Books of The Times | 'Rebel in Chief' and 'Impostor'
Disparate Conservative Assessments of
Bush
Left: Fox News Channel; Right: Van Riper Photography
Left: Fred Barnes; Right: Bruce Bartlett.
REBEL IN CHIEF Inside the Bold and Controversial
Presidency of George W. Bush By FRED BARNES 220 pages. Crown
Forum. $23.95.
IMPOSTOR How George W. Bush Bankrupted America
and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy By BRUCE BARTLETT 310 pages.
Doubleday. $26.
Published: February 21, 2006
The portraits of President George W. Bush served up by these two new books could
not be more at odds.
Both authors are die-hard, dyed-in-the-wool conservatives. Bruce Bartlett
("Impostor"), former executive director of the Joint Economic Committee of
Congress, worked in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and wrote the 1981 supply-side
manifesto "Reaganomics." Fred Barnes is executive editor of "The Weekly
Standard" and a co-host of the Fox News program "The Beltway Boys." The two
authors, however, have come to diametrically opposing views of the current
president.
Mr. Barnes views Mr. Bush as "a president who leads," an action-oriented
"visionary," an executive who combines "F.D.R.'s cool optimism" and Teddy
Roosevelt's "pugnacity and determination." Mr. Barnes had unusual access to
members of the press-phobic administration: he interviewed Mr. Bush as well as
Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for this volume. But he did not use
this access to ask hard-hitting questions. Instead, his book echoes the
administration's own portrayals of itself, even employing the same sort of macho
adjectives the White House and Bush campaigns have used to characterize the
president: "bold," "audacious," "steadfast," "unflinching."
As Mr. Barnes sees it, Mr. Bush's brand of conservatism — activist,
forward-leaning and willing to use the government to solve problems — is "the
conservatism of the future."
Mr. Bartlett, in contrast, sees Mr. Bush as a "pretend conservative" — "a
partisan Republican, anxious to improve the fortunes of his party" but
"perfectly willing to jettison conservative principles at a moment's notice to
achieve that goal." He writes that the current White House is "obsessive about
secrecy," argues that Mr. Bush has pursued "what could be described as a
Nixonian agenda using Nixon's methods" and declares that when it comes to the
federal budget, "Clinton was much better." Mr. Bush, he contends, has set the
country on "an unsustainable fiscal course," resulting in a ballooning deficit
that will inevitably lead to tax increases.
As Mr. Bartlett sees it, "the 2002 collapse of Enron" — the giant energy
trading company, which "borrowed heavily, paid little in taxes, and made big
profits in ways that were known to be contrary to sound business practices" —
"may in some ways be a metaphor for the Bush Administration's economic
policy."
His critique extends well beyond the economic sphere. He argues that "Bush
has driven away and even humiliated the few intellectuals in his midst,
preferring instead the company of overrated political hacks whose main skills
seem to be an ability to say yes to whatever he says and to ignore the obvious."
And he declares that the president's "unwillingness to properly utilize the
traditional policy development process" lies "at the heart of the failure of his
Social Security proposal and possibly the Iraq operation as well."
"One of the hallmarks of George W. Bush's approach to policy that is
disturbing both to friends and foes alike," Mr. Bartlett writes, "is an apparent
disdain for serious thought and research to develop his policy initiatives.
Often they seem born from a kind of immaculate conception, with no mother or
father to claim parentage."
Mr. Bartlett argues that the failure of "the administration to chart or
articulate a consistent economic policy" stemmed, in large measure, from "Bush's
disinterest in serious policy analysis" and his sidelining of people with
genuine expertise. He writes that Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and his successor, John Snow, were treated
as "little more than errand boys," and that the Council of Economic Advisers was
accorded little influence as well. It became clear, Mr. Bartlett writes, that
the main job of the Council's chairman, R. Glenn Hubbard, "was not to devise
economic policies, but only to offer support for those Bush had already decided
upon."
These remarks by Mr. Bartlett echo earlier observations about the
administration's mistrust of experts and often haphazard decision-making
process, made by journalists like George Packer (writing about the Iraq war) and
former administration insiders. Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism adviser,
has written that on issues like terrorism and Iraq, "Bush and his inner circle
had no real interest in complicated analyses; on the issues that they cared
about, they already knew the answers, it was received wisdom." Former Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neill once told Vice President Cheney that he felt
administration members needed to bring more "analytical rigor, sound
information-gathering techniques and real, cost-benefit analysis" to the
decision making process. And John DiIulio, the former head of the Bush
administration's faith-based initiative, wrote a 2002 memo to the reporter Ron
Suskind, in which he lamented that "in eight months, I heard many, many staff
discussions but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions."
The descriptions of the Bush White House in "Rebel-in-Chief" do not exactly
contradict those in "Impostor," but where Mr. Bartlett sees slapdash
decision-making, Mr. Barnes sees decisiveness and visionary leadership — an
admirable contempt for "small ball" and a practical desire to focus on results,
not means. Mr. Barnes seems to think that being "a risk taker" who "loves to
smash conventional wisdom" is a positive thing in a president, and he points out
that Mr. Bush "hates to manage a problem or a dispute or a broken relationship,"
preferring to cut to "what's the solution?"
The account that Mr. Barnes gives of the president's approach to
speech-making is especially telling, ironically ratifying Mr. Bartlett's
observation that Mr. Bush likes to spurn traditional policy-making channels.
In "Rebel-in-Chief," Mr. Barnes writes that Mr. Bush "has used his
presidential speeches to advance policies far beyond where his aides expected
him to go," that "rather than reflect policy, his speeches dictate policy."
Typically, he notes, the Bush speechwriting process begins with a meeting
between the president and Michael Gerson, his former chief speechwriter turned
policy adviser. Once drafted, the speech is circulated at the White House but
"is not open to debate."
"This is the first time most White House and administration officials see a
speech," Mr. Barnes writes. "It already has the president's imprimatur. Advisers
are free to recommend a change in wording, but Bush does not tolerate attempts
to alter the general direction of a speech."
In the case of the second Inaugural Address, which declared that spreading
liberty around the world was "the calling of our time," Mr. Barnes reports that
Mr. Bush teased Condoleezza Rice, saying "You're not going to believe what I
say." Ms. Rice reportedly responded, "I hope I get to see it before you give
it." What she and other senior Bush advisers later saw, Mr. Barnes goes on, "was
a near-final draft to which only minor changes could be made." He continues, The
thrust of the speech — the new direction, the policy declaration — had been
set."
Not only does Mr. Barnes fail to make a persuasive case for the virtues of
Mr. Bush's go-it-alone management style, but his narrative is also so replete
with blinkered predictions, ridiculous generalizations and absurdly rosy
pronouncements as to undermine any trust whatsoever in the author. He writes
that "America's strategic position has indeed been fortified" by the president's
Middle East policy, that "Afghanistan and Iraq are pro-American democracies"
now, and that "Bush had received vindication both abroad and at home" when
Iraqis turned out to vote in last year's elections — as if that meant that the
war had been deemed successful and wise.
Mr. Barnes assails the press for contending that Mr. Bush has "indulged in
more God-talk than his predecessors" (he contends that Bill Clinton "mentioned Jesus Christ more than Bush
has"), even though Mr. Barnes himself writes that "Bush has been more powerfully
affected by his faith than any other president" and that his "faith has had an
enormous impact on his policies." He says "the Bush approach to foreign policy
and key domestic issues, and his use of government, will stick as key elements
of the conservatism of the future," despite the president's low standing in the
polls, despite the public's unhappiness with the war in Iraq, despite many
conservatives' worries about his administration's lavish spending ways. And he
writes that "President Bush revealed his proactive tendencies after Hurricane
Katrina devastated New Orleans and coastal Mississippi in the late summer of
2005," despite the fact that Mr. Bush and the federal government were painfully
slow to respond to the emergency, as a scathing report issued by House
Republicans noted a week ago.
As for Mr. Bartlett's book, there is one gaping omission: a reluctance to
grapple with the huge federal deficits run up by his hero, Ronald Reagan. But
while this omission blunts the author's complaints about President Bush's
deficit spending, it does not detract from his larger criticisms of the current
administration: namely, its subversion of many traditional conservative beliefs
(like a wariness of Wilsonian efforts to export democracy and a wariness of big
government); its willingness to subordinate long-term policy goals to short-term
political gains; and perhaps most important, its distrust of the government's
traditional policy-making apparatus and its inclination to make decisions based
on ideology and grand ideas rather than on substantive analysis and debate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/books/review/21kaku.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th
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