Bush gets smart...too late!

I grew up in a small conservative town in Texas. For 18 years, I learned firsthand the kind of thought process that drives the decisions of Texan leaders. It goes something like this:

"I'm the boss, therefore I must be right."

In Texas, the notion that authority, wisdom, and morality might not necessarily go together is pretty much un heard-of. Like so many other racially and culturally homogeneous societies (another example is Japan), where an excess of unity has historically prevented factions from expressing dissent, Texas tends to worship leaders. After all, if everybody's on the same team, then the leader must be representing everybody.

In Texas, might = right = smart.

George Bush came into power in 2000 thinking that the U.S. was a basically conservative country, and that U.S. conservatism was the same as Texas conservatism. To him, liberals were alien, outsider, foreign and other. Liberals criticized Bush plenty, but he never even considered paying them heed - after all, as part of the "other team" (which for Bush included Old Europe and Islamists), liberals were naturally expected to criticize Bush. And Bush, for his part, was naturally expected not to listen - that would be like a football coach taking advice from the opposing coach in the middle of a game. So the more angry and strident liberals became, the more Bush felt comfortably assured that he was on the right track.

The Bush Train kept on rolling, through Iraq disaster and deficits and Abu Ghraib, until something threw it off the track. That something was Harriet Miers. Bush picked her for a very natural reason - she was a crony, and the friend of the Boss must by definition be as smart as the Boss Himself - but the conservative movement rejected his choice.

For Bush, conservative opposition was a theoretical impossibility. At first, he couldn't even believe it was happening, and simply reiterated that Miers was The Decision of The Decider. But conservatives didn't buy it, and they started to behave less like a football team and more like a political movement. This threw Bush for a loop, and he capitulated.

Then the whole story repeated itself with the Dubai ports deal.

Unlike criticism from liberals, dissent from conservatives shook Bush's view of authority and legitimacy to the core. Suddenly the coach couldn't count on his players to execute his plays - or even run in the right direction. Suddenly Bush found that, to maintain relevance, he had to dance, had to address the desires of moderates and sometimes even liberals. Basically, he found out the hard way what Clinton knew from Day 1.

So now Bush, clumsy and inexperienced at compromises and "third ways," has begun to lurch in good directions. For example, he's dropped his "ignore them at all costs" policy toward North Korea, and started looking into a much wiser approach - establishing a permanent peace treaty with North Korea.

And Bush is mostly hitting the right note on immigration, combining enhanced border security with a path to citizenship for illegals. If the obstructionist House can be beaten into line, a reasonable bill might eventually be passed.

Add this to the pragmatic, forward-thinking India nuclear deal, fuel economy standards for SUVs, and the possible closing of Guantanamo, and it looks like we're seeing what once seemed unthinkable - Bush pushing smart, centrist policies.

Unfortunately for Bush, this will come too late. By now, liberals hate Bush so much that that he'll never win over that half of the country. And conservatives have little use for his current middle-of-the-roadism, as this excellent analysis by Slate's John Dickerson illustrates.

But the fact that Bush is doing too little, too late may be good for the country. The Republican party has been in power too long, and has gone way too far in eroding the checks and balances that America's Founders built into our government. The Republicans, in their current form, are simply too maximalist, too partisan, too unethical, and too disrespectful to democracy to allow them to keep running our country. Bush may be slowly wising up, but the Republican Party isn't yet. It's time for them to go.

And let Bush's downfall be a lesson to Texans everywhere: the Big Boss isn't always right, and he isn't always smart. Following the Leader may find you walking right off a cliff.


Unrelated Thought of the Day
Check out this "Map of Freedom in the World", as determined by the human rights group Freedom House. The blue countries are "free," the purple countries "not free," and the yellow countries "partly free." Notice that the purple "not free" countries, with the exception of Africa, very closely match the territory of the old Mongol Empire (China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Central Asia, Pakistan, and Korea). In fact, the only Mongol-ruled countries that are now listed as "free" are South Korea and...Mongolia. Not sure if this has any modern political relevance, but I just love that Freedom House map.