A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

by Glenn Greenwald

  There is a particular danger with a war that God commands. What if God should lose? That is unthinkable to the evangelicals. They cannot accept the idea of second-guessing God, and he was the one who led them into war. Thus, in 2006, when two thirds of the American people told pollsters that the war in Iraq was a mistake, the third of those still standing behind it were mainly evangelicals (who make up about one third of the population). It was a faith-based certitude.

  The president’s core belief in a Manichean world provides a template for those who wish to exert influence on his decision-making process. Those who seek to induce the president to view other nations as enemies of America can achieve that goal by invoking the Manichean worldview to persuade him that the targeted nation is pure Evil.

  On February 28, 2007, President Bush hosted what he called “a literary luncheon” to honor right-wing “historian” Andrew Roberts. Accounts of that luncheon—which describe the “lessons” the guests taught the president (and they call them “lessons”)—provide an amazing glimpse into the Bush mind-set and his relationship with neoconservatives.

  The White House invited a tiny cohort, a total of fifteen guests, of standard neoconservatives and other Bush followers to the luncheon, including Norman Podhoretz (father of John and father-in-law of Iran-contra convict Elliot Abrams), Gertrude Himmelfarb (wife of Irving Kristol and mother of Bill), Mona Charen and Kate O’Beirne of National Review, and Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot. The Weekly Standard ’s Irwin Stelzer was also invited, and he thereafter wrote about the luncheon in the most glowing terms.

  Stelzer’s account provides amazing, truly illuminating insight into what neoconservatives have been filling the president’s head with for years now, and demonstrates how they have managed to keep him firmly on board with their agenda. Their most critical priority is to convince the president to continue to ignore the will of the American people and to maintain full-fledged loyalty to the neoconservative agenda, no matter how unpopular it becomes.

  To do this, they have convinced the president that he has tapped into a much higher authority than the American people—namely, objective morality, mandated by God—and as long as he adheres to that (by continuing his militaristic policies in the Middle East, where he is fighting Evil and defending Good), God and history will vindicate him. As Stelzer wrote:

  On one subject the president needed no lessons from Roberts or anyone else in the room: how to handle pressure. “I just don’t feel any,” he says with the calm conviction of a man who believes the constituency to which he must ultimately answer is the Divine Presence [emphasis added]. Don’t misunderstand: God didn’t tell him to put troops in harm’s way in Iraq; belief in Him only goes so far as to inform the president that there is good and evil. It is then his job to figure out how to promote the former and destroy the latter. And he is confident that his policies are doing just that.

  Another luncheon attendee, Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute, recalled (also in The Weekly Standard ) the president saying: “I want to have my conscience clear with Him. Then it doesn’t matter so much what others think.” Novak also revealingly marveled that “the president was not at all intimidated by his fifteen or so guests,” even though the guests included Podhoretz, Himmelfarb, and “Irwin Stelzer himself.” In Novak’s world, one expects the president of the United States to be intimidated in the presence of such powerful neoconservative luminaries, not the other way around.

  Stelzer recounts what he calls the multiple “lessons” they taught Bush at this luncheon. One of the key lessons is Roberts’s view that the United States should be most concerned with its relationships with the other “English-speaking countries in the world,” and not worry nearly as much about all those countries where they speak in foreign tongues (“Lesson Four: Cling to the alliance of the English-speaking peoples”).

  But that “lesson” led Bush to wonder bewilderedly why there was such rising anti-Americanism all over the world, even in English-speaking countries such as England (“‘Is it due simply to my personality?’ he wondered, half-seriously. ‘Is it confined to intellectuals?’ asked a guest”). Anti-Americanism, the neoconservatives instructed Bush, is something he should just ignore. As long as he continues to follow neoconservatism, that is all that matters:

  The combined Roberts-Stelzer response: The causes of rampant anti-Americanism do indeed include dislike of Bush. But there are others: the war in Iraq; anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian sentiment, laced with some covert anti-Semitism; and resentment of American power. Roberts urged the president not to concern himself with these anti-American feelings, since in a unipolar world the lone superpower cannot be loved. His advice: “Get your policies right and history will prove a kind muse” [emphasis added].

  Nothing matters—not the disapproval by the American people of the president’s actions nor the rising anti-Americanism around the world. He should simply ignore all of that and continue to obey the mandates of neoconservatism because that is what is Good and his God will then be pleased.

  Other “lessons” that Bush was taught that day: “First: Do not set a deadline for withdrawal. That led to the slaughter of 700,000 to 1 million people in India, with the killing beginning one minute after the midnight deadline.” They also told the president to ignore the fact that other powerful countries and even empires that tried to dominate the world have all collapsed. Those monumental historical realities are irrelevant and teach us nothing because—unlike the Glorious Leader today—those people simply lacked the Will to Power. Thus:

  Second lesson: Will trumps wealth. The Romans, the tsars, and other rich world powers fell to poorer ones because they lacked the will to fight and survive. Whereas World War II was almost over before Americans saw the first picture of a dead soldier, today the steady drumbeat of media pessimism and television coverage are sapping the West’s will.

  They also instructed the president to continue his policies of indefinite imprisonment without charges: “Third lesson: Don’t hesitate to intern our enemies for long, indefinite periods of time. That policy worked in Ireland and during World War II. Release should only follow victory.” “Victory,” of course, is decades away—it is a permanent war—so the “lesson” these neoconservatives are teaching is to imprison people forever with no charges and not to worry about all those petulant complaints from human-rights advocates that doing so is un-American. American values are no competition for the imperatives of neoconservative glory.

  The lessons continued. “Appeasement,” of course, is the ultimate Evil, the great French sin. Hence: “Fifth lesson: We are fighting an enemy that cannot be appeased; were that possible, the French would already have done it—a Roberts quip that elicited a loud chuckle from the president.”

  Finally, the neoconservatives left Bush with an overarching instruction—namely, the only thing that he should concern himself with, the only thing that really matters, is Iran. Forget every other issue—the welfare of the American people, every other region around the world—except the one that matters most:

  The closing note was a more serious one. Roberts said that history would judge the president on whether he had prevented the nuclearization of the Middle East. If Iran gets the bomb, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other countries will follow [emphasis added]. “That is why I am so pleased to be sitting here rather than in your chair, Mr. President.” There was no response, other than a serious frown and a nod.

  The president, concluded Stelzer with great satisfaction, “worries less about his ‘legacy’ than about his standing with the Almighty.” And as a result of this luncheon, the president’s standing—at least with the Almightys in the neoconservative circle—was as secure as ever.

  The more unpopular the president becomes as a result of these failed policies, the more of a failure these policies are, the more emphatically they insist he ignore all of that, that none of it matters, that his God and history will conclude that he did the Right Thing. And the president be
lieves that. The president’s “lessons” in the moral righteousness of his actions, as preached by neoconservatives, continue, and he is as faithful an adherent to those beliefs as ever.

  That these neoconservatives have adopted—or at least exploit—Manichean concepts to justify their agenda demonstrates that such a worldview by no means requires a belief in evangelical Christianity. Substantial numbers who view (or who claim to view) the United States as engaged in a supreme battle of Good vs. Evil are driven by a whole array of motives and beliefs.

  Moreover, it bears emphasis that, like most other groups, evangelical Christians are far from monolithic, and, contrary to popular belief, it is not the case that they all support the president or the war. Not even close. In fact, the Pew poll referenced in the prior chapter—which found that 78 percent of self-identified “conservatives” continued to express approval for the president even as of March 2006—also showed that only 54 percent of “white Evangelicals” approve of the president’s performance, a sharp decline from the 72 percent who approved of him even as late as February 2005. Clearly, substantial numbers of white evangelicals never shared the president’s worldview, and many of those who initially did reevaluated their assessment of him—almost uniformly for the worse—as the evidence of his ineptitude and untrustworthiness mounted.

  Although Americans are a religious people, pragmatism—an emphasis on results, on success, on abandoning failed ways—has always been a significant aspect of their national character. A refusal to change or admit error comes to be seen as foolish, stubborn, arrogant, and hubristic. For that reason, even many of the president’s most steadfast followers and loyal admirers—including many who are not alienated by his Manichean fervor, and even some who share it—have turned on him due to his manifestly failed policies and the inescapable realization of his ineptitude. In the ethos of most Americans, a core Goodness does not excuse recalcitrant ineptitude and failure, particularly in political leaders.

  But for many evangelical Christians, their theological convictions are inextricably linked to and grounded in their political convictions. The lack of doubt and inerrant qualities in the former are equally present in the latter. Moral rightness trumps pragmatic success, and the imperatives of the crusade trump the constraints of reality.

  The principal attribute of those who are true believers is that, by definition, they will not re-examine their core premises. Any evidence that cannot be interpreted in accordance with those premises will simply be steadfastly ignored or, when it cannot be ignored, discredited. News events that undermine such convictions must be the product of bias or intentional deceit. A failed course chosen on the basis of evangelical truths cannot fail. Failure simply means that there is insufficient resolve, or that the forces of Evil are impeding success and more efforts must be devoted to defeating them.

  EMANCIPATED FROM DOUBT

  Among the president’s most supportive followers, one of the most common observations they make after meeting him is that he is free of doubt and—even as events worsen—unwaveringly certain about the rightness of his decisions. After he interviewed the president aboard Air Force One in September 2006, one of these supporters, Paul Gigot, editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, wrote:

  This is the fourth time I’ve interviewed Mr. Bush at length in the last eight years, going back to his time as Texas governor. One of the notable things about him is how similar he seems. He has always been supremely confident in his decisions and focused above all else on pushing forward, not looking back. If he is tortured by doubt, he doesn’t show it to journalists. Some see this as obstinance, but he sees it as firmness of conviction.

  Whether or not he’s right about the elections this fall, you have to respect his willingness to put that conviction on the line. “I said in my Inaugural Address, we should end tyranny in the 21st century,” he says. “And I meant that.”

  At the same September meeting where Bush declared “a Third Awakening,” the president led attendee Rich Lowry of National Review to make this observation (emphasis added):

  Bush’s confidence goes well beyond comfort in his own skin. He exhibits a sincere, passionate, and uncompromising conviction in his principles. He is arguably losing a war in Iraq that could destroy his hopes for the Middle East and sink his party’s hope in the midterm elections. But there’s no wobble in Bush. If anything, the opposite.

  Basically right after “hello,” the next words out of his mouth are: “Let me just first tell you that I’ve never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions. I firmly believe—I’m oftentimes asked about, well, you’re stubborn and all this. If you believe in a strategy, in Washington, D.C. you’ve got to stick to that strategy, see. People want you to change. It’s tactics that shift, but the strategic vision has not, and will not, shift.”

  Never been more convinced.

  Fundamentalism as a political doctrine is uniquely ill-suited to re-examination, compromise, or debate. For that reason, conservative icon Barry Goldwater warned of the dangers of basing political decisions upon evangelical certainty:

  Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them….

  There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly.

  During the Bush presidency, numerous credible sources have reported discussions in which the president emphasized—proudly—that he relies upon his “gut” instinct more than an analysis of facts and empirical evidence. Ron Suskind recounts one such incident as reported by Senator Joe Biden:

  “I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad and I was telling the president of my many concerns”—concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. “‘Mr. President,’ I finally said, ‘How can you be so sure when you know you don’t know the facts?’”

  Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator’s shoulder. “My instincts,” he said. “My instincts.”…

  The Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush’s top deputies—from cabinet members like Paul O’Neill, Christine Todd Whitman and Colin Powell to generals fighting in Iraq—have been told for years when they requested explanations for many of the president’s decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with accepted facts. The president would say that he relied on his “gut” or his “instinct” to guide the ship of state, and then he “prayed over it.”

  Precisely the same dynamic drove the president’s approach to the 2006 midterm elections. For several months prior to those elections, virtually every public poll—every one—showed that Republicans were highly likely to lose control of the House. Particularly in the weeks before the election, the only real debate among pollsters and political analysts was how massive the Republican losses would be. Congressional Republicans were petrified at what appeared to be the certain doom approaching. Yet the president was convinced that all the polls were wrong and that Republicans would hold their majority.

  All politicians publicly adopt optimistic poses. Candidates who are thirty points behind in polls will claim in the media that they expect to defy the polls and win. Outside of fringe political parties, no candidate can admit to an expectation of losing; such an admission would almost always become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nobody is going to work to elect a political candidate who himself expects to lose, and in a country that venerates being a winner more than almost any other attribute, a politician who brands himself a likely loser is sure to
become one quickly.

  But the president was not contriving optimism about the midterms for public consumption. In private he was also emphatically insisting to Congressional Republicans and other trusted confidants that Republican success was assured. On October 15, Michael Abramowitz reported in the Washington Post: “Amid widespread panic in the Republican establishment about the coming midterm elections, there are two people whose confidence about GOP prospects strikes even their closest allies as almost inexplicably upbeat: President Bush and his top political adviser, Karl Rove.”

  That optimism, apparently based on nothing other than his own belief in his inevitable entitlement to victory, began to worry and even anger members of the president’s own party. On October 13, 2006, Kenneth Walsh reported in U.S. News World Report:

  Some Republican strategists are increasingly upset with what they consider the overconfidence of President Bush and his senior advisers about the midterm elections on November 7—a concern aggravated by the president’s news conference this week.

  “They aren’t even planning for if they lose,” says a GOP insider who informally counsels the West Wing. If Democrats win control of the House, as many analysts expect, Republicans predict that Bush’s final two years in office will be marked by multiple congressional investigations and gridlock.