I guess I wasn’t the only one who decided to skip watching the president live last night. Across the blogosphere, it seems as if many others decided to catch it later, or on the web, or just read the transcript. Why? Because I knew what was coming: an attempt at spiritual uplift, greased by billions and billions that we don’t have, organized by a federal government that, under Bush, cannot seem to organize anything competently. I’m not saying we don’t need to spend money on the reconstruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. I’m saying I don’t want to hear it from this guy. As a friend of mine commented last night over a drink, I don’t hate this president and never have. I’m just sick of him. Sick of the naked politicization of everything (Karl Rove over-seeing reconstruction?); sick of the utter refusal to acknowledge that there is a limit to what the federal government can borrow from this and the next generation; sick of the hijacking of the conservative tradition for a vast increase in the power and size of government, with only a feigned attempt at making it more effective; sick of the glib arrogance and excuses for failure that dot the landscape from Biloxi to Basra. I’m not the only one. See here, here, here, here, here, and more generally here.
THE DISILLUSION: Maybe the fact that I once truly did buy into this makes me more jaundiced today. I really wanted the man to succeed; believed he could; and, given the stakes, I felt it was almost irresponsible not to support him in the war and defend him from his worst and least principled critics (most of whom still make me retch). If so, filter my current negativism through the prism of my previous enthusiasm. Maybe I’m over-reacting. But please don’t ignore the facts: the biggest increase in federal government spending, debt and power since LBJ. Here’s one tiny example of what we’re seeing: hugely expensive trailer parks to create new federal ghettoes for evacuees. If that’s why you’re a conservative, fine. If you back this because the alternative is so awful, fine. Harry Reid’s call for a Marshall Plan for the South was a healthy reminder that many Democrats are still even worse than this profligate crew. But please don’t ask me to be enthusiastic about this. Buying popularity by spending billions was not why I originally became a conservative. Increasing the welfare state, burdening the future generations with mountainous debt, confusing politics with faith, failing to impose basic law and order as a primary reponsibility for government: these things I thought were characteristics of the left. They now define the Bush administration. I became a conservative because I saw in my native country what a terrible, incompetent, soul-destroying thing big government socialism is. It breaks my heart to see much of it now being implemented in America – by Republicans.
The Dish 