W: The Radical; Kerry: The Conservative?

Given W's problems with language and syntax, why should it be surprising that he does not understand what his beloved label—conservative—really means. Leave it to the gadfly blogger, Andrew Sullivan, to call W to task for misrepresenting himself on the hustings. Actions speak louder than words. Sullivan has convinced me: W is the radical. If this is (fair & balanced) political philosophy, so be it.

[x AndrewSullivan.com]
The Conservative Party: Kerry's Democrats
by
Andrew Sullivan

If, broadly speaking, you're a conservative, whom should you be rooting for in the American elections?

I'm not being entirely facetious here. The conservative "movement" in the U.S. is still firmly behind president George W. Bush's re-election. He uses conservative rhetoric - taking the war to the enemy, upholding conservative social values, respecting religious faith, protecting the family, and so on. He is widely regarded as one of the most conservative presidents in recent history - rivaling Reagan, eclipsing his own father in right wing bona fides. And yet if you decouple the notion of being a conservative from being a Republican, no one can doubt that the Bush administration has been pursuing some highly unconservative policies.

Start with the war. Almost overnight after 9/11, president Bush went from being a semi-isolationist, realist foreign policy president to a transformational one. He junked decades of American foreign policy in the Middle East, abandoning attempts to manage Arab autocracies for the sake of a steady oil supply, and forged a new policy of radical democratization of the Middle East. He invaded two countries - one in the grip of a theocratic dictatorship, the other brutalized by a Stalinist kleptocracy - and is in the process of trying to convert them into modern democracies. Nothing this radical has been attempted in U.S. foreign policy for a very long time. And nothing so liberal. In the 2000 campaign, Bush mocked the idea of "nation-building" as liberal claptrap. Now it's the centerpiece of his own administration. The fact that anti-American lefties despise the attempt to democratize foreign countries should not diguise the fact that Bush is, in this respect, indisputably a foreign policy liberal. He has shown none of his father's caution, little of Brent Scowcroft's realpolitik, and a rhetorical ambition not seen since Reagan and Kennedy.

At home, Bush has been just as radical. He has essentially junked two decades of conservative attempts to restrain government and pushed federal spending to record levels. He has poured money into agricultural subsidies; he famously put tariffs on foreign steel; he has expanded the biggest entitlement healthcare program; and dramatically increased the role of the central government in the matter of education. Apart from modest attempts to privatize some government functions, he has failed to reform a single government program to make it cheaper or more efficient. He has turned federal surpluses into huge deficits, and has dismissed the idea that this will have any damaging consequences. He has little interest in the bedrock conservative belief in leaving as much decision-making to the states as possible, endorsing a federal constitutional amendment that would prevent individual states from enacting gay marriage, and using federal powers to prevent other states from allowing medical cannabis. He has little or no concern for the separation of church and state, funneling public money to religious charities; and has appointed some of the most radical jurists to the federal bench. Whatever else these policies might be called, they have very little to do with traditional conservative themes of federalism, small government, the free market, the separation of church and state, and a strong, independent judiciary. Just try finding a coherent theme in Bush Republicanism. It is, in fact, one of the most ramshackle distillations of political expediency ever tarted up as an "ism".

There has also been, it's safe to say, a remarkable recklessness in Bush's approach to governance. Was it really necessary to insist that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to detainees in the war on terror? When Osama bin Laden was isolated in the Afghan-Pakistani border, was it wise to deputize the campaign to capture him to Afghan warlords? When so many people warned that the hardest task in Iraq would be what happened after the fall of Baghdad, was it sensible to junk all the carefully-written government reports for reconstruction and go in on the fly? Was it wise to brag in the days after the first military victory in Iraq that it was "Mission Accomplished"? When the Iraqi insurgency was gaining traction, was it sensible to apply the methods in Guantanamo Bay to the hundreds of petty criminals and innocents hauled into Abu Ghraib? At almost every juncture, where prudence might have been called for, Bush opted for winging it. Whatever else his methodology is, it can scarcely be called conservative.

So where is conservatism to be found?

Maybe you should cast a glance at Boston, where next week, the Democrats will anoint one John Forbes Kerry, a Northeastern patrician who is fast becoming the Eastern establishment's favorite son. Yes, Kerry's record on spending, defense and social policy has been liberal. But that is not the theme of his campaign so far. Kerry is as rhetorically dedicated to seeing through nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan as Bush is. But where Bush has scrapped America's longstanding military doctrine of only attacking when attacked, Kerry prefers the old, strictly defensive doctrine. Where Bush has clearly placed American national interest above any international concern, Kerry insists that the old alliances - even with old Europe - need to be strengthened and reaffirmed. Kerry insists that he is a fiscal conservative, aiming to reduce the deficit by tax increases. He has argued that stability in some parts of the world should take precedence over democracy or human rights. He opposes amending the Constitution and supports legal abortion, the status quo Bush wants to reverse. He has spent decades in the Senate, quietly building an undistinguished and constantly nuanced record. He is a war veteran, who plays up his record of public service every chance he gets. He's a church-going Catholic who finds discussion of religious faith unseemly in public. In the primaries, he was the safe, establishment bore compared to the radical pyrotechnics of Howard Dean and the populist charm of John Edwards.

His basic message to Americans is: let's return to normalcy. The radicalism of the past four years needs tempering. We need to consolidate the nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, before any new adventures against, say, Iran. We need to return to the old diplomatic obeisance to the United Nations. We should stop referring to a "war" on terror, and return to pre-9/11 notions of terrorism as a discrete phenomenon best dealt with by police work in coordination with our democratic allies. At home, we need to restrain the unruly theocratic impulses now unleashed by the Republicans. We must balance the budget again. We need to redress some of the social and economic inequality that has so intensified these past few years. Kerry's biggest proposal - and one sure to be modified considerably by the Congress - is an incremental increase in the number of people with health insurance. It's far more modest than that proposed by Bill and Hillary Clinton a decade ago.

Does that make Kerry right and Bush wrong? On the most fundamental matter, i.e. the war, I think Bush has been basically right: right to see the danger posed by Saddam and the nexus of weapons of mass destruction and Islamist terror; right to realize that the French would never have acquiesced to ridding the world of Saddam; right to endorse the notion of pre-emption in a world of new and grave dangers. But much of the hard work has now been done. No one seriously believes that Bush will start another war in the next four years. And in some ways, Kerry may be better suited to the difficult task of nation-building than Bush.

Domestically, moreover, Bush has done a huge amount to destroy the coherence of a conservative philosophy of American government; and he has been almost criminally reckless in his hubris in the conduct of the war. He and America will never live down the intelligence debacle of the missing Iraqi WMDs; and he and America will be hard put to regain the moral highground in world affairs after Abu Ghraib. The argument Kerry must make is that he can continue the substance of the war, but without Bush's polarizing recklessness. And at home, he must reassure Americans that he is the centrist candidate - controlled neither by the foaming Michael Moore left nor the vitreolic religious right. Put all that together, and I may not find myself the only conservative moving slowly and reluctantly toward the notion that Kerry may be the right man - and the conservative choice - for a difficult and perilous time.

Andrew Sullivan is an Anglo-American journalist and intellectual, known both for his heterodox personal-political identity (HIV-positive, sexually gay, politically Tory/conservative, religiously Catholic) as well as for his pioneering efforts in the field of weblog journalism (AndrewSullivan.com).

copyright © 2004 Andrew Sullivan