"Doctor
Zero" is one of the most articulate contributors to the
Green Room group blog
at Michelle Malkin's Hot Air
site. Referring to the uproar
over the
Justice Department report on alleged Bush-era CIA
abuses,
Doctor Zero writes today:
Apparently Obama and his accomplices decided to distract their
liberal base from the fiery Hindenburg crash of
socialized medicine, by offering them a relaxing cruise on the
Titanic of leftist foreign policy. . . .
A weary public allowed itself to be badgered into electing the
first black president, after they ran out of patience waiting
for John McCain to explain why they shouldn't. Normal people
don't define their relationship with the government by taking
pleasure in the humiliation of political figures they dislike.
We're six months past the point where American voters can be
kept quiet by suffocating them with the pillow of Bush hatred.
OK, so far, so good. One of Bill Clinton's most
insightful mantras was that successful politics is always
forward-looking. A politics that spends its time
arguing over the past is, by definition, a losing proposition. So
the attempt of the Obama administration and its allies to score
points by discrediting post-9/11 counterterrorism policy is a
guaranteed loser, politically.
However, having made that valid point, Doctor Zero then adds:
We're about a month past the point where anyone capable of
independent thought believes Obama is a better president than
Bush was.
This is a bad argument, setting up an unnecessary comparison
which does nothing to bolster the opposition to Obama.
Furthermore, one can easily argue that George W. Bush was a very
bad president and that one of the worst aspects of his presidency
was that Bush confused people about the meaning of "conservatism"
in a way that damaged the Republican Party and made possible
Obama's election.
In this regard, I am fond of quoting our publisher, Al Regnery,
who told me last year in an interview:
"You look back in the earlier times, there were no
opportunities, so there were no opportunists," Regnery says,
noting how liberals heaped abusive epithets on Buckley,
Goldwater, and other early conservative leaders. "Later on, you
have all these people who figure it's probably a pretty good
political thing to do. And so they start talking about being
conservative when they're running [for office], but they really
aren't. So when they get to Congress or wherever they go,
they're pretty easily dissuaded."
Insofar as the Obama administration is a political failure, that
failure will damage the Democratic Party and the progressive
cause with which Democrats are identified. Whatever harm to the
national interest is inflicted by that failure, it is a harm for
which Obama's opponents cannot be blamed.
If we believe that the success of conservatism is synonymous with
the good of the nation -- as every conservative
certainly ought to believe -- then the damage to the
reputation of conservatism for which the Bush administration was
responsible is, ultimately, more harmful than whatever short-term
damage to the nation Obama's (hopefully brief) misrule may cause.
We ought not engage in a backward-looking politics, but we
should study and benefit from the lessons of failures
past. It must be recognized the extent to which the
Bush administration was a failure, or we risk further damage from
future repetitions.
