PUBLIC NUISANCES: Bull Moose Rush, Chinese Fire Drill
jr., r. emmett tyrrell
Bull Moose Bush BY R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. stopped by the White House the other day, my first visit since the Bush administrationmthe first Bush administration. Over the past eight years,...
...The least he could do, deferring to liberal anxieties, is bring in some Rockefeller Republicans and the surviving Bull Moosers...
...The president played this latest diplomatic contest well...
...Will this assuage the purple passions of Winston Spencer Kristol and the country's other hawks...
...Except for the question of missing furniture the White House is resplenConsidering the growing media coverage of the Bush administration's problems with environmentalists, abortionrights activists, and other left-wing special-interest groups, think of the confusion the Bushies would sow in the critics' ranks if, say, a few undersecretaries declared themselves Bull Moosers...
...They have yet to notice that conservatism has come to characterize much of the country...
...Not a shot was fired...
...How could an environmentalist inveigh against an administration that was actively recruiting aides who claim fealty to the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt...
...President George W. Bush has filled the place with Republicans, and many are, indeed, conservative Republicans...
...In the past, left-wing Democrats and their supporters have burned American flags and held demonstrations against American foreign policy, but none has ever taken up arms against the United States...
...Liberals and liberal Democrats comprise a very insular society...
...so with my colleague Richard Vigilante ! stepped into the West Wing reception lobby directly under the nose of a tall, well-starched Marine...
...The image of the Monday morning quarterback comes to mind, and few Monday morning quarterbacks ever played football...
...Winston Spencer Kristol is another of those expansive Americans who cast themselves in a heroic mode whenever there is an opportunity to summon the nation, to muster the troops, to call out the fleet, and to secure for our generation and our time a D-Day...
...For a certitude we shared acquaintances, troopers, nannies, and a source or two in the White House...
...In no time a major Democratic contributor to the 1996 presidential campaign took up her challenge...
...They are as justified in claiming that title as the environmentalists are in denying that they are at heart Democrats...
...The loss of life and the attendant hostility between Beijing and Washington were not funny, but whenever a public figure begins playing out personal fantasies, the stage is set for comedy...
...What composed the dramatis personae and plot line of this national humiliation...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 9 June 2001 101...
...Their haughty demand for an apology was met with what I would describe as a pretty sorry apology for an apology...
...Given all the reports of the previous occupants' larcenous departure, I just wanted to see if the new administration has had to resort to the services of Cort Furniture Rental...
...George W. Bush has filled the White House with conservatives...
...The Secret Service agent standing nearby was not amused...
...Faithbased social work is inviting...
...The truth is that most are Democrats, and so for that matter are many of the supposedly innocent reporters...
...This helps explain their complaint that the Bush administration has become so very conservative, more conservative than the Reagan administration, as some of the critics would have it...
...Its influence is felt even among moderates in the Democratic Party...
...In the realm of personal accountability the statement was somewhat on the order of expressing regret for Hong Kong's inclement weather...
...Thinking herself a toughminded political strategist, she sent out a letter to Democrats that amounted to a battle cry to get tough with the Bush administration...
...The ensuing collision caused his unfortunate demise along with the forced landing of the damaged American plane on Chinese soil...
...But owing to the growth of conservatism, the liberals have lost touch with reality...
...What sort of propaganda coup was it aiming for...
...In fact, it gave some of us a good laugh, as I guess I have implied...
...And where was the beneficiary of Barbra's and Beijing's munificent campaign contributions...
...Barbra knew not the power of her pen...
...I doubt it...
...We were there to interview a member of the administration, but the ravenous curiosity of the investigative journalist within me could not be quelled...
...Admittedly I share their impatience with Beijing...
...They lie about their political commitments all the time...
...After having spent an afternoon there, I thoroughly understand the alarm that is spreading throughout liberal circles...
...Over the past eight years, despite my intimacy with the Clintons and all their contretemps, we were never what you 'UBLIC NUISANCE: would call close...
...K 9 9 9 Chinese Fire Drill h, that international sticky wicket, referred to in early April as America's "national humiliation" by Washington journalist and statesman Winston Spencer Kristol, is over...
...Certainly Barbra Streisand set the stage for comedy about the time the Chinese began acting up...
...President George W. Bush is a very nice man...
...The Bush administration is filled with conservatives because the country is increasingly conservative...
...Was it hoping to rouse the antiAmericanism of what were once called the nonaligned nations at the U.N.?Yet surely calling the Bush administration's response a national humiliation was a bit over the top...
...The least he could do, deferring to the liberals' anxieties, would be to bring into his administration a goodly supply of Rockefeller Republicans and perhaps a few surviving Bull Moosers...
...A hot-rod Chinese combat pilot stalled his fighter in front of an American surveillance plane over international waters...
...When they report that "Bush has a problem with environmentalists," they are saying that Bush has a problem with Democrats, liberal Democrats...
...And as for environmentalists, no one is opposed to a healthy environment, and almost everyone is in favor of economic growth...
...The liberals say the conservatives have lost cohesion owing to the end of the Cold War...
...The question is how to balance both interests...
...There is nothing new or even uncommon about a public figure lying about his deepest political commitments...
...Washington took no responsibility for the Chinese hot-rodder's death and merely expressed regret for his passing...
...Admittedly, there really are no Rockefeller Republicans left and the Bull Moose movement lost steam precipitously during the second Wilson administration, but surely some Bush appointees could lie about their identities, again out of deference to their anxious liberal critics...
...In the meantime, the object of Barbra's and Beijing's and Winston Spencer Kristol's ire was in the Oval Office trying to figure it all out...
...If it will relieve the liberals' hysteria, I urge more Bushies to claim they are actually Bull Moosers...
...The retired president was in India where he was photographed riding an elephant while wearing what looked like his pajamas...
...Before taking them too seriously he ought to ask himself: Are we talking about someone who has really demonstrated courage against an opponent...
...While awaiting my meeting I nosed around, espying the reception room's ancient paintings and peering under the freshly upholstered furniture for telltale evidence.What evidence, you ask...
...Yet surely he knows that a great many American public figures, when attracted to politics, engage in play-acting...
...They may claim first allegiance to their special monomanias, but the unspoken truth of contemporary American politics is that, monomanias aside, these gasbags are essentially Democrats...
...but we rarely got together, no invitations to press briefings, no invitations to White House Christmas parties, not even a presidential Christmas card...
...Or are we talking about someone who is demanding that others demonstrate courage against an opponent...
...The Chinese military, a generous contributor to the Clinton presidential campaign andmwho knowsmpossibly a contributor to the Clinton Presidential Library, Inc., downed our surveillance plane...
...The Clintons reciprocated by following my work and asking their Justice Department to do so as well...
...There goes bipartisanship...
...Similarly deluded, Winston Spencer Kristol envisaged a White House full of appeasers when President Neville Bush failed to call out the Pacific Fleet...
...Global markets are popular...
...The Chinese adjusted their calendars to contemporary times...
...Moreover, it is alive with the earnest activity of scores of wellgroomed aides...
...Over the last 20 years, the issues have changed...
...They for the most part only converse with each other and listen to media that spread their bugaboos...
...The Chinese detained the plane's crew, pursuant to some sort of propaganda coup under the delusion that this is the spring of 1951...
...Welfare reform is 100 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 9 June 2001 here...
...It is a journalistic dispensation that impels reporters covering the White House to call Bush's critics by their favored labels...
...My guess is that they have all gone back to their country homes to sip brandies and lament the appeasers in the White House...
...Surely the growing chorus of Bush's critics among the environmentalists, the abortionrights activists, the civil rights leaders, and the vegetable lovers could not complain...
...Now there is a new president, urging a new comity among Washingtonians, and dent...
...He recently told a gathering of the American Society of Newspaper Editors that we must all be more polite...
...Those who whoop it up for more vigorous combat against their opponents are not serious...
...Yet the fleet was not needed...
...Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
Vol. 34 • June 2001 • No. 5
