Bush and Conservatives: Cleansing the Doors of Perception (Part 2)

(Read Part 1 here)

Michael Novak undertakes a rebuttal of Joseph Bottum's claim that President Bush has been a disaster for the conservative movement. Responding to Bottum's argument specifically, and to conservative "demoralization" generally, Novak plunges us back into the war of perception, beginning with a curious re-interpretation of events in Iraq:

As far as perception of the war in Iraq goes, it’s worth remembering that perceptions are changeable. As the war began in 2003, the New York Times required less than three weeks before it ran a front-page report by a star correspondent of the last generation, R.W. Apple, which hauled out the heavy word of the Vietnam generation, quagmire-as in the quagmire in which, Apple wrote, U.S. troops were already bogged down. Three weeks later, those same quagmired troops had sped into Baghdad, watching as jubilant crowds pulled down the great statue of Saddam Hussein in the center of the city and organizing a systematic search for the suddenly deposed butcher of Mesopotamia.

The statue of Saddam, of course, was in fact pulled down by a U.S. military vehicle. There were no "jubilant crowds" at Firdos Square that day - only Western journalists and a handful of militiamen linked to the conman Ahmed Chalabi.




With regard to Apple, Novak appears to be manufacturing a quotation. Novak doesn't cite a source, and my searches haven't turned up any article in which Apple uses the word "quagmire" in reference to the Iraq war, though he did use the term in a 2001 piece about the war in Afghanistan - where, it should be noted, Osama bin Laden remains at large and the Taleban are resurgent five and a half years after the invasion. In an article he'd probably like to forget, Slate columnist Jack Shafer mocked Apple for implying that the Iraq war would turn into a quagmire, but nowhere does the Times reporter appear to have used the word.

The irony, of course, is that Apple's early warnings about Iraq were prescient. For instance, this passage from March 27, 2003:

But the streets and alleys of Iraqi cities are ideal places for urban guerrillas who can blend into the crowds to operate, just as those of Belfast and Tel Aviv have done. Not only are the guerrillas hard to root out, but doing so also works against the American desire to be seen as agents of liberation, not agents of conquest.

Who is a fedayeen fighter and who is a civilian? Marines tell stories of Iraqis changing in and out of uniform. A civilian bus turns out to be a troop transport. Guerrillas cluster near schools and hospitals. In several cases, troops carrying white flags have opened fire.

Iraqis do not play by the rules of West Point and Sandhurst.

Or this, from April 6, 2003:

Although the American stay is likely to be shorter [than the British colonial occupation], it could generate the same kind of resentment if not handled with a deftness rare in the annals of triumphant armies. That, in turn, could fuel the kind of resistance to a new government that the United States wishes to minimize, even if Mr. Hussein is killed or captured. It could also further destabilize the Middle East as a whole -- precisely the opposite of what Washington has set out to achieve.

Novak's point is to counter Bottum's claim that "the war is already lost" on account of the way it is perceived. "Perceptions are changeable," Novak argues - and he proves his own point by inverting the correct perception of the war.

Still, it is common conservative practice to play the victim when the right's own favored perceptions are insufficiently reinforced in the "liberal media." Novak's response to this challenge is unsurprising: he cites the wisdom of the greatest American conservative leader, who was, not coincidently, an actor:

Ronald Reagan taught us that the perceptions promoted by the liberal media do not, in fact, control the way Americans think. As Clare Boothe Luce once explained, from his experience as a B-movie actor Reagan learned the difference between the box office and the critics. If you win over the first, you can be awfully sweet-tempered to the second. He showed that the hostility of all the liberal media could not, finally, drown out common-sense reality.

This analysis begs the question of who represents the box office, and who are the critics. An enthusiastic propaganda campaign might theoretically convince the American public that all is well in Iraq, but will it convince the Iraqis who suffer the effects of the war, or the soldiers who have to fight it?

At any rate, Novak's argument next turns in such a way as to implicitly admit that the problem in Iraq is with the facts on the ground, not with feckless liberal reporters:

I agree with Bottum that in the view of the media the war has been lost. But we may also expect this perception to reverse itself if events in the coming six months unmistakably change direction.

Novak asks us to consider what would happen if things really did improve in Iraq: if the Mahdi army were to relent, if al-Qaeda were to flee Baghdad, and if the Sunnis were to see the light and turn against their own insurgent faction. "With these conditions met," writes Novak, "Iraq would come to seem reasonably tranquil." And this may be true, but it's an argument that concedes the weakness of the conservative forces of perception in the face of stiff resistance from reality.

Novak seems unable to resolve his own confusion on this point. On the one hand, he contends that Bush "should have seen, in warfare, the crucial importance of one key goal: victory" (but does this mean that Bush was not seeking "victory" to begin with?). On the other, he acknowledges that "victory" can only be achieved "by bringing security to the people." Again, the conservative impulse to demand a perception of victory runs up against reality's brick wall.

Leaving this puzzle unsolved, Novak turns to Bottum's charge of incompetence, which he suggests is "more troubling." Novak's first reaction is to reiterate an increasingly common conservative fallacy: that the problem is not with Bush's government, but with government itself:

A long-established lesson is that, even in the best of times, government is mightily incompetent—and the bigger government gets, the more incompetent it becomes. Think of how much time it takes to obtain a building permit, to go through vehicle registration, to correct a government mistake on tax forms or on public utility bills, etc. Recall how few government offices in the same building communicate with the others, and how often you are shuttled back and forth.

Conservatives have long tried to use the fact that the Post Office lost your postcard to discredit the concept of social insurance and activist government generally, but with the movement's need to escape from under the looming catastrophe of the Bush administration, this argument has gained new urgency. Expectations for Bush were too high, Novak tells us, as though no president had ever governed competently at all.

At any rate, suggests Novak, the tide may be about to turn. He spends the next several paragraphs praising Bush's latest State of the Union address, for its "plain-spoken rhetorical style," its efforts "to occupy what some think of as Democrat [sic] territory," its "simplicity and power" in addressing, once again, the threat of jihad (on this last point Novak asserts that the "stated aim" of the nebulous "Jihadists" is "forcibly to convert us to Islam or to exterminate us until the caliphate stretches around the world" - reason once again to doubt that conservative ideologues in fact understand anything at all about the terrorist threat outside of their own self-aggrandizing fantasies). Novak even cites the post-speech back-slapping as evidence that the address did wonders for the president's popularity.

Unable to resist the conservative appetite for awkward historical comparisons, Novak cites the case of Harry Truman, who was reviled in office but revered in history:

Often enough, the nation’s public leaders have been burned in effigy on the spots where their gleaming statues are later paid respect. If the reputation of President Bush meets such a fate, his 2007 State of the Union address just might be seen as one of the modest pivots on which that turn began slowly to revolve.

There's a lot of speculation packed into that "if." Despite the post-address polls Novak cites as evidence of the public's great positive reaction to the State of the Union speech, the latest polls show Bush's approval rating lower than it's ever been.

In the end Novak is forced to rely on the same hope as the president himself: that one day history will, for some reason, judge George W. Bush more kindly. Here's Novak's case:

At the very least, in the face of passionate hostility at home and abroad, George Bush has proved himself a brave and determined man who has staked his presidency on getting democratic momentum underway in the Middle East.

What is remarkable here is how, for the president's supporters, the notion of victory in the war of perception mirrors their notion of victory in Iraq: you can't prove that it will never be won - only that it hasn't been won yet.

The debate between Bottum and Novak matters because it will be difficult for conservatives simultaneously to disassociate themselves from the Bush legacy and to argue that that legacy will ultimately prove a positive one. But if you appreciate the irony of fate, you can't help but marvel at how, for Bush and for the conservatives, the struggle against historical judgment looks so similar to their struggle against reality, in the war upon which they have staked so much.

Labels: conservatives, First Things, George Bush, Iraq, Michael Novak

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:19 PM 0 comments

  Bush and Conservatives: Cleansing the Doors of Perception (Part 1)

By now the observation that conservatives and the Bush administration are divorced from the "reality-based community" has ripened from truism to cliche. Still, it's a difficult cliche to avoid, especially given how so much conservative discourse - even within the movement itself - is explicitly dedicated to arguments about perception.

It's striking how many of these conservative debates run along one or the other of two parallel tracks: perception as it relates to the success or failure of the war in Iraq, and as it relates to the question of what lessons, if any, can be learned from the Bush administration about the conservative project. Often, these two tracks are linked.

An illustrative example is the debate in First Things between Joseph Bottum and Michael Novak. At issue is "the leadership of George W. Bush" and its consequences for American conservatism: Bottum argues it has been disastrous; Novak defends the president. Each argument revolves around the problem of winning wars of perception, at home and abroad.

Bottum is bleak:

Every conservative I know is depressed these days, and they are right to be. Under President Bush, conservatism has won only in the sense of not losing as quickly as it would have under a President Gore or a President Kerry.

This depression is the result of the Administration's defeat in two wars of perception: one with regard to the conservative movement itself, the other involving public opinion generally.

On the first point, Bottum observes that, outside of a handful of victories - most notably the the Roberts and Alito nominations - conservatives are unconvinced by the media narrative that Bush has accomplished their goals:

The noise has been overwhelming since George W. Bush took office. Abortion, euthanasia, stem cells, public Christmas displays, same-sex marriage, pornography in the movies, faith-based initiatives, immigration, visible patriotism: We’ve been warned by the media, over and over again, that Republicans are reshaping America into a Puritan’s paradise. But, at the end of the day, the media mostly won and the Republicans mostly lost. Social conservatism is in little better shape now than it was when Bush was first elected. In many ways, it is in worse shape.

In the larger sense, argues Bottum, Bush's failures have seriously damaged the public's perception of conservatism itself - not just social conservatism, but economic and neo- conservatism as well. There is a point about substance implicit in what Bottum is saying: had Bush successfully implemented conservative policies, the logic goes, the country would be in better shape - and the right would thus have remained in the public's good graces. Of course, faith in the ultimate efficacy of one's ideas underlies everyone's political views, so it's logical that Bottum would make this point. But, on the question of why Bush has not successfully advanced conservative policies, the argument turns back to perception.

Says Bottum, "The common turn among commentators, once they’ve recognized Bush’s weakness, has been to declare the betrayal of some form of authentic conservatism." But Bottum doesn't share this view:

[The] conclusion that the White House has flown under false colors is ludicrous. In all that he has tried to do-reform education, fix social security, restore religion to the public square, assert American greatness, appoint good judges-Bush has proved himself a conservative. Of course, along the way, he has also proved himself hapless. The problem isn’t his lack of conservatism. The problem is his lack of competence.

The competence argument is a familiar one. Glenn Greenwald attacked it last year, though in his post - which was criticizing a Peggy Noonan op-ed - the separation between the "false colors" argument and the incompetence argument was not complete. Bottum is clarifying this distinction.

In Bottum's analysis, Bush has consistently attempted to do the "right" thing - it's just that the president has consistently lacked the political skills to succeed. He compares Bush to Clinton, who "seemed a man of enormous political competence and no principle." Bush, it appears, has been the inverse. As a result, "social-security reform is now dead for a generation," the No Child Left Behind Act was purged of its good ideas and hijacked by bad ones, and the GOP's "lack of political savvy" has cost conservatives dearly on judicial nominations.

Note the distinction between two kinds of incompetence: Bottum is not criticizing Bush for his incompetence as president, but as an agent of the conservative agenda. This failure has, in turn, poisoned that agenda in the mind of the public. What we have here is a failure to communicate.

You can see how perfectly this dovetails with the conservative line on the war in Iraq: that victory and defeat are largely matters of perception. Indeed, Bottum makes this case quite literally - although, unlike the Malkin crowd, he focuses his opprobrium not on the media, but on the Administration itself, which has failed to convince us that we are winning:

We have already been defeated in Iraq. Perhaps not in literal truth; a better policy, better implemented, might yet bring about a stable, democratic country. And certainly not in historical terms; Iraq is only an early chapter in what must be a long struggle against global Jihadism. But, at the very least, the battle for perception of the Iraq War has gone entirely against the United States. In the eyes of both the American public and the Islamic world, we have lost—and lost badly.

Emphasis mine. Of course Bottum, like every war supporter, has little more than faith - and a limitless patience for occupation and casualties - upon which to pin his hopes for "victory." As long as we do not abandon the effort, "victory" can be projected ad infinitum into the future, always at some date yet to come. It is an unimpeachable concept, relying on an un-provable negative: you can't prove that victory won't happen - only that it hasn't happened yet. Meanwhile, the issue is almost entirely a matter of perception: we should be trying to convince people (Americans and "Jihadis" alike) that the endless path upon which we are embarked must lead, somehow, to victory.

But to finally call off the game would be to "lock in place the perception of defeat." And, concerned as Bottum is about the consequences of that perception for America generally, he's worried about the consequences for the conservative movement in particular. Specifically, he's worried about a return to the culture of the 1970s: social freedom, modest foreign policy, wide lapels and all.

Domestically, a large range of conservatives will seem discredited by an American defeat in Iraq, which is why their liberal and radical opponents so quickly, and fecklessly, embraced the claim that Iraq is lost. On crime, abortion, education, government spending—the whole litany of domestic concerns-the American conservative movement may well find itself starting over, back once again where it was in 1974. The result will be perhaps most disheartening for social conservatives, as decades of intellectual and political gains against abortion are frustrated.

So here it comes together: the public's perception of the war in Iraq is linked to its perception of the conservative movement. A defeat in one theater will lead inevitably to collapse in the other.

Bottum, of course, is utterly at sea with regard to the motives of liberals. In terms of political cognition, you could say his theory of mind is severely underdeveloped. Of course, this isn't unusual on the right (nor, to be fair, is it exactly unknown on the left). Conservatives have been imputing false motives regarding the war to liberals since it began. Much of this has simply been sheer dishonesty for the sake of political opportunism. Yet it also appears clear that many conservatives, unable to separate the wars of perception from political reality, have fallen afoul of a critical rule of politics: "never believe your own bullshit."

And this is going to hurt the conservatives. For one thing, it limits their understanding of how the majority of Americans view the war and the Republican party. According to the mindset represented by Bottum, the public are misled by devious liberals who have outsmarted the president - well-meaning but bumbling - at every turn. Like other conservatives, Bottum is apparently incapable of conceiving of liberals as part of the public. Moreover, he fails to confront fully the public's disenchantment with conservatism. In the feedback loop of conservative discourse, the public are frustrated for the same reason that conservatives are frustrated: because six years of conservative government have mostly failed to advance the conservative agenda.

But of course, the more likely possibility is that the public is frustrated because six years of conservative government have simply been a disaster. Any public relations expert will tell you that you can only do so much to sell a bad product. Americans don't want competent politics, they want competent government. No amount of soft lighting, flattering camera angles, and retouched makeup is going to make the conservative experiment look any prettier. By shifting the blame to Bush, Bottum isn't doing his movement any favors, because his argument still leaves conservatives stuck in a quagmire of their own making: the unwinnable war of perception against reality.

Next - Part 2: Novak's Rebuttal

Labels: conservatives, First Things, Joseph Bottum

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:11 AM 16 comments