Remember Bush's first, pre-911 State of the Union Speech? Me neither. So much has happened since then. And for that reason, it's fascinating to take a look backwards, courtesy of Jacob Weisberg of The New York Times, to Bush in Feburary 2001.
Mr. Bush began his...address by hailing the new spirit of cooperation he hoped would characterize his relations with Congress. “Together we are changing the tone in the nation’s capital,” he declared. The new president’s top priority would be education. He intended to marry the liberal desire for more federal money to the conservative demand for higher standards.
The rest of the speech was similarly moderate in tone and substance. Mr. Bush planned to use part of the enormous fiscal surplus he inherited for a broad-based tax cut. But he also wanted to expand Medicare benefits, preserve Social Security, extend access to health care and protect the environment. He concluded with an exhortation to bipartisanship — in Spanish. “Juntos podemos,” he said. “Together we can.”
Mr. Bush seemed genuinely to want to be the kind of president indicated by that first address. He meant to build a broad coalition on the model of his governorship in Texas, where he worked closely with Democrats in the Legislature, made his chief cause correcting racial disparities in education, and was re-elected in 1998 by an almost 40 percentage point margin, including 27 percent of the black vote and at least a third of Latinos. I always sort of liked that George W. Bush. Whatever happened to him? (NYT)
Remember that guy? Me neither. I mean, I'm sure he said all that. I assumed he was trying to placate the clear majority of the population who voted for Gore. Later, he found he didn't need to.
Weisberg argues that even now, traces remain of his "compassionate conservatism." Really? Two words: Hurricane Katrina.
I don't believe it. I think "compassionate conservatism" was a mask he used to assume whenever he thought he needed it to serve his political ends or to placate the Dems (which with a rubber-stamping Congress he didn't need to do for the first six years). His record for clemency in death penalty cases doesn't reflect much compassion, compared---say---to Reagan and Nixon. And there was the small matter of his mockery of a woman sentenced to die in Texas.
In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker's] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker.
"Did you meet with any of them?" I ask..
"Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'"
"What was her answer?" I wonder.
"Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me." (Quote from National Review, see also Slate and Salon.)
As my colleague remarks, this pretty much speaks for itself. I don't believe that Bush is endowed with, or afflicated with (depending on your point of view) either empathy or compassion for people he doesn't know personally. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence on this score. As for his appeal for a compassionate approach to immigration---which Weisberg cites as evidence for his "compassionate conservatism"---I am sure that his concern was principally fueled by the desire of Wall Street for a continuing pool of cheap labor. But Weisberg says:
To this day, Mr. Bush’s compassionate conservatism has never vanished completely. Some of Mr. Bush’s signature programs, like his initiative to provide AIDS drugs to Africans, have had meaningful effects. But others haven’t lived up to their rhetorical promise. What about that special training for defense lawyers in capital cases (pledged in his 2005 State of the Union address)? The initiative to encourage mentoring for at-risk children (2006)? The grants to extend health insurance coverage (2007)? Such gestures tended to linger in the air only as long as it took Mr. Bush to make them.
So often with Mr. Bush, compassionate government began and ended with the heartfelt public avowal. He was too distracted by war and foreign policy, and too bored by the processes of government to know if the people working for him were following through on his proposals.
That's one way of looking at it. My inference: these programs didn't affect anyone he knew personally or any important campaign donors. He brought them up to gain political points and let them go because he didn't care. Then Weisberg said:
And of course, Mr. Bush’s left hand acted as if it didn’t know what his right hand was doing. After his first year in office, Democrats burned by his political strategy of polarization were disinclined to work with him on shared goals (NYT).
They didn't need to. The Republicans gave him everything he asked for while they controlled Congress. This is one time blaming the Dems----and I am quite willing to blame them for their real failings---just doesn't work.
Yes, W is an appealing guy. He can be wryly funny.. He has a puckish, mischievous streak. He's done some great stand-up routine. Maybe he don't talk so good all the time, but he has impeccable comic timing.
People ridicule his brain, but I think---verbal tics aside---his brain works just fine. It's a heart for anyone outside his own circle that's missing.
If his brother Jeb had got the presidency, we might well be no better off (though I like to think Jeb would have listened to Scowcroft, Baker, and Co.) and W could have been the comic relief.
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