Echoes in Eternity

[Obama] is going to do a lot of damage to the nation, and so I would like to lay the full responsibility for this current mess at the feet of Bush/Cheney. In the aftermath of Holder's decision to investigate some of the CIA interrogators, Dick Cheney said that their administration had kept us safe for eight years, etc. But here is the problem with that argument. They didn't keep us safe.

They kept us safe from another attack from Osama, sure, but they did not protect us from Obama. They helped to sustain, create, or grow monstrous government mechanisms that are being used to destroy the nation, and all that was necessary for the destruction to begin in earnest was one election. The mechanisms of big government, which were not rejected or dismantled during the Bush years, were just sitting there, waiting (Ecc. 10:14). They were sitting there invitingly.

Obama has already done more damage to the economy than Osama did. Maybe not on purpose like Osama, but trillions down the drain are still trillions down the drain. And Obama was able to do this damage by doing the same sort of things that Bush/Cheney did, only on a grand scale. And he was able to do these things because Bush and Cheney helped establish in our minds that this kind of governmental swollenness is "just the way it has to be."

But here is a governmental rule of thumb. If you have to create mechanisms of coercion, which is a good, working definition of what civil government is, then you ought to do it not knowing beforehand whether the winners of the next three elections will be honorable or dishonorable men. This is what our founding fathers did. They assumed that American rulers were every bit as capable of being skunks and graspers as rulers throughout the rest of history had been, and they shaped the form of government accordingly. There is a proportional relationship (and a necessary one) between what a government can do for you, and what a government can do to you. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have. Our modern big government "conservatives" are as muddled on this point as anyone, and it is long past time for us to stop listening to them.

Election Day 2008 must have been filled with rueful paradoxes for the sitting president. Iraq -- the issue that dominated George W. Bush's presidency for 5 1/2 bitter, controversial years -- is on the verge of a miraculous peace. And yet this accomplishment did little to revive Bush's political standing -- or to prevent his party from relegating him to a silent role.
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This seems to be Bush's current fate: Even success brings no praise.
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Initial failures in Iraq acted like a solar eclipse, blocking the light on every other achievement. But those achievements, with the eclipse finally passing, are considerable by the measure of any presidency. Because of the passage of Medicare Part D, nearly 10 million low-income seniors are receiving prescription drugs at little or no cost. No Child Left Behind education reform has helped raise the average reading scores of fourth-graders to their highest level in 15 years, and narrowed the achievement gap between white and African American children. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has helped provide treatment for more than 1.7 million people and compassionate care for at least 2.7 million orphans and vulnerable children. And the decision to pursue the surge in Iraq will be studied as a model of presidential leadership.

These achievements, it is true, have limited constituencies to praise them. Many conservatives view Medicare, education reform and foreign assistance as heresies. Many liberals refuse to concede Bush's humanity, much less his achievements.

But that humanity is precisely what I will remember. I have seen President Bush show more loyalty than he has been given, more generosity than he has received. I have seen his buoyancy under the weight of malice and his forgiveness of faithless friends. Again and again, I have seen the natural tug of his pride swiftly overcome by a deeper decency -- a decency that is privately engaging and publicly consequential.

Before the Group of Eight summit in 2005, the White House senior staff overwhelmingly opposed a new initiative to fight malaria in Africa for reasons of cost and ideology -- a measure designed to save hundreds of thousands of lives, mainly of children under 5. In the crucial policy meeting, one person supported it: the president of the United States, shutting off debate with a moral certitude that others have criticized. I saw how this moral framework led him to an immediate identification with the dying African child, the Chinese dissident, the Sudanese former slave, the Burmese women's advocate. It is one reason I will never be cynical about government -- or about President Bush.

For some, this image of Bush is so detached from their own conception that it must be rejected. That is, perhaps, understandable. But it means little to me. Because I have seen the decency of George W. Bush.