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Burying Conservative Infamy
 When
I wrote recently that even William Buckley has
endorsed involuntary servitude, miscalled “national service,”
quick as a flash a keen scholar shot back, “What do you mean
‘even’ Buckley?”  He cited Buckley’s long
record of supporting war and the draft.
Of course I was appealing to
Buckley’s public reputation as a “right-winger,” never
mind his breaches with many who have had, in diverse ways, better claims to
the title: Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, L. Brent Bozell, Patrick
Buchanan, and my humble self, along with many others, including the John
Birch Society and every variant of libertarianism.
Those who keep score must read
the phrase “even Buckley” with a certain irony. Today he has
reduced himself to a minor appendage of “neoconservatism,”
the only ideology with which he seems to have no quarrel. National
Review, the magazine he founded 50 years ago, has already been
outclassed and outstripped by The Weekly Standard.
Under its current editor, Richard
Lowry, National Review has led, or followed, the
lemming-march of conservatism into Bushism. In his own syndicated column,
Lowry plausibly argues that John McCain is likely to get the Republican
presidential nomination in 2008. Unless, that is, a strong conservative
emerges to stop him.
Which is what everyone thought
had happened in 2000, the strong (though “compassionate”)
conservative being George W. Bush. Four years later, Bush has abandoned
most of the tenets of the old conservative creed: apart from waging a failed
war unrelated to national defense, he has shattered all precedents for
entitlement and deficit spending. While opposing all tax increases, he has yet
to use the presidential veto, ensuring a future we may peek at through our
fingers if we dare. All this while adding a huge new Federal bureaucracy, the
Department of Homeland Security.
As a spender of the
taxpayer’s money, Bush is to Lyndon Johnson as Barry Bonds is to
Babe Ruth. He has rewritten the record book. Some want him impeached;
I’d settle for mandatory steroid testing. Weight-training alone
can’t explain this man.
![[Breaker quote for Burying Conservative Infamy: Calling Monica Lewinsky!]](2005breakers/050927.gif) The
Iraq war was also
super-Johnsonian both in its mendacious beginnings and in its utopian
rationale. It was going to create a democratic wildfire in the Arab world,
you’ll recall, never mind historical and cultural conditions, or for that
matter human nature.
Why have conservatives gone
along with all this? Some of them are asking themselves that very question,
especially those facing elections in 2006 and 2008. Bush has given
conservatism a bad name. That used to be the liberals’ job. But
conservatives have gotten the old monkeys off their backs, only to carry
King Kong instead.
Over the last generation,
liberalism has fallen into deserved disrepute, but it may now gain a new lease
on life, particularly since our last liberal president, Bill Clinton, now looks
better than Bush — and even more conservative than Bush. Utopian
wars and crushing deficits weren’t his thing; his consuming pastime
was chicks. He wasn’t very dignified, but maybe Monica Lewinsky kept
him from getting himself — and us — into far worse trouble.
One of Bush’s selling points
was that he’d restore “character” to the White House.
And in a narrow sense, maybe he has. It’s hard to imagine Bush, or
any president but Clinton, getting “involved,” as we now say,
with a girl like Monica.
Monica herself, now bound for the
tony London School of Economics, says she doesn’t want to be
remembered for ... that. And I sympathize, but she’s
going to have to work pretty hard to carve out a niche in history larger than
the one she has already achieved. Then again, she does have name
recognition for sure, and 2008 is coming, and the Republicans may be looking
for a presidential candidate who will erase the memory of George W. Bush ...
Yes! What a dramatic race it could
be — especially if the Democrats nominate Hillary! Talk about a historic
first: not just any two women heading both tickets, but Clinton
versus Lewinsky! Who says there are no second acts in American life? And
just imagine the presidential debates! They could get pretty personal. The
moderator might have to forbid scratching.
But is the country ready for
another year of Monica headlines? I think so. And best of all, Monica could
make everyone forget not only her own ignominy, but that of the
conservatives.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2005 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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