Recently, I had an e-mail exchange with a good friend of mine. A lifelong Democrat, she pointed out the inconsistencies in President Bush’s denouncement of affirmative action as quotas and discrimination compared to his passage (by executive order) of his faith-based initiative, which permits religious organizations to discriminate by religion in their hiring. Continuing the “e-debate,” I forwarded this opinion to a more conservative friend of mine. She replied that my first friend had made a good point, but she qualified her agreement about Bush’s inconsistency. “I’m not going to try to be a Bush apologist,” she began, “but I do believe-however much we might disagree with him about specific issues-that the man has principles and character. And there are those of us who happen to think that both of these were lacking in the prior administration and that fortunately they are not lacking, particularly in this dangerous period, in this president.”
My conservative friend is right. Thankfully, President Bush seems to lack the moral inadequacies of the Clinton administration. It’s hard to argue that oral sex scandals were healthy for the American democracy. But her comments also reveal a disturbing trend in American opinion, successfully fueled by Bush’s own rhetoric: just because I’m moral means that my policies don’t deserve your scrutiny; just because I’m not Bill Clinton means that my policies deserve your support. Buying into that rhetoric when it’s about tax cuts is one thing. Buying into when it’s about impending war with Iraq is quite another.
Perhaps because of the moral inadequacies of Nixon and Clinton, Americans have apparently come to think that we can expect our president to be either a strong policy-maker or a strong moral leader. Implicit in my conservative friend’s statement is that we cannot expect both. That’s wrong. I refuse to apologize for Clinton’s behavior, but I also refuse to let President Bush off the hook just because he hasn’t gotten off in the oval office.
And, is Bush’s leadership really all that principled? There have been no sex scandals, but I believe that his rhetoric might do equal injustice to Americans’ faith in the Presidency. Bush’s rhetoric has developed a “holier than thou” quality which assumes that most Americans are about as (un)intelligent as he appeared in the 2000 campaign. His style ignores the details, as if Americans won’t be able to put the puzzle together if details are provided. A cynic, of course, would say that’s because the details just don’t exist. But I’d like to think they do. I’d like to think that Colin Powell, Tony Blair, and others aren’t all hotheads hell-bent on finishing what wasn’t 12 years ago. Bush, though, asks us to assume: Why should we go to war with Iraq? Because my administration says Saddam’s an uncooperative liar. Why should we not go to war with North Korea? Because my administration says Kim Jong Il is a cooperative liar. Why should we ignore our allies? Because what they say publicly doesn’t reflect what happens at “the highest levels.” When Bush is questioned about his lack of detail, his reasoning is based in the same philosophy my conservative friend articulated: maybe I haven’t given Americans a reason to support me, but at least I’m not leading by opinion polls (read: I’m not Bill Clinton), and at least when I meet with a woman in the oval office it’s Condoleeza Rice (read: not Monica Lewinsky). Bill Clinton always wanted a legacy. It seems as if the Bush administration wants him to have one too. According to Bush, all subsequent administrations are to be evaluated by the inadequacies of Bill Clinton, not by their own merits.
At home and abroad, Bush leads with a brand of political elitism in total contrast to his oft-applauded “folksy” style and campaign so rooted in declaring he, the governor of Texas, was a “Washington outsider.” Now, with his office squarely in the Beltway, he treats Americans and foreign nations as the outsiders, unable to comprehend and unable to know. As our nation faces heightened terror alerts and impending war, I ask you to demand more from your president. Certainly ask that he be moral. But also demand that he defend his policies. Demand the intellectual honesty from your president that you demand from your professors. This is America, and you shouldn’t expect anything less.