Accidental Radical

Nicolas Lemann's article about Bush in this week's New Yorker is a must read for any number of reasons. (No More Mister Nice Blog highlights perfect illustrations of his adolescent bloodlust and his perfidious backstabbing, just to name two.)

I thought what was most interesting, however, is that Lemann seems to have concluded that Bush himself was a radical who persuaded Cheney and the other "grown-ups" that he was serious about governing in the most ideological way possible:

Clay Johnson ... [said] Bush had begun the Vice-Presidential selection process by offering the nomination to Cheney. "The now Vice-President declined the option, but did agree to head up the search committee," Johnson said. "And then came back some months later and said that in fact he’d changed his mind and he would be willing to run --- to be the President’s running mate." Johnson said he had a hunch about what had changed: "Lynne Cheney told some mutual friends of ours that she and Dick decided that in fact they did want to join the Bush ticket, because they came to really like George and Laura, and the Vice-President came to realize that the President wanted to come up here to really make a difference. He was not going to try to play it safe. Not try to extend an easy, moderately successful four years into an easy, moderately successful eight years. He was going to try to come up here and make dramatic changes to the issues he thought needed to be addressed. And the Vice-President got very, very energized and excited about doing that. And so now we have Dick Cheney as Vice-President."

In other words, the team that most people thought of as being made up of a moderate, conciliatory, relatively unambitious Presidential candidate and his bland, self-effacing, government technician of a running mate had thrown in together on the basis of a mutual decision to govern in pursuit of radical change. And they have done that.


Lemann goes on to predict that if Bush wins there is absolutely no reason to believe that he will be cowed by his failures or the impending disasters that await at every turn, but rather will use his power to enact the most sweeping revolutionary agenda in modern history --- including the privatization of social security. He shows that in this way, Bush is predictable. When it comes to the most radical elements of the conservative agenda --- creating a permanent GOP powerbase, foreign policy neoconservatism, tax cuts for the wealthy and starving the entitlement programs out of existence, he is perfectly serious. Bush has moved to the middle only as a feint to either buy time, appease certain constituencies or to placate a powerful insider like Powell (or maybe his father's inner circle.) But, at heart, he is as rigidly ideological as a Norquist or Gingrich and even more determined to follow through.

Lemann knows all these people and has met Bush, so it's probably wrong to second guess his interpretation. However, I find it very hard to believe that anecdote Clay Johnson tells about Lynn and Dick joining up to aid the cause, at least with respect to one important detail. I don't doubt that Cheney didn't particularly want to be involved in Bush II. Bush I was an ignominious failure for the true believers and he had no reason to believe that the sequel would be any better. But, I can't help but be a little bit skeptical that the Cheneys were so impressed by Junior's grand strategic vision and ideological committment to the cause that they couldn't help but sign on.

What they realized was that Junior was easily manipulated with flattery and appeals to his manly prowess in contrast to his father and they could successfully push him to enact their grand strategic vision. Seriously, George W. Bush was barely a fully formed adult in 2000 --- it is simply not believable that he was merely pretending to be this amiable doofus while hiding his secret plans to change American politics and the world.

None of that makes any difference in the results, however. They were able to persuade Bush to adopt their radical agenda without missing even a beat. Their most difficult challenge was dealing with institutional resistence from much of the governement (and even the GOP establishment) which was weak and ineffectual but still managed to muddy Bush's image as a CEO manager over time. And, of course, the abject failure of policies that have Bush in a perilous re-election fight that should have been easy after the gift (a trifecta!) of 9/11.

Like Atrios, I believe that there is absolutely no reason to buy the nonsense that the "good" Republicans are going to step up in the next term and make sure that Junior's little cabal is stripped of its power. They couldn't if they wanted to and I'm not sure they do. Junior has never shown even the slightest indication that he's displeased with his radical "achievments." Indeed, if he wins, he will perceive it as a sweeping mandate and validation of all he's done. That's how he thinks.

Let's hope that John Kerry will be able to penetrate Bush's folksy facade one more time tonight and reveal the abstruse radicalism of his powerful advisory cabal's true agenda. On these domestic issues, if people knew what they were truly planning, Bush would drop in the polls like a stone.