G.W. Bush Is No Conservative

To the Editor:

In 1992 President George H.W. Bush was lambasted by his challenger, for deriding “the vision thing.” Determined to escape his father’s fate, and publicly dismissing his father’s counsel, President George W. Bush has taken a wildly different approach to the pursuit and execution of the office he holds.

This President Bush purports to lead entirely from a vision, and the facts and analyses — indeed, the experiences and accounts — of his countrymen, be damned.

The picture that this President and his inner circle see, and would compel us to accept, is an American Weimar in need of salvation by an elite whose purity of motive, thought, and deed need not, cannot, must not, will not be questioned.

President Teddy Roosevelt said, “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, it is morally treasonable to the American Public.”

Reactionaries and utopians of various political stripes throughout our history have seized power and attempted to impose their will on our country and its people at times of real or perceived weakness. The so-called “neoconservative” strain (whose roots trace to Trotskyite utopianism) is the most virulent to develop in the West since fascism and communism — ideologically opposed, but with so much in common — arose in Europe and threatened the world.

A militarized and explicitly imperial foreign policy has been wedded to a soulful belief in the theory of the Clash of Civilizations and the Biblical end-of-times, and has brought us undeniably closer to both. This is neither visionary nor transformational. History and the Bush misadventure in Iraq prove that it is not even viable.

There is nothing Conservative about this President; not his thinking, not his leadership style, not his policies, not his record.

There is nothing strong about this President. He is merely a narrow-minded autocrat, incapable of engaging — and contemptuous of — the informed consent of the country he governs; and willfully negligent in his refusal to accept the facts and take responsibility for the consequences of his administration’s tenure.

Instead, George W. Bush’s Presidency reminds one too much of a man gone on a drinking binge: leaving his constitution weakened, his friendships in tatters, his finances in ruins, and his family frightened and insecure.

We simply must change directions and get the country back on the healthy course of sober, sensible, responsible leadership which being the world’s economic, military, and political hegemon requires.

Chris McArdle

Bennett’s Bridge Road, Sandy Hook                       October 26, 2004