One of the linchpins of the Bush presidency, especially during the
first term (and well into the second, until he became a major political
liability), was the lock-step uncritical reverence - often bordering on
cult-like glorification - which the "conservative" movement devoted to
the "Commander-in-Chief." An entire creepy cottage industry arose -
led not by fringe elements but by right-wing opinion-making leaders -
with cringe-inducing products paying homage to Bush as "The First Great
Leader of the 21st Century" (John Podhoretz); our "Rebel-in-Chief" (Fred Barnes); "The Right Man" (David Frum); the New Reagan (Jonah Goldberg); "a man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius" who is our "Big Brother" (John Hinderaker);
and "the triumph of the seemingly average American man," the supremely
"responsible" leader who, when there's a fire, will "help direct the
rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, 'Where's
Sally'?" (Peggy Noonan).
Even as Bush implemented one massive expansion of government power after the next -- the very "un-conservative" policies they long claimed to oppose
-- there was nothing but (at best) the most token and muted objections
from them. The handful of conservatives who did object were cast aside as traitors to the cause, and criticisms of the President became equated with an overt lack of patriotism.
Uncritical support for the Leader was the overarching, defining
attribute of conservatism, so much so that even Bill Kristol, in The New York Times, acknowledged: "Bush was the movement and the cause."
Whenever
I would speak at events over the last couple of years and criticize the
Bush administration's expansions of government power, extreme secrecy
and other forms of corruption, one of the most frequent questions I
would be asked was whether "the Left" -- meaning liberals and
progressives -- would continue to embrace these principles with a
Democrat in the White House, or whether they would instead replicate
the behavior of the Right and uncritically support whatever the
Democratic President decided. Though I could only speculate, I always
answered -- because I believed -- that the events of the last eight
years had so powerfully demonstrated and ingrained the dangers of
uncritical support for political leaders that most liberals would be
critical of and oppositional to a Democratic President when that
President undertook actions in tension with progressive views.
Two
months into Obama's presidency, one can clearly conclude that this is
true. Even though Obama unsurprisingly and understandably remains generally popular
with Democrats and liberals alike, there is ample progressive criticism
of Obama in a way that is quite healthy and that reflects a meaningful
difference between the "conservative movement" and many progressives.
Over
the last month, the Obama administration has made numerous decisions in
the civil liberties area that are replicas of some of the most
controversial and radical actions taken by the Bush administration, and
the most vocal critics of those decisions by far were the very same
people - ostensibly on "the Left" -- who spent the last several years
objecting to the same policies as part of the Bush administration's
radicalism. Identically, many of Obama's most consequential foreign
policy decisions -- in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan -- have been
criticized by many on the Left. Opposition to Obama's bank bailout
plan is clearly being driven by liberal economists, pundits and bloggers,
and much of the criticism over the AIG debacle came from liberals as
well. There was pervasive liberal criticism over some of Obama's key
appointments, including Tom Daschle, John Brennan and Tim Geithner.
That's more independent progressive thinking in two months than the
"conservative movement" exhibited with regard to Bush in six years.
It's certainly true that one has no difficulty finding cult-like liberal veneration for Obama - those who invoke
Bible-like "he's-a-master-of-11-dimensional-chess" cliches to justify
whatever he does (the Lord works in mysterious ways but even when we
don't understand what He does, we Trust that He is Supremely Good and
more Wise than us and knows best); who declare,
in Bush-like "with-me-or-against-me" fashion, all critics of Obama to
be the Enemy; who pay homage to Kim Jong Il-like imagery such as this and this;
who believe that "trust" -- a sentiment appropriate for family and
friends but not political leaders -- should be vested in Obama and thus
negate any concerns over how he exercises power. Some overly-eager
journalists and bloggers are devoted to carrying forth the
administration's message (usually delivered anonymously) in exchange
for favorable treatment and/our due to a painfully excessive sense of
devotion, and there's a Democratic establishment with a built-in
machinery to defend Obama no matter what he does.
But outside of
those anonymity-granting blogger/journalists and Democratic
apparatchiks, these drooling, worshipful, subservient sentiments are
largely confined to the fringes. With some exceptions,
to find this right-wing-replicating blind loyalty to the Leader, one
has to search blog comment sections and obscure diarists. Many --
arguably most -- of the most vocal liberal Bush critics have kept their
critical faculties engaged and have been unwilling to sacrifice their
political values and principles at the altar of partisan loyalty.
It
should be emphasized that mere criticism for its own sake is also not a
virtue. Those who reflexively and blindly criticize whatever Obama
does (based on the immovable, all-consuming conviction that he is
intrinsically Evil) are nothing more than the opposite side of the same
mindless coin as those who reflexively and blindly praise whatever
Obama does (based on the immovable, all-consuming conviction that he is
intrinsically Good). Pre-ordained, overarching judgments of Obama that
are detached from his actions and grounded in Manichean caricatures are
irrational in equal measure, whether that judgment yields praise or
condemnation.
A rational citizen, by definition, praises and
supports political leaders only when they do the right thing
(regardless of motive), and criticizes and opposes them when they
don't. It's just that simple. Cheerleading for someone because
they're on "your team" is appropriate for a sporting event, not for
political matters. Political leaders deserve support only to the
extent that their actions, on a case-by-case basis, merit that support,
and that has largely been the behavior of progressives towards Obama.
Hence: civil
libertarian critics of Bush have vehemently criticized the Obama
administration for embracing Bush's secrecy theories, shielding
government policies (including torture) from judicial review, denying
all rights to Bagram detainees, and retaining some of Bush's extreme
detention powers, but have praised him -- often lavishly -- for
restricting FOIA secrecy, banning waterboarding and CIA black sites,
disclosing key Bush-era OLC memos, bringing charges against the last
"enemy combatant" in America, and guaranteeing International Red Cross
access to all detainees. Foreign policy critics have objected
to Obama's escalation of our military presence in Afghanistan and drone
attacks in Pakistan while praising him for preliminary changes in our
tone (if not policy) towards Israel and his diplomatic overtures to
Iran. Economic critics have attacked his bank rescue plan as a sleazy
give-away to Wall Street and his excessive stimulus compromises, while praising his ambitious domestic budget
and his core stimulus approach. In most areas, his record has been
mixed, and thus progressive reaction to it has been as well.
Critical
analysis is how a political culture and even a political movement
remains vibrant and worthwhile, and is the only way political leaders
and a political class will remain responsive and accountable. Blind
reverence and uncritical loyalty -- the need to see a political leader
as one who embodies infallible truth and transformative justice and can
deliver some form of personal or emotional elevation -- breeds
ossification, intellectual death, and authoritarian corruption. Anyone
who doubts that should look at the state of today's conservative
movement to see what the fruits are of that cultish mentality.
Many
conservatives typically use the excuse that a national crisis (9/11) is
what led to such lock-step and uncritical support for the Leader, but
many progressives are retaining their critical faculties despite the
(at least equally threatening) economic crisis consuming not just
America but the world. There are many legitimate criticisms one might
make of liberals but, with some exceptions, replicating the Leader
worship and blind reverence that dominated the Bush era doesn't appear
to be one of them.
UPDATE: I'm
well-aware, and explicitly stated, that there were some conservatives
who dissented early on from the Bush movement as an assault on their
ideological convictions -- I devoted an entire chapter of my first book
to those individuals -- but they were a tiny minority (and were cast
out of the movement). Even as Bush's popularity collapsed across the
spectrum, self-identified "conservatives" continued to support him overwhelmingly and "movement conservatism" devoted itself blindly to Bush.
Indeed, even as recently as December (three months ago), by which point
the Bush disaster was undeniably apparent to everyone else,
self-identified "conservatives" continued overwhelmingly to support their leader.
The
point, though, isn't so much the lockstep devotion to Bush among the
conservative rank-and-file as it is the uncritical, creepy, cult-like
glorification of him by the Right's opinion-making leaders and their
refusal to criticize what he did -- until they sought cynically to
distance themselves from the stench of his failure late in his
presidency (and anyone who doubts that should just click on the links
in the first paragraph or read this).
If one searches for it, one can find that devoted reverence towards
Obama among some creepy cultists and overly eager supporters, but that
has not been the predominant behavioral trait among progressives.