Exposing Myths About President Bush

Now that time is placing more perspective on the Bush Administration – and while Bush, himself, continues to show he’s got more class than all the Democrats, combined – it is useful to start debunking a lot of the lies spread about Bush when he was President. Julian Zelzer takes to this task in the Washington Post – this one I think important:

2. “Compassionate conservatism” was just a campaign slogan.

…as Vanderbilt University historian Gary Gerstle has shown, Bush was personally invested in compassionate conservatism. While growing up in Texas and later serving as governor, Bush constantly befriended and worked with members of his state’s Hispanic community and fought for the rights of immigrants. “Once children are in Texas,” he said in 1995, “Texans know it is in our best interest and their interest to educate them, regardless of the nationality of their parents.” In his gubernatorial reelection victory in 1998, Bush won 49 percent of the Hispanic vote and 27 percent of the black vote – a strong showing for a Republican in Texas. (It is unsurprising that, in his memoir, Bush reportedly describes the accusations of racism he experienced in the aftermath of Katrina as “the worst moment of my presidency.”)…

Many conservatives disparaged “compassionate conservatism” while almost all liberals held the phrase and concept in contempt. But the reason I first started switching from backing McCain to backing Bush in 2000 was because of “compassionate conservatism”. While I disagreed with some of the things Bush did in the name of compassionate conservatism (the prescription drug benefit looms most large here), the fact remains that any real understanding of conservatism requires a person to be compassionate.

For far too long now conservatism has essentially been conserving liberal policies. Huh? What’s that you say? It is a bit of a concept to wrap the mind around, but I’m not remotely the first to figure it out. In fact, it was an old Liberal who understood this best:

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. – G K Chesterton, Illustrated London News, 4/19/1924

Our Progressives, in their eager love for humanity, have quite forgotten about loving their fellow man. Our Conservatives, so desperate to stop Progressivism, have forgotten that they are supposed to be conserving the way of life of the common man. The Progressive makes a new policy, the Conservative opposes it. After a while, the Progressive policy becomes the institution – then the Progressives go on to their next fad, while the Conservatives fight a desperate, rear-guard action to just keep things as the Progressives left them yesterday.

Conservatism, in order to get things right, must try to set things right. Its no good trying to dress up yesterday’s Progressive failure as something worthy – it was idiotic when thought up, and still is no matter how long it endures. A true Conservative looks at the poor, common man and wonders how to get him back to his happy state of being owner of his property and master of his own destiny. That is compassionate, because it is an attempt to do for men what they both want and need done.

President Bush understood this – whether by intellectual process or sheer instinct is both unknown and irrelevant. He got it – he understood that his job, as a Conservative, is to find ways where average, every day people can get back their own. And so, tax cuts for middle class businessmen; quality education for the poor (even the illegal immigrant poor); property ownership spread as far as possible (and too bad that Barney Frank, et al, took this noble desire and turned it in to a casino for their cronies); people able to live and worship without let or hindrance from government. That is conservatism; that is compassionate.

And it is what I am today, and will always remain – a Compassionate Conservative. President Bush did what he did and he made his share of mistakes – what man in leadership hasn’t? But, over all, he was the right man at the right time, and he pointed the right way for conservatism.

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