Screeds
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Arms And The Man
June 17, 2002
Imagine what the political state of the country would be if Black Tuesday had never happened. Let’s start by remembering what it was.
George W. Bush entered the White House only after extraordinary struggles that reached from the polling places of southern Florida all the way to the United States Supreme Court. He had bare majority support in Congress for the early initiatives of his administration. He and his team had to fight every battle uphill, against a determined Democratic opposition and an entrenched federal power structure that was largely in bed with it. Sometimes, the Democrats succeeded in eviscerating the Bush program, as with the education bill, where passage was impossible until the school choice component was removed.
When Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont elected to leave the GOP, it crippled large portions of the Bush program, particularly with regard to judgeships and appointive positions. The Jeffords defection has also endangered some of the early Republican victories, most notably the eleven-year tax rate reduction passed early in 2001.
On September 11, 2001, George W. Bush went from being a normal President to a war President, and the world was changed.
War is the ultimate reorganizer of priorities. Ask Georges Clemenceau: “My formula is the same in everything. Home politics? I make war. Foreign politics? I make war. I make war all the time.... And I shall continue until the last quarter of an hour, for it is we who shall have the last quarter of an hour!”
Having led the country into war, Dubya must make war, for he is our Commander-In-Chief. Not now and then, but continuously, until the enemy has been expunged. Similarly for us outside the government, the war will likely be the principal factor to command our attention for as long as it lasts.
But that doesn’t mean everyone will be focused on the war.
Franklin D. Roosevelt had a docile Congress when he led the country into World War II. He had nothing to fear from an opposition that remained active in domestic issues, for they were a very minor minority. Dubya’s situation is otherwise, and it could well cost him and us dearly.
As contentious as our domestic politics were before Black Tuesday, they are no less so today. The difference is that the Bush Administration and the Republican contingent in Congress must focus on the anti-terror campaign: where it stands, what it needs, where it must go, and how to get it there. That leaves the Democrats and their hangers-on a freer hand than they would otherwise have.
Yes, the Democrats have to give some indication of interest in the anti-terror war, but it doesn’t have to be their prime concern. They can give the overwhelming share of their energy to undoing the Republicans’ few successful policy initiatives from 2001. The evidence suggests that that’s exactly what they’re trying to do.
As modest as are conservatives’ near-term goals for tax, regulatory, and governmental rollback, and as slender as their gains have been to date, even those goals and gains are threatened. In some areas—prescription drugs; education; laws restricting the financing of political campaigns—the trend is already in the reverse direction and picking up speed.
As Dubya’s Dad discovered, the political benefits from having conducted a successful war can be ephemeral. If your opponents have operated effectively against you at home while you were transfixed by events abroad, you could well find that the country was pulled out from under you.
Just now, Republicans appear overly determined to focus the country on the war. In tandem with this, they celebrate their wartime President, whose steadfastness, determination, and moral clarity are all admittedly admirable. But the war will be over some day—won’t it?—whereas the country will go on. It’s not wise to allow America to gather a thicker layer of socialist moss.
Some decisions made today will continue to affect the development of the country half a century hence. Judgeships, for one example. Internet regulation, for another.
I know, I know: everybody knows how to do the boss’s job better than the boss does. That’s been much on my mind. The problem is that the Boss has more than one job, and the others aren’t getting done at all—except by the other side.
The pro-freedom elements in American politics have such a variety of adversaries, see so few victories, and get so little approbation that the temptation to focus on a successful thrust against a universally recognized enemy must be nearly irresistible. But that’s all the more reason to resist as staunchly as we can. It’s easy to cheer from the sidelines as American arms dismantle the visible parts of the al-Qaeda terror network and the gangster-states that give it aid and comfort. Anyone can do it.
The hard parts, prosecuting the domestic campaign against creeping socialism through taxation and regulation, and quelling the various noxious interest groups that seek to make their obsessions part of American law, require more attention and energy than they’re getting—a lot more. Concerned lovers of freedom cannot content themselves with sidelines boosterism, singing of arms and the man, when there is so much at stake that The Man, due to the priorities of war, cannot properly address.
Now is the time for all good men to come to the defense of their country: America, the Land of the Free. Now, whenever it is, is always the time.
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