I hadn’t started out a Bush-basher. In fact, I’d been predisposed to like George Bush. I knew him personally and had dealt with him professionally when we were both governors. He’d always been charming and hospitable to me and my family, both in the Governor’s Mansion in Texas and at the White House. He’d always been more than upright in the business dealings between our states, keeping his word when he had no legal obligation to do so. What I knew of his record in Texas bespoke a moderate man who was willing to put pragmatism before ideology, to raise taxes when necessary to equalize state education spending, and to take some heat from the right wing of his party for doing so. (“I hate those people,” he’d once snarled at me when I ribbed him at a White House governors’ gathering about some trouble he was having in Texas with the Christian Coalition.)
I’d approached his presidency with an open mind. I hadn’t voted for Bush, but I didn’t expect the worst of him, either. After all, I’d always been in the moderate middle of my own party — a staunch advocate of fiscal discipline, a devotee of balanced budgets, pro-choice but also pro-gun owners’ rights, and in favor of the death penalty in some instances. In my races for governor, I’d always enjoyed the support of a certain number of moderate Republicans who shared my commitment to balanced budgets and responsible social spending. “Compassionate conservatism” sounded like something I could live with until the next Democrat ran. And from what I knew of George W. Bush’s personality and temperament, I figured I could live with him, too.
I was astounded, then, when Bush cast moderation and conservatism aside and took up the mantle of right-wing extremism. He surrounded himself with radical ideologues and extremists: people who made a crusade of our foreign policy and polluted our government institutions with fundamentalist bigotry. I was shocked when the president set out to dismantle the social programs that Americans hold most dear: Social Security and Medicare….
The sheer stupidity of much of what came out of the White House surprised me, because I knew firsthand that George W. Bush was not, by any means, a stupid man.
I doubted that he’d really changed his views. It seemed unlikely that he’d gone, in a matter of months, from moderation to the far side of the dark side of the American political spectrum. No — I concluded that once he’d gotten into the Oval Office, he’d become so disconnected from ordinary people and the details of their lives that he’d let the Republican Party’s ideology get the better of him. He was missing the fine points of how that ideology affected ordinary people because he just didn’t care about the details….
That lack of caring, that shrugging off of the details of ordinary Americans’ lives, was every bit as enraging to me as purposeful, hateful extremism. It seemed to me, in some ways, even worse. It was callous and opportunistic. And it showed a willingness to put real people — real, ordinary Americans — in jeopardy.
October 1, 2004 5:27 AM
