Debating A Radical
Morton Mintz
October 13, 2004
George W. Bush is not a conservative. Conservative principles—like taking responsibility for one's actions, being fiscally cautious, and protecting the general welfare—have had no place in his administration. George W. Bush has been nothing if not radical, says reporter Morton Mintz, and John Kerry needs to call him on it.
Morton Mintz is a former chairman of the Fund for Investigative Journalism. He was a Washington Post reporter for nearly thirty years before departing in 1988.
John Kerry neither defends himself when George Bush sneeringly calls him a liberal nor denounces the president as the radical and phony conservative he is. He should go on the offensive and do both.
During the second debate, the president—by word, facial expression and gesture—contributed once again to the despicable campaign of right-wing commentators and politicians to make liberal a dirty word and implicitly equate it with traitorous.
This was Bush's low-blow contribution in St. Louis just on Oct. 8:
"First, the National Journal named Senator Kennedy [Bush misspoke] the most liberal senator of all. And that's saying something in that bunch. You might say that took a lot of hard work. (The National Journal itself rejects his interpretation.)
"That's what liberals do. They create government-sponsored health care. Maybe you think that makes sense. I don't." (What is Medicare if not "government-sponsored health care?", Kerry might have asked.)
"They don't name him the most liberal in the United States Senate because he hasn't shown up to many meetings. They named him because of his votes. And it's reality."
Kerry should be proud to be a liberal, as he said he was in 1991, and explain why. Would we have had Social Security without liberals? Medicare? The Wages and Hours Act? But if he doesn't wants to defend liberals because he judges that to do so in our poisonous political climate would be counterproductive, he could certainly seize the opportunity to expose Bush aggressively—and productively—as a radical and fraudulent conservative.
Going to war as Bush did is radical. His doctrine of pre-emptive war is radical. His assaults on liberties and on separation of church and state (even Ralph Reed, while executive director of the Christian Coalition, called separation of church and state "complete" and "inviolable") are radical. His administration's violations of international law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice to permit torture and abuse of prisoners are radical. His administration's secrecy so exceeds that of any other in modern times as to be radical.
But there is another, and, unfortunately, a widely ignored, case for calling Bush—along with the Tom DeLay wing of the Republican Party—radicals. The argument rests on the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. In seeking "to form a more perfect Union," the Founding Fathers declared there, one of the fundamental goals of "We the people of the United States" was to "promote the general welfare." To promote the general welfare—to be faithful to our basic charter—is thus by definition conservative; to promote the private welfare at the expense of the public welfare is, by the same logic, radical.
To do nearly nothing for the 35.9 million Americans who lived in poverty last year—indeed, to let their numbers increase—and at the same time to cut taxes drastically for the top 1 percent of the population is to disregard the general welfare in order to advance the private welfare of the few. That's radical. So is destroying the environment for the benefit of the power industry (and, as well, a violation of the Biblical instruction that mankind be the steward of God's earth). So is lettiung the oil and gas industry secretly set White House energy policy. So is blocking regulation by the Food and Drug Administration of tobacco, which kills more than 400,000 Americans every year.
Furthermore, the refusal of Bush and his top officials to take responsibility for prisoner torture and abuse is fake conservatism, acceptance of responsibility for one's acts being a core conservative principle. A true conservative does not transform a huge budget surplus into a staggering deficit to be bequeathed to our children and grandchildren. Or cut taxes in wartime. Or nurture corporate welfare. which costs the taxpayers about $125 billion a year, for the benefit of Enron and Halliburton, among others. Or propose but inadequately fund programs (No Child Left Behind being an example). Or be a handsomely paid errand boy for the financial, oil, pharmaceutical and power industries. Or name to top regulatory positions lobbyists who had spent years fighting against the very safety, health and environmental regulations they would swear to enforce, but who on taking office moved quickly to eliminate regulations, take anti-regulatory measures and cancel regulatory work in progress.
One need but look at some of the complimentary dictionary synonyms for liberal and conservative to see why a person of intelligence and integrity can be proud of being either. Liberal: broad-minded, high-minded, humanistic, humanitarian, impartial, reasonable, tolerant, unbiased, understanding. Conservative: cautious, constant, controlled, conventional, middle-of-the-road, not extreme, sober, stable, traditional. Conservative, Bush is not. To see him for what he is, just look at some of the uncomplimentary dictionary synonyms for radical: excessive, extreme, immoderate, unqualified.
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