Read Online A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency by Glenn Greenwald - Free Book Online
Authors: Glenn Greenwald
Tags: United States, General, History, Biography & Autobiography, Political Science, Politics, Case studies, International Relations, Good and Evil, Government - U.S. Government, United States - Politics and government - 2001- - Decision making, George W - Ethics, George W - Influence, Presidents & Heads of State, Presidents - United States, George W - Political and social views, Political leadership, Current Events, Political leadership - United States, Executive Branch, Character, Bush, Good and evil - Political aspects - United States, United States - 21st Century, Government, United States - Politics and government - 2001-2009 - Decision making, Government - Executive Branch, Political aspects, 21st Century, Presidents
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but there are other things going on here that Republicans will have to contend with,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center. “There is a difference in the landscape.”
Political journalist Rod Dreher is as conservative as an individual can be—a longtime contributor to National Review, a self-described “practicing Christian and political conservative,” and a columnist for the Dallas Morning News . Yet his rejection of George Bush and Bush’s vision of America is now complete, and the reasoning that led him to that point is shared by many other Americans who previously supported the president.
In January 2007, Dreher recorded an extraordinary oral essay for National Public Radio in which he recounts how the conduct of President Bush (for whom he voted twice) in the Iraq War (which he supported) is causing him to question, really to abandon, the core political beliefs he has held since childhood. Dreher, forty, explains that his “first real political memory” was the 1979 failed rescue effort of the U.S. hostages in Iran. He states that he “hated” Jimmy Carter for “shaming America before our enemies with weakness and incompetence.” When Reagan was elected, Dreher believed “America was saved.” Reagan was “strong and confident.” Democrats were “weak and depressed.”
In particular, Dreher recounts how much, during the 1980s, he “disliked hippies—the blame-America-first liberals who were so hung up on Vietnam, who surrendered to Communists back then just like they want to do now.” In short, to Dreher, Republicans were “winners.” Democrats were “defeatists.” On September 11, Dreher’s first thought was: “Thank God we have a Republican in the White House.” The rest of his essay recounts his political transformation as a result of the Bush presidency:
As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool’s errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.
But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool.
In Iraq, this Republican President for whom I voted twice has shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything Carter did.
The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government’s conduct of the Iraq War have been shattering to me.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. Not under a Republican President.
I turn forty next month—middle aged at last—a time of discovering limits, finitude. I expected that. But what I did not expect was to see the limits of finitude of American power revealed so painfully.
I did not expect Vietnam.
As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.
I had a heretical thought for a conservative—that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take presidents and generals at their word—that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot—that they have to question authority.
On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn’t the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?
Will my children, too small now to understand Iraq, take me seriously when I tell them one day what powerful men, whom their father once believed in, did to this country? Heavy thoughts for someone who is still a conservative despite it all. It was a long drive home.
Dreher’s essay is extreme and intense but also increasingly commonplace and illustrative. The unparalleled magnitude of the disaster that President Bush has wrought on this country will carry a profound impact on American strength and credibility for a long, long time to come and also on the views of Americans—including many conservatives—toward their political leaders and, almost certainly, toward the Republican Party.
Yet another illustrative example is Newsweek ’s
Political journalist Rod Dreher is as conservative as an individual can be—a longtime contributor to National Review, a self-described “practicing Christian and political conservative,” and a columnist for the Dallas Morning News . Yet his rejection of George Bush and Bush’s vision of America is now complete, and the reasoning that led him to that point is shared by many other Americans who previously supported the president.
In January 2007, Dreher recorded an extraordinary oral essay for National Public Radio in which he recounts how the conduct of President Bush (for whom he voted twice) in the Iraq War (which he supported) is causing him to question, really to abandon, the core political beliefs he has held since childhood. Dreher, forty, explains that his “first real political memory” was the 1979 failed rescue effort of the U.S. hostages in Iran. He states that he “hated” Jimmy Carter for “shaming America before our enemies with weakness and incompetence.” When Reagan was elected, Dreher believed “America was saved.” Reagan was “strong and confident.” Democrats were “weak and depressed.”
In particular, Dreher recounts how much, during the 1980s, he “disliked hippies—the blame-America-first liberals who were so hung up on Vietnam, who surrendered to Communists back then just like they want to do now.” In short, to Dreher, Republicans were “winners.” Democrats were “defeatists.” On September 11, Dreher’s first thought was: “Thank God we have a Republican in the White House.” The rest of his essay recounts his political transformation as a result of the Bush presidency:
As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool’s errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.
But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool.
In Iraq, this Republican President for whom I voted twice has shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything Carter did.
The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government’s conduct of the Iraq War have been shattering to me.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. Not under a Republican President.
I turn forty next month—middle aged at last—a time of discovering limits, finitude. I expected that. But what I did not expect was to see the limits of finitude of American power revealed so painfully.
I did not expect Vietnam.
As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.
I had a heretical thought for a conservative—that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take presidents and generals at their word—that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot—that they have to question authority.
On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn’t the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?
Will my children, too small now to understand Iraq, take me seriously when I tell them one day what powerful men, whom their father once believed in, did to this country? Heavy thoughts for someone who is still a conservative despite it all. It was a long drive home.
Dreher’s essay is extreme and intense but also increasingly commonplace and illustrative. The unparalleled magnitude of the disaster that President Bush has wrought on this country will carry a profound impact on American strength and credibility for a long, long time to come and also on the views of Americans—including many conservatives—toward their political leaders and, almost certainly, toward the Republican Party.
Yet another illustrative example is Newsweek ’s
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