Conservative Hate

From an ultraconservative editorial columnist:

Why I can't stand Bush
Sunday, May 07, 2006

I often hear from readers who wonder why I so thoroughly dislike George W. Bush. .... But to return to the subject of the president: Before George W. came along, conservatives were on the winning side of every major issue. We were the ones who disdained the Beltway class, who pushed for smaller, more responsible government. Remember term limits? The balanced-budget amendment? In the Clinton era, the GOP promised such reforms.

But then George W. took over. We've got term limits, all right. Only now we call them "indictments." As for Bush's promise to give us the balanced-budget amendment, that was about as valid as his promise not to get into a war without an exit strategy -- or any of his other promises.

You can call it lying, or you can call it spin. Whatever you call it, there is not a single person in the administration who would endorse in 2006 what Bush himself endorsed in 2000.

But to call Bush a traitor to his political philosophy is to imply that he had one. He didn't. You can read through Bush's various speeches over the years without coming up with the slightest hint of a coherent system of thought. In this, he's the opposite of Reagan. Though Reagan was the one who had the movie career, Bush is the actor. He's simply reading lines put before him by Karl Rove et al.

Seen from this angle, Bush can be placed in his proper category. It's a category that includes all the offspring of famous people who drift effortlessly into the family line of work. How often have you heard some movie star whose father was a movie star brag that he made it on his own? Dad didn't help at all -- except of course for the name, the contacts, the house in Holly wood, the money, the car and all the other advantages not available to some young actor from Dubu que who comes to Hollywood with stars in his eyes.

Bush is, in other words, the political equivalent of Lloyd Bridges' kids, Henry Fonda's kids and so on (with the important exception that some of these kids can really perform their jobs quite well). That's all there is to the Bush presidency, I'm afraid, and it's not much.

For a short while in the begin ning he seemed to know what he was doing, but then so did Gary Lewis, to name another movie star's kid. After the Beatles came to America, the son of comedian Jerry Lewis, like just about every other kid in America, decided he wanted to be a rock star. Unlike every other kid in America, Gary Lewis had the contacts to put together a simulacrum of a rock band and have his efforts recorded and televised. He actually put out a couple of catchy tunes before fad ing into well-deserved obscurity.

That's George W. to a T, an entertainer past his prime. Only his fellow entertainers -- Rush Limbaugh et al. -- still pretend he knows what he's doing. Traditional conservatives, such as the columnist Joe Sobran, are even more ap palled by Bush than I am.

It's conservatives like this who are now driving the president's poll numbers.