Jonah Goldberg argues that worrying about Bush’s fiscal record when he’s fighting the war on terror may be legitimate but shouldn’t bar anyone from supporting Bush. He goes on, referring to yours truly:
A blog which soared with high-minded rhetoric about how the war on terror is the test for this generation and that Bush was the right man to lead that struggle, now day-after-day tries to whittle away at reasons to support Bush in the fall as if the war on terror were merely another issue which can be trumped by any other issue you happen to feel more passionate about. Maybe “fiscal conservatives” aren’t defined by their fiscal conservatism? Or maybe they think this election isn’t a choice about a single issue be it the deficit or, say, gay marriage? Maybe the election is about a choice between George W. Bush and the people he would appoint to staff his administration and the judicial branch and John F. Kerry and the people he would appoint and how those respective administrations would govern across a wide array of issues including first and foremost the war on terror? And maybe most conservatives find that a cost-benefit analysis on that question yields a fairly obvious answer.
Fairly obvious? But Jonah himself recently pondered the following observation: “While I still think it would be bad for America if Bush lost the election to Kerry – and terrible for Republicans – it’s less clear it would be bad for the conservative movement.” Hmmm. And why would he say something like that? Could it be that Bush has not governed as a conservative in critical ways – and hasn’t even governed competently in others? Let’s list a few: the WMD intelligence debacle – the worst blow to the credibility of the U.S. in a generation; Abu Ghraib – a devastating wound to to America’s moral standing in the world; the post-war chaos and incompetence in Iraq; an explosion in federal spending with no end in sight; no entitlement reform; a huge addition to fiscal insolvency with the Medicare drug entitlement; support for a constitutional amendment, shredding states’ rights; crusades against victimless crimes, like smoking pot and watching porn; the creeping fusion of religion and politics; the erosion of some critical civil liberties in the Patriot Act. I could go on. Is there any point at which a conservative might consider not voting for Bush? For the editor of National Review Online, the answer is indeed “fairly obvious.” But for people not institutionally related to the G.O.P., the only question is: where would that line be?
THE BEST RESPONSE: Here’s an email that says more eloquently than most why some fiscal conservatives might stay with Bush’s big government conservatism:
1) Kerry will probably be only slightly more fiscally conservative, and then only because the (presumably) Republican Congress will become seasonal budget hawks when a Dem. is in the White House.
2) Fiscal Conservatism pales in comparison to Getting The One Big Issue Right. In my opinion, Kerry will not take the fight to the enemy. It goes against the grain of his entire career. He learned at the knee of a Realist, and he is a Realist in his soul. And I think it’s a way of looking at the world that is inimical to security in a post 9/11 world.
That makes some sense. But I think there are enough Rubinites around Kerry to move him in a fiscally responsible direction even without the prodding of a Republican Congress. And, yes, the war. Obviously. But am I the only one who is far less enthusiastic about Bush’s war leadership now than I was a year ago? I supported the war in Afghanistan and Iraq; I support pre-emption as a policy; I believe in taking the fight to the Jihadists at every possible opportunity. But hasn’t the last year changed things somewhat? From the fall of Baghdad on, we have seen little but setbacks. Our goals in Iraq now are limited to making the place less dangerous and oppressive than it was under Saddam. If a Democrat had this record, do you think National Review would let it pass? Look, I am far from being persuaded that Kerry can do any better in the war. But I cannot support this president on the war as enthusiastically as I once did – because the mounting evidence suggests a much more mixed record.
THE MARRIAGE THING: And yes, of course, the president’s support for the FMA has colored this. How could it not? If you had spent much of your life arguing a) that gay people deserve civil equality and b) that civil marriage is the fundamental mark of that equality, it would require Herculean masochism to endorse a president who wants to enshrine the denial of marriage to gays in the very Constitution itself. I could live with disagreement on the issue of marriage – but not the amendment. Pace Jonah, I have been quite clear in this blog that, in my judgment, no self-respecting gay person could vote for Bush; and I consider myself a self-respecting gay person. In my first response to the FMA, I wrote that “[t]his president has now made the Republican party an emblem of exclusion and division and intolerance. Gay people will now regard it as their enemy for generations – and rightly so.” I wrote in a fit of hyperbole on March 3 that Kerry “will get every gay vote and every vote from their families and friends.” Get the drift? No that doesn’t mean I cannot praise or respect other things the administration does. But it does mean I would lack integrity if I were to endorse the guy. Jonah says that “over the last year,” you wouldn’t get the impression that I had made up my mind against Bush. He’s right. My public piece wasn’t published till May 2004 – which leaves ten months for “thinking out loud.” And it’s still possible to think out loud about the candidates, even if you have ruled one out for support this fall (in my Advocate piece, I insisted I still supported the president’s war on terror). So it’s hardly an “extremely significant silence.” I’ve said as much to every interviewer who has asked – on television and radio – and many other people who have asked me privately. And besides, I wrote it for the Advocate – to the readership to whom I most owed an explanation for my endorsement of Bush in 2000. I don’t post my Advocate pieces as a rule on the website because I get enough emails decrying my discussion of gay issues, and the pieces are written for a specific audience. Besides, the arguments in the piece have been expressed before on this site many times (too many times for most people’s tastes). But it’s public; there’s no mystery; and the notion that if you write something for the gay press, you haven’t really written it is, as usual, insulting to gay people. Has this caused me heart-ache? No end. I do indeed feel betrayed, as do many other gay people who trusted this president and paid a price in many ways for supporting him. (I’ve certainly paid more of a price in my own social world for backing this president than Jonah ever has in his.) My only dilemma now is whether to support Kerry or sit this one out. It still is.
The Dish 