Bashing President Bush Is No Policy

The news that Congressional approval ratings have fallen to 14%, the lowest ever recorded, shows that when you have no idea what to do and no programs to solve America’s problems, simply castigating and ridiculing the President is not enough.

For example, when Jim Webb, the new Democrat Senator from Virginia (the one whose aide was caught with the Senator’s firearm concealed on his person) gave the opposition response to the President’s State of the Union Address, about the only thing he said was that he knew in advance that the President’s actions to bring democracy to Iraq would fail. That’s not enough.

We conservatives are very angry at Bush right now. Let’s see: not only did he back the amnesty-immigration bill, he signed McCain-Feingold; he pushed for No-Child-Left-Behind; he failed to reform a bankrupt Social Security system; he sponsored Medicare Part D; and, after an early success, he may have mishandled the Iraq War (I say ‘may have mishandled’ because we probably would have had to go through the current chaos no matter what we did. It’s the nature of the beast.) Most conservatives take issue with these domestic positions. I’m on board for Medicare Part D.

On the other hand, we have a terrific economy that survived the Clinton recession and 9/11 nicely, we have won important victories in a Supreme Court that Bush has reshaped, and, most important of all, after 9/11 he has managed to protect our homeland from further terrorist attacks. Somehow, with a Democratic Party and all the major media conspiring to prevent American success in protecting us all from the crazies in the world, he has managed to persevere; and in doing so, he has had to endure the most despicable torrent of smears, lies and threats to his well-being since Adams and Lincoln – and maybe even worse.

Ace of Spades

“People who have no idea on earth what to do about the war or any of the problems we face as a nation think it is some kind of program to ridicule the intelligence of the President. Even the political opposition has fallen into this trap by making mere perspicacity in the anticipation of evils rather than the determined effort to combat them its test of political success. Thus in Sen. Jim Webb's reply to the president's State of the Union Address in January, he had no alternative to suggest to the measures for dealing with Iraq that had been proposed, but he was full of indignation on the grounds that the mistakes of the administration had been foreseeable. He knew that they were foreseeable because he himself had foreseen them. The implication was that he was much cleverer than President Bush--as if that was all that need be said to the credit of the former and the discredit of the latter.

The fact that the opposition and the media frame the debate in this way means that much of the administration's energies have to be expended in defending itself against endless second-guessing, which in turn means that it is even less inclined to recognize and correct mistakes. This is infantile politics. Meanwhile, on the question of what is now to be done about the mistakes, no one seems to know any better than Sen. Webb, whose policy amounts to saying that we ought not to have made them in the first place. This is also the view of much of the Democratic Party, and almost all of the media, who repeat mechanically that we need a "change of course" in Iraq but never get around to telling us what they would change--short of surrendering, which is now becoming the default option. In April, Sen. Harry Reid finally bowed to the logic of his own position by acknowledging that the war was already lost. At any rate it had better be, if he wants to preserve the reputation for shrewdness and sagacity that he, like so many others, have cultivated by being wise after the event.”

We are facing huge problems involving energy supplies and energy costs. President Bush proposes solutions, and the Democrats criticize his proposals and then basically do nothing but chat up Biofuels, which careful analysis showed long ago to be a fool’s dream. The President has acted to confront Islamic terrorists; the Democrats criticize vociferously and crudely, but have no idea themselves what to do. Democrats and liberals cannot really be taken seriously unless and until they put forth some serious and reasonable solutions to the serious problems we face. It has been joked that Republicans want to protect America from Islamic terrorists while Democrats want to protect America from global warming. It was a joke, but it is close to the mark.

SPECIAL NOTE: THE NEWS TODAY THAT PRESIDENT BUSH HAS COMMUTED SCOOTER LIBBY’S SENTENCE REAFIRMS MY FAITH IN THE PRESIDENT’S GOOD SENSE AND GOOD WILL.