“Our gross national product does not allow…. for the
intelligence of our public debate.” — Senator Robert F.
Kennedy, 1967
What would Bobby Kennedy think now?
For eight years the people inhabiting prominent roles on RFK’s
side of today’s ideological divide, all of them suddenly speaking
of reconciliation, of respect for the presidency and the
president, who speak glowingly of a fresh start — did none of
this. None. Zero. Nada. Zip. To hear the departing President
Bush, a gentleman to the core, muse at his last press conference
about his disappointment in the tone of the criticisms he has
received only makes one marvel at his understatement.
Let’s take a sampling of the kinds of things that were said of
George W. Bush. The kinds of people and things Bobby Kennedy was
speaking of when he stressed the importance of “the intelligence
of our public debate.”
* From Frank Rich, the columnist for the New York Times,
came this tone-setting citation of Bush via David Letterman.
Bush, offered the allegedly erudite Rich, is a “colossal boob.”
Not a “memorable villain” (Bush being villainous, you see, was
part of the tone-setters equation as proffered by Rich.) Other
“intelligent” comments offered by Rich on Bush include asserting
(without a shred of fact but, of course, who cares about that??)
that the President “lied us into war” and exhibited “smugness”
(hey, maybe he got that from reading Frank Rich columns!). Rich
even wonders whether this “worst president ever” actually prays
to God. There’s infinitely more of this kind of stuff from Rich,
but there’s a space limit here.
But in defense of Mr. Rich, “intelligence” in our public debate
as that intelligence was defined on the left was easy to find.
The comments below are but a skimming of the sewer.
* From Keith Olbermann: Bush “let their (Americans’) sons and
daughters be killed!” Bush aides “may yet be charged with war
crimes” and were “sycophants.” The President was guilty of
“murderous deceit” and had an “addled brain.” We should question
Bush’s “very suitably (sic) to remain in office.” Bush was guilty
of “faithless stewardship” of the presidency. In short, the
president of the United States should “Shut the hell up!”
* From the Daily Kos: Bush was “incredibly stupid” and a
“chickensh—.” (The last two letters were present in the
original.) Not to be outdone, liberal critic Neal Gabler seethed
on the DK that the Bush presidency “is (the) nation’s first
medieval presidency” And another Kos contributor was blunter (as
blunt as we can allow in a family publication) about Bush and
company: “They are goddamned liars. And they are bastards.” Oh,
and don’t forget the standard cry from the left: “Bush lied.
People died.”
* MoveOn.org was more visual, with an ad morphing Bush into
Hitler. This theme obviously was just fine with George Soros, who
claimed Bush supports “supremacist ideology” and “reminds me of
the Germans” (meaning the Nazis).
* Terrence McNally, playwright: Watching Bush is “like watching
Jason or Chucky from the slasher movies.”
* Paul Krugman: The words most associated with Bush are
“incompetent,” “idiot,” and “liar.”
And these were some of the allegedly smart people on the left.
Think of it. Columnists for one of America’s most prominent
newspapers. A television commentator who gets his own show on a
cable network run by one of the oldest and (once) distinguished
broadcast networks in the world. A playwright who has won four
Tony Awards, a comedian with one of the top rated shows in
television history, a billionaire financier. All this supposed
intellectual firepower and this is their response to RFK’s call
for intelligent debate? Pretending to discuss deeply substantive
issues that demand both serious thought not to mention thoughtful
discussion, Frank Rich and his intellectual soulmates (uh, might
we scratch the term “intellectual”) respond by calling the
President and his staff Hitler, a slasher, murderous, a colossal
boob, an idiot and a liar?
Somewhere Bobby Kennedy is deeply embarrassed. These are the
worst presidential and public policy analysts this side of John
Wilkes Booth.
Quite aside from pulling the curtain back to reveal that, lofty
media perches or not, these people have shown a breathtaking
inability to think critically and present thoughts on policy,
something else has been displayed here. The inability to
articulate opposition to ideas in any serious fashion other than
the shallow nuttiness as quoted above condemns them individually
and collectively as guilty of a massive failure of serious
opposition.
Worse, they have managed to set up Barack Obama for similar
criticisms from some on the right.
Nowhere, of course, did any of these critics have a clue that
they were (yet again) injecting a poisonous toxin into the
intellectual bloodstream that allows a serious political
opposition to exist. (Please see the tales of the Nixon and
Clinton presidencies, also known as the episodes of The Sauce for
a Goose and a Gander. See also Thomas, Clarence, sexual
harassment raised at confirmation hearings and Jones, Paula. Also
a good reference, Reagan administration, number of special
prosecutors for, and, Clinton administration, ditto.) Never did
it appear to cross the minds of Mr. Rich and his fellow Bush
critics that they were in fact setting standards for the
opposition to employ when faced, inevitably, with the charge of
opposing the next Democrat to hold the White House.
Be that as it may, the moment has arrived and the unlucky
inheritor of what might be called in Robert Ludlum-thriller style
“The Rich Legacy” (or Olbermann, Soros, McNally, Letterman or
Krugman Legacy etc., etc., ad infinitum) is one President Barack
Obama. It is Mr. Obama who must now deal with the presidential
reality that the left spent its time out of the White House
setting standards for the right of what’s acceptable discourse
when one opposes a president. Standards that, thanks to the likes
of Mr. Rich, Mr. Letterman, Mr. Soros, Mr. McNally and company
are surely going to attract some on the right as they set about
settling in to the role of the political opposition.
It will be well and vividly remebered, of course, that Bush
mistakes on, say, weapons of mass destruction were morphed into
“lies.” That a philosophical commitment to keeping America safe
by taking the fight to enemies abroad was treated not as a
serious difference of opinion or judgment but rather as evidence
of a lust for deliberate murder in the mode of the infamous mass
murderer of six million Jews. That this lust included a desire to
murder the children of American citizens. And so on and on and
appallingly and drearily so on.
THE QUESTION NOW IS, should conservatives pick up the cudgel?
Should Obama be Bushed in the style of Mr. Rich and his friends?
For example, is President-elect Obama’s trillion dollar spending
plan simply a wrong-headed (if spectacularly mammoth) example of
even more government financial mistakes that will prove ruinous
for generations? Or, in Rich-think, is it the mark of a venal
liar (the new President Obama) scheming to rob average Americans
blind in perpetuity to reward both his own political cronies and
those of his party? Is the push to close Guantanamo a mistaken
decision that could allow a collection of vicious killers to go
free under the guise of legal protections never given before in
American history? Or is it instead the action of a devious fool
who has no intention of protecting American citizens because in
reality he believes Americans should be murdered for their
multiplicity of sins (against blacks, native Americans, all
people of color etc., etc., etc.) during their history? Did
Obama’s support for the election and re-election of the
now-nationally infamous Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich mean
that he was just doing the routine
rally-around-my-party’s-nominee-for-governor dance common to all
politicians? Or was he a sinister cynic and a willing participant
if not a leader in the effort to elect as governor a man whose
ethics were plenty visible to insiders before caught on tape
trying to sell a seat in the U.S. Senate?
This is a serious question for conservatives. There are now (as
there have been the last eight years) vital issues at play in the
world. Issues of economics, constitutional law, national
security, foreign policy, health, immigration and on and on. If
conservatives start down the road of these Frank Rich-style
Shallow Hal’s of the left — and doubtless there will be some
unable, understandably, to resist the temptation — the
conservative movement will not be back any time soon. Nor would
it deserve to be. The fundamental successes of the Reagan era
and, yes, of the George W. Bush presidency are devotion to ideas.
In Reagan’s case it was a well thought out and deeply serious
commitment to end the Cold War and put right (no pun intended)
the American economy. Volumes have been written about the serious
approaches inherent in launching the defense buildup that
included the 600-ship Navy and Strategic Defense Initiative while
rejecting the nuclear freeze or installing Pershing missiles over
the vociferous objections of the American and European left. Or
the intellectual work that went into supply-side economics and
the understanding of tax cuts and monetary policy. Indeed, the
criticisms of the current Bush presidency from the right were
precisely substantive, focusing on federal spending, a
prescription drug program, amnesty on the immigration issue and
so forth.
The transition from in party to out party can be easy or it can
be hard. If it revolves around the shallow name-calling and a
“so’s your old lady” mentality, the specialty of Frank Rich and
company, history shows that it will bring even a later victory to
grief. Decades of the left dealing with the Nixon, Reagan and
Bush 41 presidencies by defining them in terms not only of
name-calling but of special prosecutors, impeachment and sexual
harassment brought forth a Clinton presidency defined as the time
of Slick Willy, a tit-for-tat mentality that kept the country
occupied even as the leadership of al Qaeda was sitting in an
Afghanistan cave plotting death and destruction in the very heart
of America.
There is an important lesson on this subject captured in the
wonderful film The Queen, in which actress Helen Mirren
did an Oscar-winning turn as Queen Elizabeth. In the film
Elizabeth is struggling to cope with the tidal wave of emotion
sweeping over her subjects after the death of Princess Diana and
the wide perception that the royal family couldn’t care less. In
a conversation with then Prime Minister Tony Blair it is observed
that the public can turn on a once very popular figure (in that
case the Queen) in an instant.
And so it can. With the new President Obama taking office on a
wave of popularity, it is worth noting that even the vicious
tactics of Frank Rich and friends eventually had an effect on the
once popular Bush. A real toll was taken with the acid of their
insistent claims the President was an idiot, boob and a liar.
This can be done again. Over time the drip-drip-drip quality of
this kind of thing can create an Obama version in the style of
the Rich portrait of Bush. Should this be done? Will it? Now that
Mr. Rich and company have led the way, can this kind of thing
even be stopped?
It wouldn’t be right to do it (no pun intended). It wouldn’t be
smart. It wouldn’t be good.
It would, though, be Rich.
