Sorry about the absence, dear (and few) readers. Been having some quite remarkable family issues/developments/wtf surprises since Mithras day. Bear with me.
It would be amiss and probably illegal for any blog that touches on politics not to give a brief summary and some conclusions of the 43rd president. Few men can have had as much ink spilt and keys tapped over them that ol' George jr whilst in public office. While Clinton gave birth to Drudge and Rush, GW has been the source of an explosion in both professional and citizen journalism, of current affairs analo-historical writing and mass (and remarkably lazy) polemic. The most important aspect being the international reach of these developments. He has been prejudged (indeed I remember one journalist saying during the Enron collapse that this was the defining moment of his presidency) by all and sundry.
His remaining partisans, a bare husk of the alliance he mustered during the 2000 and 2004 elections, have shilled desperately at times, and argued forcefully at others, that the man will be vindicated. History will judge him (as Castro also said, interestingly). There is some truth in this. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and their reconstructions as modern nation states are events not confined in their consequences by 4 year terms or even decades. Yet there is enough evidence around to suggest that 'the decider' was not quite the brave shinning knight that some have portrayed.
In opposition to this is the vast monolith of anti-GW feeling and invective, tinged with a great dollop of 'Bushitler' nonsense. The litany of mistakes/errors/crimes/intentional programs of mass inhumanity (choose your own wording or CYOW) is well known. Enron, the climax of Christian fundamentalist influence, political dirty tricks and smears on opponents, violating constitutional norms, the vast tax cuts, Katrina, support of/slavish devotion to/cynical use of (CYOW) Israel, idiotic rhetoric, fear mongering and 'varied interpretations, suspending Habeas Corpus, wire tapping, those two invasions that I keep forgetting, the coup against Chavez, those other possible interventions he did not support i.e. Darfur, Zimbabwe, Burma, Global economic meltdown and destroying the planet. For a man who had a nap most afternoons and was supposed to be a 'relaxed' worker, it is quite a list.
Lest we forget, amongst all this he was meant to have constructed and controlled a vast conspirary of thousands to cover up the 9/11 attacks according to some fellows with beLIEve t-shirts on.
Within this leviathan of 'decider-phobes', are paleo-con little America-ists, Foreign policy RINO realists, Libertatarians, social Liberals, economic Liberals, Soft, Hard and scrambled Jihadists/Islamists, Socialists, Anarchists, every shade of Trot and Bolshevik under much of the Sun (exceptions to DSTPFW) and pretty much any news outlet not owned by Ruprecht von Murdox. It is the most amazing and widest alliance of views and ideologies since the popular fronts of the Second World War. And that is both deeply depressing - this is not Hitler (oddly) nor is this in found against the theocrats of Tehran or the central commitee of the CCP - and revealing.
Bush is not real, he has become totemic. He is a divining rod for opinion for those who have lost any meaningful compass of ideas and values. By conjoining the papable public idiocy of the man, US policy, various ideological groups in the US and Fanonesque anti-imperialism, Bush became magical (in its weberian sense). He has become, despite his blatantly obvious limitations, a cosmo-plastic monster. He became Bushitler
For history to be worth something, it must both dispense with such hyperbola as a starting assumption and analysis why such a totem came into being. W came into power under a cloud but firmly buttressed by elite insititutions and by most of the media. His program of tax cuts, mild isoloationism, government reform and privatisation of welfare was a fairly modest right wing proposal compared to the rebulican hubris of the mid 90s. He proceeded to strip away at state bodies, placing people in charge who doubted the same bodies right to exist. John Bolton being a fine example. The rhetoric of a pure hearted essentially American 'Mr Smith' draining the potomac swamp took hold of state functions. With it came the slow enfeebling of these mechanism. His tax cuts, initially, were money side economic 101, return or more accurately a reaffirmation of tirckle down.
Programs of 'compassionate conservatism' sought to redefine the relationship between government, non-state agencies (including church groups) and the welfare claimant. This was a continence of the Clinton reforms, reinventing welfare's role as a sociatal tool. He pulled back from the interventionist and global arbiter role that the Dems pursued and seemed to be become the most isolationist Republican since Coolidge. That is to sayThe long held plan to republicanise the judical system continued. A battle royale over Wade and Roe was awaiting. Culture war seemed primary.
Then that beautiful and terrible autumnal day.
9/11 did change everything. Not in the way that Cheney or Rummy thought however. It faced a small government (small government of the pocket book, not of the bedroom) administration, dedicated to the economics of supply side and a conflict of values such as abortion and gay rights and school pray with something entirely out of its conception. Suddenly, a state that was meant to very little and increasingly less had to do everything. Things that had seemed to be malignant now seemed vital i.e. the UN, foreign intervention. The culture war was subsumed, eaten if you will, by this new and quite startling threat. Thus a void in traditional and paleo-conservatism was apparent. What did English as a first language or ends of history mean after those towers fell?
This was filled by a strand of conservative doctrine that was completely concerned with manichean conceptions of the world and America's international mission. A small group of elite thinkers and politicians gained the whip hand. Wolfowitz and Perle in government, Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz in the media. Neo-Conservatism seemed to have the perfect answers to the why and the what-to-do. It had preached a similar argument for decades, against the Soviets, against Islamism, against China. It gained both popular traction amongst the right and some parts of the left after 9/11 as it already had in its top pocket an end of days narrative of good and evil. Its discourse flowed into the public arena and gain converts in Cheney, Rice and Rummy.
I shall look at neo-conservatism in more detail in another post. But the demands of a neo-con policy were clearly at odds with that of the original administration's goals and ideas. This split was to mark the remaining seven years of W's presidency. On the one hand, Bush tried to keep small government on the table by skimping on un-WOT departments (particularly the FBI's organised crime fighting abilities and of course FEMA) but had to spend untold billions on the NSA or military contracts or 'nation building'. Attempts to revive culture war politics with gay marriage no longer mobilized like before. The systemic uneasiness and distrust of state function pushed onto the neo-con agendas too. 'Nation-building' was criminally done on the cheap and quick, troops lacked material and the proper arms and the costs were to be funded by vast borrowing.
This tension was to amplify and deepen mishap into disaster and disaster into catastro-fuck. Unable to consider state options valid or legitimate, the W administration had to move from each cock up, rapidly spending every last dime of political capital it had. By the end, and facing another problem that required a massive increase in state power, W made one last flounder before handing over power.
Considering the centrality of 9/11 to W's term is not new or original. But one must take into any account the total inability of conservatism to surmount its lack of ideas and ideological hang ups in a post 9/11 world. Panic, being lost at sea, sheer fear; these are the motifs of 43
