The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town

EPAA Vol. 8 No. 41 Haney: The Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education

Dubya: Worse than Reagan

Here is a transcript of a History News Network program, via MWO. David Gergen – the pragmatic, poll-watching, toe sucking, Clinton-advising Republican – says in a stammering kind of shock that Bush has turned out to be further to the right of Reagan:

Prof. GERGEN: I--I want to follow up. I think Doris is absolutely right on that second point. And a--and--and it's one of the big surprises, I think, of the--of the Bush presidency. And it--it brings back echoes to me of--of--of the Reagan presidency. It's often said, you know, that George W. Bush is the true son of--of Reagan, the true heir to the Reagan rev--presidency. But, you know, there was a thing about Reagan--Reagan, on domestic policy, tended to talk right, but tended to govern more toward the center. And--and George W. Bush is just the opposite. He--his conversation, his--his dialogue, his language is the language more of the center. But his act--his policies, his actual governance...

GOODWIN: Absolutely.

Prof. GERGEN: ...is far--much farther to the right of Reagan. It's--it--there--there's a radical conservatism that runs through much of the Bush policy, whether it's tax cuts or affirmative action or the environment or education or dismantling The Great Society. It's--I think it's been a major surprise.

Later in the show, Gergen worries that Bush now has convinced himself that he is an instrument of divine providence on the world stage – not an outlandish concern, given Dubya’s sincere evangelical beliefs and his intense reaction to 9/11.

I want to note two things here. First, it’s crucial that mainstream folks come to understand what Gergen is politely saying. That Bush is radical. That he’s not your typical friendly Republican. That he’s scarier than Reagan, scarier than Nixon, scarier in his way than Gingrich (who at least read history & was known to back off in practice from his more radical rhetoric). Why is it important for mainstream people to understand Bush’s radicalism? Fear leads to action. Folks need to start taking out their checkbooks and talking to the swing voters. And they are only going to do it if they understand that Bush is way out of the mainstream in his policies.

The second thing that strikes me is the comparison to Reagan. Josh Green in the Washington Monthly recently made the point that the conservatives who want to canonize Reagan distort his record. They are making him into the modern saint of muscular modern conservatism, not because they love Reagan, but because they love conservatism. The Reagan canonizers quote Ronnie’s bold rhetoric about shrinking government and killing commies. They don’t remember that the government grew under Reagan and that the hawks thought it was a mistake to get all buddy buddy with Gorbachav.

This is worth noting because the Dubya has clearly been influenced by the canonization of Ronnie. His wingnut courtiers want him to be more like Ronnie than his own pop: bold, decisive, true to conservative ideals. Thing is, doddering Ronnie was none of those things in practice. When Dubya tries to govern like Ronnie, he is actually governing in a much more extreme and destructive way than the Gipper, for all his faults, ever did.