At its core, the Bush movement has defined itself by that which it is not rather than by identifiable, affirmative ideas. Its foreign policy objectives are identifiable by one overriding goal—destroy and/or kill the enemy, potential or suspected, often including everyone nearby. And it has come to view its domestic objectives through the same lens. It is a movement in a permanent state of war. All matters, foreign and domestic, are framed in terms of that war and ritualistic attacks on the enemy du jour—the terrorist, the Communist, the illegal immigrant, the secularist, and most of all, the “Liberal.”
In his best-selling 2006 book, Conservatives Without Conscience, John Dean compares the conservative movement he joined in the late 1960s to today’s Bush-led movement. Dean was attracted to the political conservatism of Barry Goldwater (whose 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, inspired Dean’s title), and, at the age of thirty-two, Dean became Richard Nixon’s White House counsel.
Dean’s central premise is that the current Bush-led “conservative” movement shares none of the core principles that attracted him to Goldwater conservatism. And indeed, scores of the country’s most prominent voices on the right, such as Pat Buchanan, William Buckley, and George Will, also find that the Bush movement bears little resemblance to “traditional conservatism.”
In July 2006, the so-called father of modern conservatism, National Review founder William Buckley, pronounced that Bush’s “singular problem” is “the absence of effective conservative ideology.” At roughly the same time, George Will condemned the so-called neoconservatism that has guided the Bush foreign policy as a “spectacularly misnamed radicalism.” One of the president’s most influential neoconservative supporters, Robert Kagan, echoed Will’s view when he acknowledged, in his Washington Post column in January 2005, that although the vast majority of self-proclaimed “conservatives” have been loyally supportive of Bush’s so-called neoconservative foreign policy, the Bush foreign policy is actually the very “antithesis of conservatism”:
The goal of American foreign policy is now to spread democracy, for its own sake, for reasons that transcend specific threats. In short, Bush has unmoored his foreign policy from the war on terrorism.
This is where Bush may lose the support of most old-fashioned conservatives. His goals are now the antithesis of conservatism. They are revolutionary.
And before his death, Barry Goldwater himself frequently accused the “social conservative” wing of the party of assaulting core conservative principles.
Relatedly, Dean documents that the “conservative” movement Bush leads is composed of various factions that actually share very few political beliefs. With the exception of a handful of isolated examples (such as a fervent belief in tax-cutting), these groups could not come close to agreeing on a core set of political principles and specific policy goals that define their movement. In the absence of a unified policy agenda, what, then, binds them and maintains their allegiance to this political movement?
Dean’s answer is that these disparate enclaves hold in common the need to wage war against perceived Evil, and the shared (related) hatred of common enemies. Their collective attacks on those enemies have become the Bush movement’s defining attribute. That commonality is sufficient to maintain allegiance because, argues Dean, it provides a tonic to a morally ambiguous, uncertain, and complex world—a world they perceive to be filled with dangers in every facet of life. All of these factions, like the devotees of Manicheanism, are in thrall to promises of a comforting and liberating moral simplicity, a framework that provides refuge from a complex, confusing, and frightening world. A unified crusade against Evil enemies bestows purpose, excuses failure, alleviates confusion, and enables sensations of power.
Not only American political discourse but also American culture generally are suffused with an endless parade of fear-inducing images, of constant warnings of latent dangers—the terrorist “sleeper cells” lurking in every community, the sex predators living covertly on one’s own street, drug gangs and violent criminals and online pedophiles, radical tyrants seeking nuclear weapons. Basic human nature dictates that a world that seems frightening and hopelessly complex always engenders a need for both protection and clarity.
Religion—a belief in an all-powerful, protective deity and a clear, absolute, and eternal moral code—powerfully satisfies those cravings. True faith in an all-powerful, benevolent God alleviates both fear and anxiety and produces an otherwise unattainable tranquillity and feeling of safety. Identically, a political movement built on a strong, powerful, protective leader—one who claims that the world is morally unambiguous, who insists that it can be cleanly divided into Good and Evil, and who promises “protection” from the lurking dangers of Evil—fulfills the same needs. Those who lead the group—the Protectors—will inspire great personal loyalty, while those who oppose it will be viewed as mortal enemies.
The Bush administration’s political rhetoric and that of its supporters almost uniformly conforms to a binary framework that sustains allegiance and cohesion and justifies the actions of its leaders. As Dean writes:
Important conservative opinion journals, like the National Review and Human Events, see the world as bipolar: conservative versus liberal. Right-wing talk radio could not survive without its endless bloviating about the horrors of liberalism. Trashing liberals is nothing short of a cottage industry for conservative authors….
The exaggerated hostility also apparently satisfies a psychological need for antagonism toward the “out group,” reinforces the self-esteem of the conservative base, and increases solidarity within the ranks.
Many of these tactics, including the ongoing use of Manichean rhetoric, have been wielded by the American right wing for decades, but they became particularly effective as a result of the 9/11 attacks and the resulting political power bestowed on President Bush. The terrorist acts of 9/11 were evil, and they were perpetrated by those who truly are enemies of the United States. For that reason, the uncompromising nature of the president’s condemnation of those attacks—and his vows of retribution against the Evil enemy—potently resonated among most Americans, including many who are typically unreceptive, even resistant, to Manichean appeals.
But the propriety and success of such rhetoric in the context of vowing vengeance against Al Qaeda led to its application in many morally ambiguous contexts increasingly removed from 9/11. Thus, evil and enemy became terms wielded not merely against the terrorists who sought to launch 9/11-like attacks on Americans but also against an ever-lengthening list of others—countries with no current or historical connection to Al Qaeda, groups that were vaguely opposed to U.S. interests but not guilty of anti-American terrorist acts, and finally, to those who, even by peaceful means, opposed the president—whether abroad or at home. As the Los Angeles Times editorialized in the beginning of 2007:
The 9/11 attacks reinforced the White House’s penchant for viewing the world in binary terms, and Bush’s “with us or against us” mantra fit the moment. On issue after issue, from tax cuts to Iraq to its tactics against suspected terrorists, this administration has portrayed opponents as beyond the pale, while its own positions are crucial to the defense of Western civilization.
Those who were not squarely behind the president’s crusade for Good were suspected, and frequently declared guilty, of siding with Evil. Attempting to impede the president’s policies or, worse, the president himself, subjected one to accusations of harboring sympathy for terrorists, or at least of a reckless indifference to the danger the enemy presented. The binary view of Good and Evil came not merely to define every significant political issue but to engulf all political debate. One was presented with a false choice—embrace and actively support the president’s policies to wage war on Evil or side with Evil, either deliberately or by default.
With these dualistic premises underlying virtually the entire national political discussion, Supreme Court justices who ruled against the president on national security matters were ac
cused of being tyrants, traitors, and pro-terrorist. Journalists who uncovered legally dubious Bush administration conduct and policies—from illegal, warrantless eavesdropping to CIA “black sites”—were accused of being criminals who should be prosecuted. Virtually all significant political opponents of the president’s—Howard Dean, Al Gore, John Kerry, the Clintons—were relentlessly branded as liars, mentally unstable, corrupt, seditious, and/or sympathetic to the Enemy.
Indeed, even those who had devoted much of their adult lives to military service (often in ways far more courageous and impressive than most Bush supporters), or even those who have been longtime Republicans and conservatives, have seen their characters relentlessly smeared and their motives and integrity impugned as soon as they have criticized the administration in any way that could significantly embarrass the president—Richard Clarke, Paul O’Neill, the war-critic generals, Joe Wilson, Scott Ritter, Wesley Clark, John Murtha, Max Cleland, John Paul Stevens, and on and on and on.
The Bush movement has been devoted to the destruction of its enemies wherever they might be found. That movement took as its inspiration the resolute commitment to battle a genuine threat—the terrorist networks that perpetrated the 9/11 and similar attacks on the United States—and moved it further and further outward from that event, to the point where invocation of Evil and Enemies became reflexive, regardless of the targets or the circumstances.
The president and his supporters locate new “enemies” continuously, in every corner and seemingly on a daily basis, and vow heightened wars against them, because they must. Enemies are the essential sustenance of all Manichean movements.
BUSH’S DIVINELY INSPIRED STRENGTH
No meaningful analysis of the Bush presidency is possible without a thorough examination of President Bush himself. His strong personal convictions and rigidly held approach to decision-making have shaped every aspect of his presidency. To explore the way in which the president’s worldview has been shaped, the starting and ending point is his religious faith. Bush has made as explicitly clear as he can that his evangelical Christianity and absolute faith in God lie at the heart of everything he does, including the decisions he makes as president.
An important caveat is in order here. The claim that Bush’s faith is the centerpiece of his persona frequently provokes objections, particularly among his critics, that Bush’s religious beliefs are insincere and purely decorative. That claim is typically predicated on the argument that his decisions and actions are in conflict with Christian doctrine, and that his claimed Christianity must therefore be a sham.
Those arguing for the inauthenticity of Bush’s evangelical faith often cite as inconsistencies between Bush’s conduct and Christian morality his ordering of unnecessary wars, his condoning (if not ordering) torture, his willingness to deceive, or even his general lack of personal humility. The premise of this objection is typically that if a person acts contrary to Christian dictates with sufficient frequency, it is fair to conclude that his professed beliefs in Christianity are illusory.
Just from a strictly doctrinal perspective, there are numerous flaws with that reasoning. The belief in original sin and mankind’s fallen nature, for instance, means that all humans, even the most devout and faithful, will personally sin, and do so repeatedly. Independently, many evangelicals hold that a person who truly accepts Jesus as savior is saved permanently and irrevocably, without regard to the goodness of their subsequent acts.
But for purposes of understanding the president, all of those theological issues and questions as to whether he is a “true Christian” can be set aside. What matters is the president’s own understanding of his faith, not whether by the metrics of others he falls short of being “Christian.” Put another way, whether the president’s behavior is consistent with Christianity in some objective sense is an entirely different question from whether he believes that he is acting in accordance with God’s will and pursuant to the mandates of his religion as he understands them. To show that Bush’s behavior as president is “un-Christian”—as measured against some objective barometer of piety—is not to demonstrate that Bush touts his Christianity cynically.
What is relevant for understanding the president’s mind-set is that he himself believes that he is mandated to act in accordance with God’s will, that he is able (at least with respect to certain critical matters) to discern that will, and that he is, in fact, acting in accordance with it by virtue of the course he has chosen. These subjective beliefs the president holds have guided his presidency and governed the course of his administration and our country.
To his credit, Bush has always been quite up front and explicit that there is nothing that he thinks or does that is independent of his evangelical beliefs. For example, when he identified Jesus as his “favorite philosopher” in a 1999 debate against other Republican presidential candidates, Bush evinced unabashed candor and no hesitation in declaring the central role his Christian faith plays in his life. Most presidents and those who sought to be president—particularly in modern times—have indicated a belief in God and an embrace of some form of Christian faith, but few, if any, have so explicitly and continuously emphasized the central role that religious belief plays in their decision-making.
Bush has never spoken publicly in any detail about his born-again conversion, though he has recounted that he was first “pointed to the path of God” in 1985, by the evangelical minister Billy Graham. In his 1999 campaign autobiography entitled A Charge to Keep, then-Governor Bush wrote: “Over the course of that weekend, Reverend Graham planted a mustard seed in my soul, a seed that grew over the next year.”
Moreover, Bush has spoken extensively about his religious awakening when describing the circumstances that enabled him to stop drinking. A 1999 campaign interview with the Washington Post contained this exchange:
Why did you quit drinking?
A couple of things happened. One, you know, the Billy Graham visit in 1985. I met with Billy, but it’s like a mustard seed. You know, he planted a seed in my heart and I began to change…. I realized that alcohol was beginning to crowd out my energies and could crowd, eventually, my affections for other people.
You quit drinking and you became more spiritual. Talk about that a little bit. To put it in spiritual terms, I accepted Christ. What influenced me was the spirituality, sure, which led me to believe that if you change your heart, you can change your behavior. There’s a lot of drug rehabilitation programs and some that are based upon exactly what I went through, which is spiritually based—that’s what AA is really based upon.
Though Bush has denied throughout his presidency that he receives specific instructions from God, he did believe that his running for president was an event that God specifically willed. In The Faith of George W. Bush, author Stephen Mansfield—relying on televangelist James Robison as his source—reported that when Bush decided to run for president, “he spoke to various evangelical groups that he felt God had called him to run for president in 2000: ‘I know it won’t be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.’”
Similarly, Jackson Lears reported in a March 2003 New York Times article: “From the outset he has been convinced that his presidency is part of a divine plan, even telling a friend while he was governor of Texas, ‘I believe God wants me to run for president.’” And in a December 2005 Fox News interview with Brit Hume, the president was asked about the role faith played in his life, and he emphasized its core function: “I think once faith is central in your life, it stays central in your life. I read the Bible every day.”
Bush’s emphasis on the primacy of his faith and his corresponding certainty that he is acting in accordance with God’s will, even with respect to the decisions he makes as president, have led to some unfair caricatures of his religiosity. Unlike, say, Pat Robertson, who claims to be the beneficiary of one-on-one, literal conversations with the deity, the president generally makes no such grandiose claims.
To the contrary, he has repeate
dly stated that God does not “instruct” him on what decisions to make. The president emphatically repudiates the notion that he carries on direct conversations with God in which he receives specific instructions as to what to do. In an October 2006 interview, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly queried the president regarding the claim that “God tells you what to do and you go out and do it.” The president replied: “I guess that I have pity for people who believe that. They don’t understand the relationship between man and the Almighty, then.”
Nevertheless, the president does commonly invoke the will of God as to specific issues in order to justify the decisions he has made as president. When Bob Woodward asked Bush if he consulted with his father about whether to invade Iraq, Bush—according to Woodward—responded that he did not, but instead appealed to “a higher father.” And during secretly recorded discussions in June 2003, between Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas (who had previously met with President Bush) and various Palestinian factions—recordings obtained and then disclosed by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz—the following exchange occurred:
Abbas said that at Aqaba, Bush promised to speak with Sharon about the siege on Arafat. He said nobody can speak to or pressure Sharon except the Americans.
According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: “God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.”
A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency Page 8