Rebel With a Cause
Barnes, Fred
BOOKS IN REVIEW Zachary Taylor. Poor Stephen A. Douglas, according to Wilentz, was the earnest compromiser Clay was not, but the ground was taken out from under him, we are told, by the crafty...
...Barnes therefore attaches a great importance to Bush's speeches, claiming also that "he's delivered five or six of the most important and eloquent presidential addresses of the last half-century...
...EITHER BUSH NOR BARNES, however, seems to nderstand that conservatism in its political context is largely about means...
...The reason for their enmity stems, on the domestic side, from Bush's deviation from traditional conservative principles, primarily his embrace of government power and his lack of restraint in spending federal money...
...A fellow evangelical Christian, Barnes displays a keen understanding of the role of faith in Bush's life...
...Barnes posits that Bush was transformed from a realist to an idealist in foreign affairs by the events of 9/11...
...Barnes notes, however, that many of Bush's most important speeches have been ignored by the media--merely one of the reasons Barnes believes that reporters fail to understand the President...
...Despite his obvious admiration for the Texan, however, Barnes admits that Bush can be "stubborn and standoffish...
...The book is filled with other interesting revelations...
...It is not clear whether Wilentz is papaphobic, or just inexplicably distracted by cranky religious sects...
...Orestes Brownson, who is described by his biographer, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., as America's closest equivalent to Cardinal Newman, is much touted by Wilentz as a political activist...
...But when he joins the premier Christian church, where he rose to considerable influence as the comparison with Newman implies, as far as Wilentz is concerned, he walks off the edge of the earth and is not mentioned again...
...The Whigs lasted barely 30 years and only elected two indifferent presidents...
...FEBRUARY 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 75...
...Early in his first term, for instance, Bush summarily declared that the President would no longer consult the liberal American Bar Association when making judicial nominations...
...Barnes believes that Bush is wisely redefining modern conservatism to conform to a current realit y - t h a t most Americans have come to accept a large federal government as legitimate, and indeed as beneficial...
...Barnes also describes Bush as humble, readily giving credit to others...
...Amid outcries at home and abroad, he withdrew the United States from the Kyoto global warming treaty RebeMn-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversia~ Presidency of George W. Bush by Fred Barnes (CROWN FORUM, 224 PAGES, $23.95) Klugewicz Stephen M. Klugewicz is executive director of Collegiate Network...
...Barnes character- Reviewed by Stephen M. izes Bush as "rebel-inchief," an "insurgent" leader who has ignored the Washington elites and challenged conventional wisdom when making policy...
...Any comparison with the Whigs is strained...
...He excitedly claims that Brownson's ideas were "every bit as startling" as those of Marx and Engels (a wild exaggeration, p. 500...
...I'm the forty-third guy, he's the first," Bush observed, "and they're still analyzing the first...
...But in Rebel-in-Chief Barnes suggests Bush "is best characterized as a strong-government conservative" (a term that Barnes borrows...
...The author recently compared (in the New York Times Book Beview) the current Republican Party and the crumblingWhigs of the 1840s...
...Among them is one that is dangerous because it conceals the true nature of the war against terrorists and the nations that support them...
...Likewise, a massive government bailout of Katrina victims that includes the creation of enterprise zones to help small business is an example of Bush's "new conservatism...
...He drenches the readr in details about the most obscure and evanescent religious personalities, but cannot bring himself to refer to the existence of the Roman Catholic Church until page 450 (when it numbered over half-a-million Americans and was growing rapidly), and rarely thereafter...
...According to Barnes, Bush's "view of government is Hamiltonian: it's a valuable tool to achieve security, prosperity, and the common good...
...He relates a story about Bush apologizing to his aides after blowing up at them over a malfunctioning Teleprompter, an act of contrition that Barnes credits to Bush's Christian faith...
...He has clarified his views in an exchange with another reviewer in Slate, and limited the scope of the comparison, but this puts the perspective of this book in a contemporary context...
...His strategy," Barnes suggests, "is to use government as a means to achieve conservative ends...
...As President, however, Bush has generated a great deal of opposition from so-called paleoconservatives-a group that Barnes characterizes as "a distinct minority in the conservative movement...
...And so on...
...Though the Republicans had a very successful launch in 1856, according to Wilentz, that party magically eructed forth out of disparate elements, and Lincoln, William H. Seward, and Thurlow Weed, who are generally considered to be its founders, are given no direct credit for the birth of the Republicans...
...Bush's thumbing of his nose at the liberal Washington establishment, combined with his conservative social views, ought to have earned him the sympathy of conservatives of all stripes...
...Barnes indeed lauds Bush for embarking on an idealistic crusade to spread democracy across the world and credits him with reinventing America's role in the Middle East by changing the rules of the diplomatic game...
...This two-term president has launched the United States on an international crusade against terrorism and for democracy, the success or failure of which will have enormous consequences for world history...
...This is a fantasy, or at least a goal for the far-off future...
...In sayJed Babbin, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is author of Inside the Asylum: Why the United Nations and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think (Regnery...
...Barnes insists that it was Bush himself--and not, as often thought, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or Paul Wolfowitz-who was "the instigator of the bold post9/11 changes in foreign and national security policy...
...Thus the goal of "No Child Left Behind" to make states accountable to the federal government (the very antithesis of the traditional conservative principle oflocalism) becomes a conservative program...
...This is also incongruous in a book that is in other respects an exemplary work of scholarship and presentation...
...The discriminating reader quickly becomes alert to the author's leanings, and can compensate for them...
...Barnes pooh-poohs the hope of traditional conservatives "that someday, somehow, the federal government will be substantially reduced in size...
...FEBRUARY 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 73 BOOKS IN REVIEW and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia...
...Neither condition matters particularly, but the impression left by treatment of religious subjects supplements the partisan credibility problems of the political narrative...
...The reader learns of the importance of aide Michael Gerson in this regard...
...Barnes agrees that it will take decades to pass a fair judgment on the Bush presidency, but he clearly believes that Bush is well on his way to succeeding in creating a Republican majority by redefining conservatism and in making democracy the wave of the future around the globe...
...Candidate Bush hired Gerson in 1999 as his main speechwriter, a post that was to become key in Bush's decision-making process...
...Poor Stephen A. Douglas, according to Wilentz, was the earnest compromiser Clay was not, but the ground was taken out from under him, we are told, by the crafty Lincoln...
...Barnes chastises these dissenters on the right, reminding them that "one of the virtues of conservatives is their ability to take the world as it really is...
...After the Bush tax cuts were enacted and the economy rebounded in his first term, for example, Bush told economic advisor Larry Lindsey that the American economy had experienced"the Lindsey recovery...
...He has also sought to redefine modern American political conservatism, an effort that may well help to determine the prospects of the Republican Party for decades...
...as his place of employment to which he must commute, seeking to escape the city whenever he can...
...The Republicans have endured 150 years and have defeated the Democrats 23 times in 38 presidential elections, and have produced some of the nation's greatest leaders...
...Barnes famously coined the term "big-government conservative" (see his article in the April 1990 TAS), and used it to describe George W. Bush during his first term as president...
...Traditional conservatism presupposes that government should not take an active role in molding society, even if worthy ends are sought...
...LENTZ'S PARTISAN BIASES a r e n o t entirely onfined to politics...
...Rebel With a Cause • [ • X i CAN SAY THIS with confidence," Fred ames asserts in the closing chapter of his ively book on George W. Bush, "Bush is a president of consequence" Most Americans would likely agree with Barnes's assessment, though Bush has become a polarizing figure, alienating both the left (predictably) and many on the right (somewhat surprisingly...
...In addition, he routinely pokes fun at the media and refuses to play the role of gracious host to Washington's socialites...
...Barnes argues that Bush plays the central role in shaping administration policy in all areas, domestic as well as foreign...
...The palsied ineptitude of the (Democratic) Pierce and Buchanan administrations is soft-pedaled...
...Bush treats Washington, D.C...
...Bush's distaste for the political establishment and its "expert" opinions, Barnes notes, extends to the city where the establishment is housed...
...74 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 2006 BOOKS IN REVIEW ' ~ ARNES DOES UNDERSTAND BUSH and does a n e x - D cellent job analyzing the private as well as pubi lie man...
...Rather than reflect policy," Barnes writes, "[Bush's] speeches dictate policy...
...At the conclusion of an interview for this book, the President mentioned to Barnes that he had read two recent biographies of George Washington...
...Though Barnes praises Bush's realism in domestic matters, he rejects the realist approach in foreign affairs...
...The Myths of War T HE FIRST WAIl OF THE 21ST CENTURY has been going on long enough to have generated its own clichfis...
...Crafted in private by Bush and his team of writers, Bush's speeches are in effect guidelines for administration officials to follow...
...Wilentz's admiration for the Democrats is perfectly reasonable and is an arguable view, but it is not a legitimate filter to be imposed on the interpretation of historical events by a serious historian, which he certainly is...
...But it is disappointing that such an important and valuable work should be so unrigorously partisan...
...Though some readers will differ with Barnes' analysis, few will find this book anything less than entertaining, lucid, and thoughtprovoking...
...The Whigs, who invented modern political campaigning with the picturesque Log Cabin and Hard Cider election of Harrison and Tyler in 1840, and were the source of sensible abolitionist sentiment that ultimately liberated the country from the divisive evil of slavery, are generally dismissed as an almost worthless foil to the steady progress of the Democrats toward a just and fair America...
...We learn, for example, that Bush regularly cuts evening functions at the White House short so he can be in bed by 9:30 P.M., that Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have occasionally prayed together, and that Bush in at least one instance privately dismissed French President Jacques Chirac as an "asshole...
...But for Barnes and Bush, efforts that increase federal power can be "conservative" if they increase the efficiency of government programs or achieve positive results...
Vol. 39 • February 2006 • No. 1
