W Talks The Talk, But Does He Walk The Walk?

Here's an advance look at Peter Singer's The President of Good & Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush (March 2004). Singer is a bioethicist at Princeton University. My friend—the Nedster—sent a print copy along via snailmail. The Nedster is cyber-challenged, so he resorted to 19th century technology. Singer takes what W says at face value and evaluate W's positions from an ethical standpoint. If this is (fair & balanced) revelation, so be it.

[x The Plain Dealer]
An ethicist strips off Bush's moral veneer
by Tom Brazaitis

With the Demo cratic presidential nominating process starting at Monday's Iowa caucuses, the question being asked is, which of these nine candidates, if any, could beat President George W. Bush in No vember?

Wrong question.

In a presidential election with an incumbent running, the first question voters ask is whether the man who holds the job merits a second term. Only after that question is answered in the negative or with a "maybe not" does attention turn to the qualifications of the challenger.

Those of you who have made up your mind that Bush deserves four more years may skip the rest of this column. For those who are undecided, I have a recommendation: Put in an order for a new book by Peter Singer, due out in March, called, "The President of Good & Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush."

It covers the major issues dealt with by the Bush administration through mid-2003 - stem cell research, faith-based initiatives, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to name a few - but Singer analyzes Bush's statements and actions through an ethical prism. Remember, it was Bush who campaigned as the candidate who would bring "honor and dignity" to the White House, a not-so-subtle reminder of Bill Clinton's moral failings in the Oval Office.

"When I have told friends and colleagues that I am working on a book about 'Bush's ethics,' some of them quip that the phrase is an oxymoron, or that it must be a very short book," Singer writes in the introduction.

Nevertheless, Singer, a Princeton bioethicist, takes his task seriously, acknowledging that "tens of millions of Americans believe that [Bush] is sincere, and share the views that he puts forward on a wide range of moral issues."

"My starting point," Singer says, "is to take what Bush says at face value, and inquire how defensible the positions that he espouses are."

The title of the book stems from Bush's tendency to see the world in terms of good and evil. As of June 16, 2003, the president had spoken about evil in 319 speeches, or 30 percent of all his speeches up to that time, Singer notes.

Singer's mission is simple: To find out whether Bush practices what he preaches.

Examining the moral case for Bush's $1.6 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years, Singer notes that by heavily weighting the cuts to benefit the wealthiest Americans, Bush has only accentuated economic inequality in the country. Compassionate conservatism?

Bush has railed against "a culture that devalues life" while holding firm the notion that "every life is precious." Singer tries to understand these assertions coming from a man, who as governor of Texas signed 152 death warrants, more than any other American governor in modern times. He also tries to square Bush's virtual ban on government-funded stem-cell research in deference to "precious" embryos when tens of thousands of citizens could benefit from the research.

Bush, Singer says, justifies the deaths of thousands of noncombatants in Afghanistan and Iraq by saying those deaths were not intended, although they certainly could be foreseen.

"No doubt scientists who seek to derive stem cells from embryos would be happy if the embryos could survive the process," Singer writes. "In that sense they too could claim that, although they foresaw the deaths of the embryos, they did not intend them."

Bush sold Congress and the American people on the idea that ousting Saddam Hussein was necessary because he harbored weapons of mass destruction that could be used against U.S. citizens. That claim turned out to be false.

Switching course, Bush stressed that getting rid of Saddam would liberate the Iraqi people from a vicious dictator who had killed tens of thousands of his own people.

Singer isn't buying. From what we now know, he says, "it appears that the Bush administration decided what action it wanted to take, and then selected and massaged the intelligence information to make it support that action."

As for Bush's backup claim that the war would save Iraqi lives, Singer reminds us that in March 2003 when Bush ordered the attack, no case could be made that there was a looming humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq.

Washington psychologist Renana Brooks, head of the Sommet Institute for the Study of Power and Persuasion (www.sommetinstitute.org) has written that Bush's handlers "project the president as a man of character. The character myth relies on the psychological phenomenon that a person who speaks frequently and passionately about morals is generally regarded as a moral person."

Before voting this time, we would be wise to ask ourselves whether we believe the myth or the man.

Brazaitis, formerly a Plain Dealer senior editor, is a Washington columnist.

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