Stand Up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge - Couverture rigide

Dionne Jr., E.J.

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0743258584 ISBN 13 : 9780743258586

Editeur : Simon & Schuster, 2004

Synopsis

Book by Dionne EJ

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Chapter 1. Put on a Compassionate Face

How an Idea Got Bush Elected and Got Him into Trouble

President Bush -- you'll enjoy this -- he says he needs a month off to unwind. Unwind? When the hell does this guy wind? Come on!

David Letterman, August 20, 2001

Everything depends on whether he is seen as taking charge when there's something to take charge of. But there is a view of Bush that he's a total lightweight. This makes it an easy shot, so it was a risk for him.

Richard E. Neustadt, author of Presidential Power, quoted in The Washington Post, August 29, 2001, on that long Bush vacation

The day before planes piloted by terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania countryside, George W. Bush was, if not a failed president, then a floundering leader who had lost the initiative and faced a miserable autumn. David Frum was serving at the time as a White House speechwriter. Frum admitted in The Right Man, a book as friendly to Bush as its title suggests, that he was planning to leave the White House before the events of 9/11 happened because he did not want to watch as the Bush presidency "unraveled."

Bush was in trouble courtesy of a problem that will always plague his presidency: having persuaded many Americans during his campaign that he was moderate in spirit, he governed from the right. His deep, instinctive conservatism and his impatience with moderate Republicans led to the great debacle of his first months in office, the defection of Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont from the Republican Party. On May 24 -- just four months after Bush took office -- Jeffords flipped control of the Senate to the Democrats. It was the most important political moment of the Bush presidency before 9/11.

The Jeffords switch was, in retrospect, a logical response to how Bush chose to manage his presidency. After the disputed election of 2000, Bush faced the choice of governing as a moderate and healing the wounds left by the Florida debacle, or governing as an uncompromising conservative and bulling his way to a series of ideological victories. He chose the aggressive strategy. It worked reasonably well until Jeffords decided he had had enough. Jeffords's defection was a rebuke not only to Bush's strategy but also to a conservative movement that assumed for many years that it could trash, ridicule, intimidate, and denounce Republican moderates -- and still count on their votes at crucial moments.

The strategy had succeeded for at least a decade, and it ultimately succeeded on Bush's big tax cut when most moderates (including Jeffords) fell into line. Because the moderate Republicans rarely rebelled when it mattered, conservatives could overlook the inconvenient fact that without the progressives from the Northeast and Middle West, the Republican majority in Congress would disappear.

The funny thing is that Jeffords did exactly what conservatives, for years, had told him he should do. Over and over, they denounced him as a crypto-Democrat who had no business wearing the Republican label. Even as Jeffords was preparing to leave, conservative leaders and their supporters were saying, "good riddance."

"Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont is not a moderate," declared National Review in an editorial e-mailed around the land. "He is a liberal." The magazine that guards conservative orthodoxy said the party switch "makes it clear that the Republicans are the conservative party and the Democrats are the liberal party." Jeffords's decision, they said, was "a clarifying one."

Indeed it was. Jeffords realized it made no sense to serve in a Republican majority that had made itself the servant of the Bush program when, as Jeffords put it, "I can see more and more instances where I will disagree with the president on very fundamental issues."

The Jeffords defection was played as a breakdown of Bush's much-praised political operation, and that was true enough. Bush's advisers never saw the defection coming, perhaps because they focused so relentlessly on the right wing of the party. But above all, Jeffords's departure marked the failure of Bush's strategy. Once in office, the president acted as if he had won a mandate despite his loss of the popular vote. He assumed he could win on issue after issue by getting votes from Democratic moderates in states he had carried. The president's apparatus figured that pressure, digs, and threats leaked to conservative journalists would keep moderate Democrats and potentially rebellious Republicans in line.

But Republicans from the states carried by Al Gore knew perfectly well that their own voters were in no mood for anything but a middle-of-the-road program from Bush. Jeffords's decision to walk away could thus be seen as the real American majority, moderately progressive in temperament, striking back.

John Grenier, a leader of Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign, said at the time that the central question in Republican politics was: "What are you willing to pay for the South?" Quite a lot, it turned out, and the payoff came in the defection of millions of conservative southern Democrats. They included such Republican senators as Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, Phil Gramm of Texas, and Richard Shelby of Alabama, all of whom lost power in the Senate when Jeffords switched.

The steady "southernization" of Republican politics -- Bush was part of that trend -- eventually called forth a reaction in the old Republican bastions of the North. There was a poignant moment when Jeffords announced his switch. He chose to refer to his political ancestors as "Lincoln Republicans." That was a quiet rebel's yell against the new Republican Confederacy.

Jeffords's voluntary departure was, finally, the revenge of Republican moderates and liberals who had been driven from power involuntarily over the years. Distinguished Republicans such as Jacob Javits of New York, Clifford Case of New Jersey, and Thomas Kuchel of California were beaten in Republican primaries. The battle against moderates continued under Bush as conservative groups such as the Club for Growth staged primary challenges against Republican mavericks. The idea was that the offending moderates would be defeated -- or brought into line.

For a moment, at least, Jeffords brought to life an alternative possibility: that if moderates were attacked often enough, they might just pack up and leave. It was a dreadful portent for Bush's efforts to create a new Republican majority.

II

From the beginning of Bush's quest for the presidency, both he and his top political adviser Karl Rove understood the delicacy of the situation they confronted. On the one hand, Bush and Rove were determined not to repeat what they saw as the core mistake of the first Bush presidency: the failure to enunciate a vision that appealed to the conservative base of the Republican Party. But they were also determined not to repeat the mistakes Newt Gingrich made during his Republican Revolution after the 1994 election. "Compassionate conservatism" was born out of this tension. It proved to be a brilliant construction. Conservatives already thought they were compassionate and thus, in principle, would not be offended by the adjective, even if some resented that it was needed at all. But moderates heard something very new -- though that something was far less new than it seemed.

Not repeating his father's errors was an obsession for Bush. When I interviewed George W. Bush for a magazine piece before the 2000 campaign, I asked him about his family's tradition of public service. Bush spoke respectfully of his father -- and quickly got to the political point.

"Obviously it's a proud tradition," George W. said. Then he immediately identified himself with his brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush -- and, effectively, against his father. "I believe we have that sense of service, but I believe that we're both driven as well by ideas and philosophy," he said. "That we have come to realize, particularly in our respective roles as governors, how powerful an idea can be. And that it's important to serve but it's also important to achieve results. To set goals, clear and measurable goals, and to lead." As president, Bush was determined to lead to the right.

Yet Bush knew that was not enough. When I asked him what the Republican Party had done wrong since 1994, he had a quick answer. "It hasn't put a compassionate face on our conservative philosophy," he replied. "People think oftentimes that Republicans are mean-spirited folks. Which is not true, but that's what people think." Note that Bush spoke of putting a compassionate face on conservatism. That was not the same as transforming it. On the contrary, Bush seemed to be saying there was nothing wrong with the Republican Party that a different face wouldn't cure -- and he knew whose face he had in mind.

David Frum, the Bush speechwriter, offered this puckish take on Bush's creed: "Bush described himself as a 'compassionate conservative,' " Frum wrote, "which sounded less like a philosophy than a marketing slogan: Love conservatism but hate arguing about abortion? Try our new compassionate conservatism -- great ideological taste, now with less controversy."

But whether compassionate conservatism was primarily a philosophy, a marketing slogan, or merely a dodge, it was the product of prodigious work and careful thinking. Bush did the work, but his assignments often came from Rove, whose relationship with his candidate (and president) cannot simply be defined by the words "political adviser."

When Rove first met Bush, he seems to have realized almost immediately that his own skills as a gut fighter, a visionary, and a self-made intellectual were perfectly complemented by Bush's ease with people and his upper-crust connections. ("Bush is the kind of candidate and officeholder political hacks like me wait a lifetime to be associated with," Rove once said.) What Rove has never said -- publicly at least -- is that Bush badly needed his boy genius, as Bush called him, on absolutely everything related to the substance of politics: policy, strategy, tactics, and, when necessary, a willingness to execute, without much apparent scruple, whatever political attack was necessary.

"Rove was cerebral; Bush never liked going too deeply into the homework," James C. Moore and Wayne Slater write in their important Rove biography, Bush's Brain. "Rove had an encyclopedic mind and a gift for campaign arithmetic; Bush had engaging people skills, a knack for winning over opponents with pure charm. If Rove approached politics as a blood sport, Bush's instinct was to search out compromise and agreement." If ever a relationship deserved to be called co-dependent, this was it.

But Rove was not simply a tough guy. He was also a political visionary. He could play the low road, but it was in pursuit of a grand dream. Compassionate conservatism was one important plank to be used in a much larger project. Rove's dream was to create a dominant Republican majority for the next two decades or more. And he had a model: the success of turn-of-the-century Republican president William McKinley, who became the master of political fund-raising from the corporate world -- exactly what Bush would become. McKinley identified with the rising interests of industrial capital, just as Bush identifies with capital's leaders today. Rove sees in the current moment the same epoch-making potential that existed at the time of the election of 1896, when McKinley produced a new Republican majority that endured, with the interruption of the Woodrow Wilson years, until the Great Depression.

Rove argues that McKinley understood that the issues surrounding the Civil War, which had dominated politics for three decades, were no longer relevant to a large and growing segment of the electorate. McKinley also realized that immigration and industrialization had changed the character of the country. If Republicans did not make a bid for the votes of immigrants and the working class generally, they would lose preeminence. Rove, for whom archival research is a hobby, can cite letters McKinley wrote describing the party's problem and meetings he held with immigrant leaders to bring them around to the Republicans' promise of the "full dinner pail."

Rove's analysis represented a sharp break with the popular conservative assumption that all that was required for a Republican victory was to recreate Ronald Reagan's appeal and to reassemble his coalition. The electorate had changed enormously from the time of Reagan's last election. Baby boomers and younger voters were now at its heart. And in 2000, at least, Reagan's best issues were gone. The Cold War was over and hostility to government programs ebbed.

It was not hard to see how Rove would play out the McKinley parallel. Bush's quest for Latino votes -- a large factor in California, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois -- was directly comparable to McKinley's wooing of the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Italians, and the Irish. Similarly, Bush's minuets on social issues such as abortion and affirmative action -- and his more general pledge to a compassionate conservatism -- reflected Rove's sense that creating a durable Republican majority required converting suburban independents and Democrats whose social and moral views are more moderate than conservative.

Rove also liked to quote Napoleon's adage: "The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack." Compassionate conservatism might be seen as the "well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive." The "rapid and audacious attack" was situational. In 2002, as we'll see, it used Iraq and homeland security as its weapons.

Rove seemed to have the Republican coalition -- and the hope of a larger one -- built into both his conscious and subconscious minds. He lives and breathes with his potential majority. He always understood, for example, that cultural conservatives would be a linchpin of Bush's constituency, even as he also understood that Republicans would, by conviction and necessity, always be the party of business. "To govern on behalf of the corporate right, they would have to appease the Christian right," write Lou Dubose, Jan Reid, and Carl Cannon in their Rove biography, Boy Genius. "The marriage of the Christian conservatives had to be made to work if the party was to work."

Yet Rove also understood the importance of wooing middle-class voters who were not right-wing. He wrote a memo to Republican governor Bill Clements of Texas in the 1980s that perfectly described the strategy he would later pursue for Bush. He did not expect to get votes from liberal constituencies, but he did want to win over moderates who shared some of the liberals' concerns. "The purpose of saying you gave teachers a record pay increase is to reassure suburban voters with kids, not to win the votes of teachers," Rove wrote to Clements. "Similarly, emphasizing your appointments of women and minorities will not win you the support of feminists and the leaders of the minority community; but it will bolster your support among Republican primary voters and urban independents." Welcome to compassionate conservatism before it was cool.

Bush knew perfectly well how cool the idea could be -- and how important it was to his advancement. Even though Bush shared the conservatives' anti-government creed, especially where environmental, labor, and business regulation were concerned, he had learned from Gingrich's failures. The former House Speaker's conservatism had clearly been too combative, too devoted to an anti-gover...

Présentation de l'éditeur :

One of our most visible, trenchant, and witty political commentators, the author of the bestselling Why Americans Hate Politics, offers a tough critique of President George W. Bush and the Democratic opposition on the eve of a landmark presidential election -- and points to a way out of cynicism and defeatism.
With passion, clarity, and humor, E. J. Dionne describes today's political atmosphere as the bitterest he can remember. Never have Democrats been as frustrated by their inability to move the debate. The party of Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Clinton, Dionne says, is lost in pointless feuds, outdated strategies, and old arguments. Democrats have lost track of what they stand for so they don't know what they're fighting for and besides, they've forgotten how to fight back.
In describing how Democrats, moderates, and liberals have failed to match Republicans and conservatives in commitment, resourcefulness, and clarity, Dionne invents what is likely to become a popular parlor game among the politically committed. In "The Wrong Stuff," he lists ten futile arguments -- big versus small government, for example -- that Democrats keep having with themselves. "The Right Stuff" focuses on ten arguments they should start making about taxes, business, and the role of government.
Dionne zeroes in on how a floundering Bush administration used September 11 to politicize national security issues for partisan advantage. Enraged but intimidated by ruthless opponents, the Democratic party failed to find its voice on security issues and was soundly beaten in 2002.
Drawing on some lessons from the 2004 primary campaigns, Dionne argues that anger and frustration have in fact awakened progressives to the need for innovation in organizing, in approaching an increasingly conservative media, and in formulating politically useful and plainly stated ideas. Learning from the conservative movement's successes, liberals have begun the work of reconstruction.
The politics of revenge, Dionne argues persuasively, can give way to something better: a progressive patriotism built on hope and optimism about America's role in the world and its capacity to renew social justice at home.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Simon & Schuster
• Date d'édition: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0743258584
• ISBN 13: 9780743258586
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 256