Former Bush speechwriter Mike Gerson does a fairly remarkable thing in this WaPo column, attempting to conflate Clintonism and Bushism. The basic problem with this analysis is that Bill Clinton was a moderate and George W. Bush is not. Oh, Bush talked–a bit–about compassion and faith-based social programs, but David Kuo pretty much destroyed the notion that Bush tried to do anything about it. And yes, Bush deserves credit for his AIDs initiative in Africa and his stand on immigration. But…
Clinton tried to govern from the middle. He received ZERO support from Republicans when he chose fiscal responsibility in his 1993 economic plan. Indeed, he was subject to a continual personal assault by Republicans, culminating in the utterly outrageous impeachment fiasco in 1998. I’d ask Gerson what he thinks about impeachment now, since he’s so charitable about the Clinton years? I’d ask him if he’d acknowledge that it was Republican political consultants, talk show hosts, freak-pundits like Ann Coulter and leaders like Newt Gingrich who were the pioneers of the rhetorical poison now afflicting the extremes of both parties.
But most important, Gerson can not slide away from the two hallmarks of the Bush Administration: the flagrant, arrogant and ill-informed foreign policy that has alienated the entire world–and the shameful partisan politicization of national security policy, the use of “terrorism” for electoral purposes, as a bludgeon against Bush’s political opponents. It is an act of almost unimagineable hubris, as the signature policy of the Bush Administration–its so-called War on Terror–lies in flaming ruins from Gaza to Waziristan, for Gerson to speak of moderation.
George W. Bush is no moderate. He has governed as a radical, and we’ll be paying the price for his thoughtless extremism for years to come.