- test them
- rejoice at how well they take the test.
Never mind the fact that they are still tanking on standardized national tests.
If at first you can't succeed, change the metric of success.
About as transparent fraud as you could manage, but its success was touted endlessly from the stump and from the networks.
I did not believe this man. His most impressive accomplishment – from my perspective -was beating Ann Richards – and I didn't see that as a reflection of his intellect. I had never heard of Karl Rove – but even then people were talking about the brass knuckles approach his side favored.
I remember McCain in the 2000 primary – I really wanted him to win the nomination. Here was a guy talking sense – advocating for campaign finance reform, speaking out against corporate giveaways. Him, I respected.
Bush II was just another mouthpiece.
Brass knuckles politics won the day for the mouthpiece – and I've yet to see any of the leadership qualities his loyalists cite so often.
The most damning example of this was 9/11.
Bush goes into a photo op knowing that a jetliner has flown into the World Trade Center, and not much else.
In the middle of his photo op – he is told that "A second plane hit the second tower. America is at war."
-and he just sits there until his photo op is done.
Why?
Because he is waiting for someone to tell him what to do next.
You think Rudy Giuliani would have stayed put if Andy Card had told him the same thing?
Fast forward to Katrina: Bush sitting in a briefing that tells him that the levies are overflowing and things are going to get worse.
Bush just sits there until the meeting is over. No leadership. No action. Just a guy filling a chair.
That's what we've had for the past eight years. An ill informed reactionary, steeped in and surrounded by the ideology of...
..of what, exactly?
While Bush's most ardent apologists call themselves conservative – I cannot fathom why they would associate themselves with the policies of the last eight years.
This president
- Has spent more on government, not less.
- Has made government larger, not smaller.
- Has allowed the government to torture,
- Has authorized spying on American citizens
- Has centralized power in a "unitary executive"
- Has asserted his right to ignore statues he disagrees with
- Has commuted the prison sentence of a subordinate convicted of felonies performed while a member of his administration.
- Has vastly expanded the role of secret (and therefore unaccountable) law
- Has personally intervened in the health care decision of his citizens
And on and on and on….
Glenn Greenwald made a
scathing point about how anytime conservatism fails, conservatives claim that what failed wasn't true conservatism.
I'd agree with part of that – Conservatives cannot wash their hands of the disaster they now find themselves in. Too many were willing participants to now pretend that G.W. was some kind of aberration. He WAS conservatism for eight years, and nobody on either side of the aisle did much to change that.
Nor did republicans learn much from G.W.'s failure either. Witness Sen. McCain's breathtakingly tin-eared campaign of the last year.
Here was a man who eight years ago could lay claim to being a maverick. But to get the nomination for 2008 he adopted the mannerisms and tactics of G.W. and Rove.
Had he not done so, it is unclear that he would have gotten any kind of support from the GOP base.
Which leads to the question – who are these people in the GOP base, anyway? And how do they compare with people who believed there was a point to conservatism besides holding on to power?
If the GOP is going to re-group – you wonder if they can save anything if "The Base" is still calling the shots.
Catering to that base is what ruined McCain. A man who could have led the GOP out of the wilderness instead took the bullet for their mistakes.
It's a terrible waste of a man who could have been great.
I don't excuse McCain - he did choose that path, but I wonder if the GOP faithful who laid the path have learned anything.
And I'm not talking about tactics.
