Chaotic neutral, p.21
Chaotic Neutral, page 21
Footnotes
i As with “Clinton,” context should clarify that “Bush” is George W. Bush rather than his father unless otherwise noted.
ii What is often called the West but mostly meant the United States won. U-S-A! U-S-A!
iii At writing, the Biden administration shows signs of finally winding down the American reliance on drone warfare; although typically, perhaps stung by the wild overreaction to the Afghan withdrawal, the White House is failing to capitalize on this significant accomplishment. See Cooper, R., “Biden Nearly Ended the Drone War, and Nobody Noticed,” Week, December 1, 2021.
iv For FY2022, Biden requested $715B while congressional Democrats joined with Republicans in insisting on $739B. See Edmondson, K., “Congress Moves to Increase Pentagon Budget, Defying Biden and Liberals,” New York Times, September 2, 2021.
v Matt Yglesias wrote presciently in the aftermath of the 2014 midterms on the inability of Democratic elites to recognize the serious problem the party had at the state level, even before Trump. See Yglesias, “Democrats Are in Denial. Their Party Is Actually in Deep Trouble,” Vox, October 19, 2015.
vi Nebraska has a unicameral nonpartisan legislature.
vii It’s pronounced “peer,” and its residents will correct you.
viii The same thing happened in Washington state, where two Democratic state senators joined with the twenty-three-member GOP caucus to give Republicans control of the forty-nine-seat chamber from 2012 to 2017.
ix Hence Russell Berman’s accurate assessment of the 2020 election in his article “The Failure That Could Haunt Democrats for a Decade,” Atlantic, November 10, 2020.
CHAPTER 9
THE BUSH YEARS
Bob Woodward’s chronicles of the Clinton era, The Agenda and The Choice, signaled the author’s transition from muckraker to storyteller, from exposés to access journalism offering the masses a peek behind the curtains of power. During a long slog through his nearly dozen books on the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama presidencies, a curious pattern emerged. For Obama and especially Clinton, the Republicans are always present. They’re part of the story—an important part. Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, they’re always there. Involved. Relevant. The tale of Obama’s or Clinton’s presidencies cannot be told without them.
By contrast, in three books about George W. Bush, the Democrats barely register.i They aren’t there. The story doesn’t require them; when they do appear, they’re inconsequential. The GOP governed to the greatest practicable extent as though the Democrats were a nonfactor. In State of Denial, the Democratic nonexistence is almost literal; the book makes one mention of them in the context of Bush appointing a committee to study prewar Iraq intelligence. He needed to involve Democrats in the investigation to make his bureaucratic whitewash look good. That’s it.
The Democrats’ role in five hundred pages of Plan of Attack (2004) is to express “concern” and “misgivings” (307–308) about Iraq War resolutions and budgets—budgets Democrats ended up supporting, of course. Even “vocal critics” (204) got on board. But the comic masterpiece of the series is The War Within (2008). Sen. Barack Obama makes a brief cameo to mildly criticize Bush after the president’s approval had tanked so badly that even Senate Republicans were scoring points off their lame duck president (316).ii Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid criticizes Bush’s “surge” proposal for Iraq—and is attacked by other Democrats for “demoralizing” the troops (Sen. Carl Levin is noted to have really “chewed his ass,” 346). And finally, after the Democratic Congress passed $124 billion in supplemental war spending in the spirit of supporting the troops—Bush vetoed the bill for being too small and for suggesting a specific date that a troop withdrawal must begin—Speaker Pelosi called him “obstinate” and promised to pray for him (349).
That’s it. That’s how the Democrats feature in the presidency of George W. Bush. Liberals derided him as the buffoon, failson, and bagman he was (and remains, character rehabilitation aside) but could not defeat him in two tries.iii They hated him but became so enamored of the Clintonian method of accepting the premise and criticizing the details that they couldn’t successfully attack him directly. They had to nitpick, to argue managerial competence without exposing themselves to mockery as McGoverniks waving peace symbols and trying to surrender American sovereignty to the nearest convenient one-world government. We know how well “support the troops but oppose the war” or in some cases “support the troops and the war even more than Bush” worked.
THE CLINTON CONTINUATION
Since Bill Clinton left office popular, having overseen what were by consensus eight good years of peace and prosperity, the ascension of his vice president to the White House seemed likely. Al Gore was, unfortunately, a mediocre candidate with none of Clinton’s charisma but all of his wonkiness. Gore would talk policy, most of it laced with gee-whiz techno idealism, until the heat death of the universe. Liberal elites love that stuff; voters, conversely, tended to find him ponderous and confusing. Meanwhile, with the assistance of deferential media coverage, Bush was able to sell himself as a “compassionate conservative,” which sounds nice but isn’t a real thing. It was a two-bad-candidates election: the tedium of Gore the technocrat versus the inanity of Bush the regular fella.iv The razor-close finish underscored the oh-well-whatever dynamic of the moment.
Predictably, Democrats leapt upon two aspects of the loss that absolved Gore (and running mate Joe Lieberman), the Democratic Party, and its ideas: the Supreme Court and Nader voters. It is a fact that had every Nader voter instead voted for Gore, he would have won (although this argument conveniently ignores that third-party paleoconservative Pat Buchanan “stole” more votes from Bush than Nader did from Gore.)1 The inconvenient question is: If Bush is the total dipshit liberals claimed (spoiler: he was!), why couldn’t Gore score a win regardless of the usual smattering of votes to minor candidates? Why did a Gore victory require the same helping hand from the Supreme Court that Bush needed to reach the White House? Reasonable political actors might consider what they did wrong and learn something from it. Instead, 2000 was a prominent example of the new thinking in the New Democrat era. It’s never our fault. We do not fail, but other people fail us.
So, fault ultimately landed upon the voters (idiots who fell for Bush’s regular guy act, or who recognized a fellow idiot and embraced him), Nader voters and the left who stabbed the Democrats in the back,v and institutions (Florida elected officials and courts, the federal courts) who refused to step in and award the Democrats a deserved win. To this day, the lack of clarity about what happened in Florida in 2000 reigns. Various studies of ballots and recount methods tend to confirm the official tabulation that put Bush very slightly ahead; although it has been argued cogently that with better balloting and counting techniques less prone to overvotes (ballots disqualified for multiple votes for one office), Gore won comfortably. Alas, those better ballots and techniques were not what was used in 2000.2
Too infrequently was it asked in good faith why Al Gore couldn’t match Bill Clinton’s 1992 and 1996 performances, even against a candidate who was demonstrably a dolt. It was and remains easier to scold Nader voters and remind them of their moral obligation to vote for Democrats (who openly disdain them) than to ask the Occam’s razor question of why Gore couldn’t achieve the simplest path to victory: convincing just a few more people in a few more places to vote for him. No one asks why or how Gore’s poll numbers, at one point solidly over 50 percent, fell steadily, and why it seemed like the more voters saw of him the less they liked him.3
In a postelection analysis by venerable political scientist Gerald Pomper, Gore’s campaign and personal performance were found badly lacking. Gore “did little to focus voters’ attention on the Democratic achievements,” “neglected to put the election into a broader context” of Republicans’ dismal record at the helm of Congress, and “made the election a contest between two individuals and their personal programs” by “eschewing” partisanship.4 Another established scholar tellingly titled a retrospective “Ideology in the 2000 Elections: A Study in Ambivalence.”5 I’m no venerable scholar, but it sounds like there may have been some pretty serious shortcomings in the Gore campaign. The written history matches the lived experience of 2000, a campaign in which a robotic Gore did little but argue that he would be the better manager of what was essentially a mutually understood agenda. He told voters he would better administer the legacy of Clintonian prosperity without actually talking about or claiming credit for the prosperity.vi
Yes, the Supreme Court could have decided differently. Florida elected officials could have been something other than hysterical, blindly pro-Bush partisans. Nader voters could have all woken up on Election Day to realize they owe their vote to a candidate representing a faction dragging the Democratic Party rightward. Everyone could have recognized what was right in front of them, that Bush was a store-brand Gerald Ford fronting a cabal of Nixon-era psychopaths. But it is ludicrous to ignore that Al Gore could have done a lot of things better and given people a reason to vote for him. It is telling—and unbelievable in hindsight—that a campaign that chose Joe Lieberman as the running mate has not prompted more soul searching and more consideration of its self-inflicted wounds. Maybe a powerful explanation for the debacle of 2000 was that Al Gore did almost everything badly. Instead, Democrats faced down the question of why they lost by blaming everyone except themselves.
9/11, IRAQ, AND ABB (ANYONE BUT BUSH)
Imagine a George W. Bush presidency without 9/11. Remember what the first nine months of his presidency were like, before 9/11? Of course you don’t! Nobody does. He was a guy who barely squeaked into office and whose defenders—mind you, his defenders—argued that he was probably an idiot but would appoint competent people to run things. The terrorist attacks and subsequent (putatively but not actually related) wars in Iraq and Afghanistan gave the Bush presidency a sense of focus, purpose, and mission that it would not otherwise have found. It also played to his strengths (posturing, bombast, a third-rate John Wayne impression) and those of his administration (warmongering, profiting from warmongering). Even with the boost he received as a wartime president, Bush entered 2004 with uncertain prospects for reelection.
Democrats, who loathed Bush passionately and rightly considered him a nitwit, created their own uncertainty with an uninspiring field of candidates that included attempted Clinton impersonator John Edwards and alleged (but not actual) populist Howard Dean. Longtime senator John Kerry was essentially the default choice, a known name perceived as steady, stately, and competent—the perfect anti-Bush. His military service would also project strength and gravitas, tapping into the post-9/11 emphasis on terrorism and reminding Americans that Democrats liked war too. Ultimately Kerry was shrugged into the nomination without passionate supporters.6 He’d do. Besides, the election would be about “anyone but Bush.”7 Americans could see clearly that Bush was an idiot, a liar, a buffoon. All Democrats felt they needed to do was present a determined visage to contrast with Bush’s impish smirk. Surely wisdom and steady leadership would win over dick-waving bravado and faith-based foreign policy. Not for the last time, Democrats bet big on a consummate establishment candidate and assumed that the Republican candidate being a moron would win the election for them.
Bush-era politics linger. A White House aide at the time coined the phrase “reality-based community” in an interview with Ron Suskind to denigrate liberals during the run-up to the Iraq War. Marvel at the sheer balls of the full quote:
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.… That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Democrats, the label implies, place their faith in rules, facts, and projecting an image as the adults in the room. It was up to the voters, aided by a media that cherished those values, to recognize and appreciate those qualities. Bush’s cadre created its own reality by repeating lies until they became recognized truth and acting without concern for the constraints that were supposed to limit their actions. Liberals wore the intended insult as a badge of honor, proudly proclaiming their allegiance to reality, truth, fair play, and following the rules. That position appealed strongly—and if this sounds familiar, it’s because the exact same dynamic played out in 2016 and 2020—to the highly educated people for whom America’s social and economic systems seemed to be working fine and for whom conforming to the demands of the meritocracy had panned out. But like Reagan, Bush found that the public reacted well to pro-America rhetoric that came without a side of scolding and caveats. Bushism was, in every sense, “America, fuck yeah!” elevated to a political worldview. Instead of trying to offer voters an alternative, Kerry and most Democrats endorsed the basics of Bushism and its global war on terror—the 2004 Democratic convention used the slogan “Strong at Home, Respected in the World”—but argued that they would do it better. To this day, Democrats have not resolved the contradiction of supporting institutions at the core of the reactionary worldview like the military and law enforcement while simultaneously attempting to be the party for people who are skeptical (or worse) of those institutions.
The core message the Kerry campaign sought to project at the 2004 Democratic convention was the candidate’s record of military service.8 “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty” is about all anyone remembers from the otherwise bland convention.vii The intent was straight from the New Democrat playbook: to neutralize GOP attacks on Democrats as soft on foreign policy. Of course, those attacks came anyway, irrespective of Kerry’s veteran status. The counterproductive pattern played out: Democrats recognized that, of course, everyone knows we need to drop a lot of bombs, but we can’t trust George W. Bush’s judgment; Kerry’s is sound. The military emphasis during the campaign repeatedly “lost [opportunities] to present a compelling reason to voters to cast their ballots for Kerry.”9 With no substantially different foreign policy and with broad agreement on core economic ideas continuing from the Clinton years, there simply was no fulcrum for pushing back against the post-9/11 Bush position.10 Democrats were convinced that crucial, persuadable voters shared Republicans’ promilitary, proaggression worldview and thus they could not attack it directly.
Worse, the GOP refused to play by the tacit understanding that certain things like the service record of a war hero could not become fodder for attacks and conspiracy theories. At a historical moment of performative patriotism, the GOP nonetheless deftly undermined what was supposed to be Kerry’s strength. Kerry’s record of criticizing and questioning US military involvement in atrocities in Vietnam left a substantial portion of the usually proveteran, promilitary voting bloc feeling chilly toward him. When the GOP attacks came, amplified by the growing sophistication of right-wing media messaging, they unleashed an avalanche of hit pieces with sinister titles like “Unfit for Command.” The “swiftboating” of Kerry was done largely through surrogates rather than by the Bush campaign, but it was clearly signaled to the rank and file that Kerry’s war record was fair game. Memorably, 2004 Republican convention attendees wore Band-Aids with fake Purple Hearts to mock Kerry’s medals.viii The indignity didn’t stop there, though. Kerry wasn’t just stripped of the political benefits of military service; he was emasculated through rhetoric designed to depict him as “French and feminine.”11 Every benefit Democrats expected to accrue from Kerry’s status as a veteran, a stern leader, and a serious person seemed to be parried effortlessly by the GOP. Everything Democrats believed would work failed to work.
No doubt it would have been difficult for a Democratic nominee to chart out a different course for the nation in 2004. It was an era of jingoism, of fear, of the Hummer H2, of “with us or with the terrorists.” Yet with previously supportive Americans beginning to sour on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush was hardly on firm ground. It turned out that Americans love the troops, kicking ass, bombing bad guys, and the kind of war that asks no sacrifices of the public and has no negative externalities. What they love less are wars that drag on after a promise of quick victory, are costly in terms of blood and money, and lack clear objectives. In a futile effort to preclude Republicans from calling them weaklings on terrorism, congressional Democrats overwhelmingly supported the Iraq War and then tried to carve out middle positions later; “We took Bush at his word and he disappointed us” was not the definitive riposte they thought it was. Questioning—and opposing through actions as well as words—the fundamental premise of the wars appears not to have been seriously considered. Afraid of the old charges of mealy-mouthed cowardice, Democrats offered war on terror lite to the GOP’s full-strength formula.
Alas, Mark Penn’s beloved swing voters must have trusted Bush to kick more ass and blow up more things. “Security moms” terrified of terrorism are hard to discern in survey data, but Bush won by 11 percent among married women.12 All the equivocating, the protroops folderol, and surrender to the surging nationalism of the era accomplished nothing. The strategy to beat the GOP by conceding that we needed to do a lot of war stuff, only better, failed. Bush not only won, but the GOP also increased its margins in the House, Senate, and in state capitals. The GOP emerged from that election “in its strongest position since Herbert Hoover was elected” in 1928.13
