WASHINGTON — If every voting-age American read the first seven
chapters of Hugh
Hewitt’s book If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat, Bush
would be running away with this election easily. Hewitt presents
the best case for the reelection of George W. Bush that I have
seen.
“The Democratic Party,” Hewitt contends, “has lost its
collective will and collective ability to take the national
security of the United States seriously. This is not treasonous or
unpatriotic behavior, just selfish and stupid behavior.” He then
explains how the pacifist wing of the Democratic Party is too
strong, and to back it up he quotes in total House Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi’s response to President Bush’s 2004 State of the Union
speech. The speech reads like it was penned by Joan Blades of
MoveOn.org. Pelosi complains of “alienating our allies” — i.e.,
France and Germany — and about “no-bid contracts for politically
connected firms like Halliburton.” She hopes that with the aid of
France and Germany we can “end the sense of American occupation [in
Iraq] and bring troops home safely when their mission is over.” If
that’s the best the Democrats have to offer, then they need to be
kept out of the White House for a very long time.
Hewitt’s book also contains devastating chapters on Howard Dean
and, of course, John Kerry. Hewitt recounts in detail Kerry’s
history of poor judgment on national security matters. It is hard
to read If It’s Not Close without coming away thinking
that if the Massachusetts Senator wins, our foreign policy will be
Jimmy Carter redux.
Hewitt also has useful chapters on understanding party politics
and suggestions about where to send campaign donations. He notes
that parties are about winning majorities and that requires
building a big tent with more liberal Republicans like Arlen
Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Lincoln Chaffee.
However, it is in the chapter titled “There Aren’t Enough
Targets That You Have to Shoot at Your Friends?” that Hewitt
displays some of the shortsightedness typical of “party animals.”
He quotes a Washington Post piece by Dana Milbank that
examined conservative discontent (including an article
by yours truly) over Bush’s spending, and then grumbles, “the
self-anointed spokesmen for the conservative cause dutifully lined
up to take a whack at the president in the pages of the
Washington Post, proving once again that in the nation’s
capital, it isn’t about winning or even moving in the right
direction; it is about being noticed.”
After lambasting us for “selfish grandstanding,” Hewitt exhorts
us to follow Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not
speak ill of fellow Republicans.” As much as I admire Ronald
Reagan, I don’t consider that to be one of the smarter things he
ever said. And it is certainly not one we should take too seriously
given that Reagan committed the most egregious violation of it by
mounting a primary challenge to sitting President Ford in 1976.
Indeed, Reagan’s challenge to Ford shows the healthy and often
essential role that intra-party criticism can play: moving the
party in the proper direction and thereby improving its future
prospects.
HEWITT OVERLOOKS THE VERY constructive role such criticism plays in
keeping politicians who are sympathetic to conservative ideals in
office. Consider that conservatives criticized Bush for excessive
spending, steel tariffs, and not front-loading his tax cuts in 2001
(he didn’t fully phase them in until mid-2003.) It is all but
irrefutable that those policies have slowed the recovery, giving
the Democrats one of their best talking points in this election,
namely, that Bush is the first President to lose jobs in his first
term since Herbert Hoover. Can there be any doubt that Bush would
be running away with the election right now if the economy were
booming? Indeed, perhaps if the Administration had listened more
too such criticisms, it would have pursued better policies.
Furthermore, Hewitt’s exhortation is applied selectively.
Nowhere in the book does he mention the damage that Republican
politicians have done to the Republican Party. So he emphasizes the
importance of electing Republican majorities who will confirm
strict construction judges, criticizes Stephen Moore’s group Club
for Growth for backing a primary challenge to Arlen Specter, but
never mentions that Specter helped keep conservative Jeff Sessions
from the bench. He claims that the resources spent against Specter
would have been better spent against Tom Daschle in South Dakota,
but he never notes the role GOP Governor and Congressman Bill
Janklow played in getting Daschle elected in the first place.
(Rumor has it Janklow may endorse Daschle this time around against
John Thune.) Apparently, if you are a Republican elected official,
the Eleventh Commandment doesn’t apply.
A majority party is more likely to stay in the majority if it
tolerates a certain amount of internal dissent. Can it be
coincidence that the Democrats are headed toward prolonged minority
status and never allow a speaker at their conventions who is
pro-life? Such dissent helps prevent the party from making too many
mistakes. However, such dissent also means tolerating public
criticism of party officials and occasionally mounting primary
challenges to those Republicans who stray a little too far from the
reservation.
Hewitt is right that an effective national security policy means
a Bush reelection. But it is because the Bush Administration didn’t
take conservative criticism of its domestic policies more seriously
that Bush’s reelection is in some doubt.
