Author: Andrew Sullivan

It was the second best speech I have ever heard George W. Bush give – intelligently packaged, deftly structured, strong and yet also revealing of the president’s obviously big heart. The speech writers deserve very high grades for pulling it off, to find a way to get the president to deal substantively with the domestic issues he is weak on and to soar once again on the imperatives of freedom in the Middle East. I will be very surprised if the president doesn’t get a major boost from the effort, and if his minuscule lead in the race begins to widen. In this way, the whole convention was a very mixed message – but also a very effective one. They presented a moderate face, while proposing the most hard-right platform ever put forward by a GOP convention. They smeared and slimed Kerry – last night with disgusting attacks on his sincerity, patriotism and integrity. And yet they managed to seem positive after tonight. That’s no easy feat. But they pulled it off. Some of this, I have to say, was Orwellian. When your convention pushes so many different messages, and is united with screaming chants of “U.S.A.”, and built around what was becoming almost a cult of the Great Leader, skeptical conservatives have reason to raise an eyebrow or two.

THE END OF CONSERVATISM: But conservatism as we have known it is now over. People like me who became conservatives because of the appeal of smaller government and more domestic freedom are now marginalized in a big-government party, bent on using the power of the state to direct people’s lives, give them meaning and protect them from all dangers. Just remember all that Bush promised last night: an astonishingly expensive bid to spend much more money to help people in ways that conservatives once abjured. He pledged to provide record levels of education funding, colleges and healthcare centers in poor towns, more Pell grants, seven million more affordable homes, expensive new HSAs, and a phenomenally expensive bid to reform the social security system. I look forward to someone adding it all up, but it’s easily in the trillions. And Bush’s astonishing achievement is to make the case for all this new spending, at a time of chronic debt (created in large part by his profligate party), while pegging his opponent as the “tax-and-spend” candidate. The chutzpah is amazing. At this point, however, it isn’t just chutzpah. It’s deception. To propose all this knowing full well that we cannot even begin to afford it is irresponsible in the deepest degree. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the only difference between Republicans and Democrats now is that the Bush Republicans believe in Big Insolvent Government and the Kerry Democrats believe in Big Solvent Government. By any measure, that makes Kerry – especially as he has endorsed the critical pay-as-you-go rule on domestic spending – easily the choice for fiscal conservatives. It was also jaw-dropping to hear this president speak about tax reform. Bush? He has done more to lard up the tax code with special breaks and new loopholes than any recent president. On this issue – on which I couldn’t agree more – I have to say I don’t believe him. Tax reform goes against the grain of everything this president has done so far. Why would he change now?

FULL SPEED AHEAD: I agreed with almost everything in the foreign policy section of the speech, although the president’s inability to face up to the obvious sobering lessons from Iraq is worrying. I get the feeling that empirical evidence does not count for him; that like all religious visionaries, he simply asserts that his own faith will vanquish reality. It won’t. We heard nothing about Iran, North Korea or even anything concrete about Iraq. We heard no new bid to capitalize on the new mood in France or to win over new allies in the war on terror. We heard nothing about intelligence reform. And the contrasts with Kerry were all retrospective. There was no attempt to tell us where Kerry and Bush would differ in the future over the Middle East, just easy (and justified) barbs about the past. But Bush’s big vision is, I believe, the right one. I’m just unsure whether his profound unpopularity in every foreign country has made real movement more or less likely. I do know that the rank xenophobia at the convention did not help American foreign policy or American interests.

BISMARCK + WILSON: The whole package was, I think, best summed up as a mixture of Bismarck and Wilson. Germany’s Bismarck fused a profound social conservatism with a nascent welfare state. It was a political philosophy based on a strong alliance with military and corporate interests, and bound itself in a paternalist Protestant ethic. Bush Republicanism is not as authoritarian, but its impulses are similar – and the dynastic father-figure is a critical element in the picture. Bismarck’s conservatism also relied, as Bush’s does, on scapegoating a minority to shore up his Protestant support. Protecting the family from its alleged internal enemies is an almost perfect rallying call for a religiously inspired base. But unlike Bismarck, Bush’s foreign policy is deeply liberal and internationalist: promoting a revolutionary doctrine of democratization abroad in the least hospitable of places. His faith in this respect, if not his ease with using military force, is reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson. Yes, this doesn’t exactly add up to a coherent philosophy – but it’s based on the president’s feelings, not on any argument. This administration is not philosophically coherent. But as a political operation, that doesn’t seem to matter.

I CANNOT SUPPORT HIM IN NOVEMBER: I will add one thing more. And that is the personal sadness I feel that this president who praises freedom wishes to take it away from a whole group of Americans who might otherwise support many parts of his agenda. To see the second family tableau with one family member missing because of her sexual orientation pains me to the core. And the president made it clear that discriminating against gay people, keeping them from full civic dignity and equality, is now a core value for him and his party. The opposite is a core value for me. Some things you can trade away. Some things you can compromise on. Some things you can give any politician a pass on. But there are other values – of basic human dignity and equality – that cannot be sacrificed without losing your integrity itself. That’s why, despite my deep admiration for some of what this president has done to defeat terror, and my affection for him as a human being, I cannot support his candidacy. Not only would I be abandoning the small government conservatism I hold dear, and the hope of freedom at home as well as abroad, I would be betraying the people I love. And that I won’t do.

A fascinating (as usual) despatch from Zeyad in Iraq. He quotes one Mohammed Bashar Al-Faidhy, spokesman of the Association of Muslim Scholars. If you want to see how attuned these maniacs are to divisions in the West, read on:

To our brothers in the Islamic Army of Iraq. We wish to inform you that we totally understand the extreme rage that is boiling in your hearts regarding the French decision to ban the Hijab in their schools, and we share you your dissapointment. We officially condemned the French decision at the time… However, killing the two hostages without considering the grave consequences of such an act would be harmful to our cause and would isolate us from our international support… Our goal is to besiege the Americans politically in every spot of the world and this act is not serving that goal… You can see how the agents of the occupation are already using this incident against us… It is our duty as scholars to point out to our brothers what is wrong and what is right… France as an anti-occupation country has been helpful to our cause… You might say that the French stance is not an altruistic one and that they have their own political interests that caused them to disagree with the Americans, and I am not going to say that is not true but it is also our goal to turn them against each other to serve our cause so France has a strategic importance for us.

This is a fascinating and potentially important moment in the war on terror. If the Jihadists take the war to France now, we may get the Western unity that has so far eluded us. And that can only be a good thing.

Zell Miller’s address will, I think, go down as a critical moment in this campaign, and maybe in the history of the Republican party. I kept thinking of the contrast with the Democrats’ keynote speaker, Barack Obama, a post-racial, smiling, expansive young American, speaking about national unity and uplift. Then you see Zell Miller, his face rigid with anger, his eyes blazing with years of frustration as his Dixiecrat vision became slowly eclipsed among the Democrats. Remember who this man is: once a proud supporter of racial segregation, a man who lambasted LBJ for selling his soul to the negroes. His speech tonight was in this vein, a classic Dixiecrat speech, jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric. As an immigrant to this country and as someone who has been to many Southern states and enjoyed astonishing hospitality and warmth and sophistication, I long dismissed some of the Northern stereotypes about the South. But Miller did his best to revive them. The man’s speech was not merely crude; it added whole universes to the word crude.

THE “OCCUPATION” CANARD: Miller first framed his support for Bush as a defense of his own family. The notion that individuals deserve respect regardless of their family is not Miller’s core value. And the implication was that if the Democrats win in November, his own family would not be physically safe. How’s that for subtlety? Miller’s subsequent assertion was that any dissent from aspects of the war on terror is equivalent to treason. He accused all war critics of essentially attacking the very troops of the United States. He conflated the ranting of Michael Moore with the leaders of the Democrats. He said the following:

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today’s Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator. And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.

That macho invocation of the Marines was a classic: the kind of militarist swagger that this convention endorses and uses as a bludgeon against its opponents. But the term “occupation,” of course, need not mean the opposite of liberation. I have used the term myself and I deeply believe that coalition troops have indeed liberated Afghanistan and Iraq. By claiming that the Democrats were the enemies of the troops, traitors, quislings and wimps, Miller did exactly what he had the audacity to claim the Democrats were doing: making national security a partisan matter. I’m not easy to offend, but this speech was gob-smackingly vile.

OPPONENTS OR ENEMIES?: Here’s another slur:

No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn’t believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home. But don’t waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution. They don’t believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.

Yes, that describes some on the left, but it is a calumny against Democrats who voted for war in Afghanistan and Iraq and whose sincerity, as John McCain urged, should not be in question. I have never heard Kerry say that 9/11 was America’s fault; if I had, it would be inconceivable to consider supporting him. And so this was, in truth, another lie, another cheap, faux-patriotic smear. Miller has absolutely every right to lambaste John Kerry’s record on defense in the Senate. It’s ripe for criticism, and, for my part, I disagree with almost all of it (and as a pro-Reagan, pro-Contra, pro-SDI, pro-Gulf War conservative, I find Kerry’s record deeply troubling). But that doesn’t mean he’s a traitor or hates America’s troops or believes that the U.S. is responsible for global terror. And the attempt to say so is a despicable attempt to smear someone’s very patriotism.

THE FOREIGN AGENT: Another lie: “Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations. Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.” Miller might have found some shred of ancient rhetoric that will give him cover on this, but in Kerry’s very acceptance speech, he declared the opposite conviction – that he would never seek permission to defend this country. Another lie: “John Kerry wants to re-fight yesterday’s war.” Kerry didn’t want to do that. Yes, he used his military service in the campaign – but it was his opponents who decided to dredge up the divisions of the Vietnam war in order to describe Kerry as a Commie-loving traitor who faked his own medals. What’s remarkable about the Republicans is their utter indifference to fairness in their own attacks. Smearing opponents as traitors to their country, as unfit to be commander-in-chief, as agents of foreign powers (France) is now fair game. Appealing to the crudest form of patriotism and the easiest smears is wrong when it is performed by the lying Michael Moore and it is wrong when it is spat out by Zell Miller. Last night was therefore a revealing night for me. I watched a Democrat at a GOP Convention convince me that I could never be a Republican. If they wheel out lying, angry old men like this as their keynote, I’ll take Obama. Any day.

It was a sound one, certainly defensible in its sharp attacks on Kerry and heartfelt in its defense of the character of the president. But it was over-shadowed by the foul rhetoric that went before him, rhetoric he blessed with his opening line. On a substantive note, it is astonishing to me that neither he not anyone, in invoking the war on terror, has mentioned any developments in Iraq or Afghanistan over the last year. These speeches could have been written as Baghdad fell or at the latest, when Saddam was captured. And this party and president claim to be war-leaders. Real war-leaders explain defeats and set-backs, they recognize the current situation, they grapple with reality. But this war is easy, it seems. There are no problems in Iraq. Everything is peachy. Democracy is breaking out everywhere; no mistakes have been made; no rethinking is necessary after the travails of the occupation (sorry, Zell). I understand the political need to put a gloss on things. But the surrealism of the rhetoric is, in some respects, an insult to the American people, who deserve a real accounting of where we are. Of all the difficult choices we have to make – in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia – nothing is spoken. There is not even a nod to reality. Just an assertion that only the Republicans have the balls to fight this war. It may well work in the election. But it speaks to the character of our leaders that they prefer bromides and denial to a real accounting and real leadership.

TWO SMALL POINTS: Cheney barely mentioned the economy. Almost no one has. They realize it’s a liability. Another missing link: Mary Cheney. Where was she? She was “disappeared” from the family tableau, perhaps of her own choice. But the only reason she was not there was obvious. No openly gay people belong anywhere near that podium. Her position, at this point, is poignant – but, alas, increasingly impossible.

ROMNEY’S FORUMLATION: The first speech I heard last night was Mitt Romney’s. Nothing special; and certainly not bad. He reiterated the talking points about Kerry but also framed his support for a federal constitutional amendment barring any legal protections for gay couples. Here’s his formulation:

We step forward by expressing tolerance and respect for all God’s children, regardless of their differences and choices. At the same time, because every child deserves a mother and a father, we step forward by recognizing that marriage is between a man and a woman.

That’s an interesting standard. If every child deserves a father and a mother, then surely we have to take the children of single mothers away from them and give them to approved couples; or we have to make divorce much more difficult; or we have to ban adoption by single people; or we have to prevent the care of children by their grandparents and any other variation on the nuclear family. Is Romney serious? Are single moms now anathema to Republicans? Don’t their children deserve a mother and a father? Of course, Romney doesn’t mean that. He gives tolerance and respect to most people who, for whatever reason, perform the hard and noble task of bringing up children, and does not scant good rearing because sometimes it falls short of the ideal. What he really and solely means is that gay people should be barred from adoption, should have their own kids taken from them if necessary, and if they have children as a couple, they should be denied legal rights with respect to custody. What else can he mean? I therefore take these two sentences as an Orwellian statement. Discrimination is tolerance. Disdain is love. Revulsion is respect. And the victims of his policies remain nameless.

Something important is happening in France. The Jihadist threat to murder two French journalists if Paris doesn’t rescind its ban on head-scarves in public schools has proven one thing: these fanatics are not responding to Western excess or the war in Iraq. They are theocratic fascists using the old methods of terror and violence to get their way. You cannot appease them, although Paris is trying to get its Arab friends to help out. But the event may shift French opinion our way and reveal to them that they too are at risk and that appeasement cannot work. Here’s today’s editorial in Le Monde. It’s revealing in its hopes and its fears:

They say that every cloud has a silver lining. The kidnapping of the two French journalists Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot and the blackmailing of the French government by the kidnappers to force the government to repeal its new law against wearing the Islamic veil in school has two objectives. The first is to show that no Western country, no democracy — even one that, like France, opposed the American intervention in Iraq — is sheltered from the fanaticism of the soldiers of the “holy war” launched on September 11, 2001 by Al Qaida. The second is to show that France, despite or even because of its status as the largest Muslim state in Europe, has become a preferred target of this ideological war. . . . [But the terrorists have missed their mark.] Even if the current consensus in France remains fragile, even if ambiguities remain, even if the law against wearing the Islamic veil remains for many Muslims a strike at their religious liberty, we can do nothing but rejoice to see French Muslims on the front line of defense of the Republic.

But for how long? And how solid will French Muslim support be if France really begins to fight back?

Here’s an email that says a lot:

Tuesday night I ventured over to Herald Square, where delegates had to be escorted into the Garden by riot police. An angry throng of demonstrators was lined along 32nd Street to “greet” them with screams, jeers, placards, raised middle fingers and the vilest form of name-calling. The bile and hate was palpable and, as a lifelong New Yorker, I found the offensive display hugely embarrassing. This is not how a world-class city behaves.

There were at least 200 people at the corner where I was located, but one woman in particular caught my attention. She was standing beside me, yacking away on her cell phone, when she would pause periodically to scream at passing delegates (at decible levels I thought only a garbage truck could manage) “Fuck you!!! Get out!!!” When I finally turned to her — she was practically yelling in my ear — and told her to “chill out,” her eyes almost exploded with anger. I reminded her that these people were just human beings and entitled to a modicum of respect. That prompted her to unleash a vicious tirade against me that was mostly incomprehensible. Sensing that this was getting ugly, I quietly made my way out of the crowd, with the woman screaming after me “shame on you!!!”

Every group — left wing or right wing — has its unhinged fanatics, but the Bush-hating mob that decended on New York this week is clearly in a class by itself. Everyone ought to have the right to express their dissent, but what I’ve seen so far has less to do with exercising Constitutional rights than it has to do with intimidation, shakedowns and unadulterated hate.

This does not only come from one side, of course. But the pathologies now affecting the far left are as real and as deep as those afflicting the far right. They deserve each other; but they do not deserve to usurp the discourse in the next two months.

One of his cabinet ministers drops a hint.

I don’t agree with his assessment of the Iraq war, but I do agree that Arnold’s pitch to conservatives like me was insufficient. And its insufficiency is related to its avoidance of all the hard questions that must be asked of Bush.

Alan Keyes calls Mary Cheney a “selfish hedonist” because she is a lesbian. (It’s worth recalling that Keyes’ intellectual mentor, the brilliant philosopher, Allan Bloom, was also a “selfish hedonist.”) Meanwhile, the Family Research Council distributes fortune cookies at MSG with the message: “Real Men Marry Women.” I guess Jesus and the Pope aren’t real men.

I thought this was kinda funny. (And I played Hamlet in grad school.) Yes, I am in political agony. As a classical conservative on most issues, my heart warms to the themes of this convention: freedom, strong defense, true diversity, personal compassion. I like Bush as a person and respect his good intentions. It is very hard to disagree with the central argument of my idols, McCain, Giuliani and Schwarzenegger, that Bush has the better temperament and will to conduct the war against our enemies. And I remain as committed to that war as I have ever been. You only have to see the carnage in Russia, or the hideous massacre of Nepalese workers in Iraq, or the threats against French journalists to see why this war is vital. But that doesn’t mean you should not grapple with the other side of the equation: How will Bush bring us back to fiscal sanity? What will he do with Iran? How can he wage a competent war while alienating so many of our allies? (You should hear how the pro-war Brits talk of his diplomacy.) How can he unite the country while backing the agenda of Christian fundamentalism in all domestic issues? How can he guarantee progress in Iraq while the country is riven by two major insurgencies? The answers I keep getting from Republicans is: Kerry would be worse. That is not an answer. It is an avoidance. Conservatives should not let pure partisanship blind them to fiscal abandon, war incompetence, and social intolerance. Maybe Kerry’s characterological weakness makes Bush the best bet in the war. Maybe that means he deserves your vote in November. But that doesn’t mean these underlying questions can be ignored or forgotten. They could make a second term a disaster – for the country and for conservatism and for the world.