Another guest post from Bob McElvaine. You can see his list of links to his published columns here. See Index to Robert McElvaine guest posts for other full McElvaine articles at Old Hickory's Weblog.
This piece was published in a somewhat abridged form in the Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger 10/07/04. But he sent it to me asking that it be forwarded, so I'm reproducing the entire column here (with his title rather than the Clarion-Ledger's). The Clarion-Ledger didn't include his concluding adapted-from-Shakespeare quote.
So we'll call this "the unexpurgated version."
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Conservatives generally see George W. Bush as one of them. He says he's a conservative.
But, before they vote, conservatives should remember the words of Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell:
"You would be better advised to watch what we do, not what we say."
Bush, the Conservative Imposter
By Robert S. McElvaine
Conservative voters, we hear, are solidly behind George W. Bush, "because President Bush is a strong conservative."
But, just what is it that makes President Bush a conservative? He says he's a conservative, but what if we follow the advice of Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell to "watch what we do, not what we say"?
Bush says he's a conservative, but what he does sure doesn't make him a fiscal conservative. He has transformed a $230 billion surplus he inherited from the "liberal" Bill Clinton into a $400+ billion deficit in three years - by far the worst fiscal record in American history.
Bush says he's a conservative, but what he does sure doesn't make him an anti-federal spending conservative. He has increased discretionary nomilitary federal spending at a rate about twice as fast as it increased under the "liberal" Bill Clinton.
Bush says he's a conservative, but what he does sure doesn't make him an anti-big, intrusive government conservative. He has taken the position that the government should have many secrets from the people, but the people can have almost no privacy from the government.
Bush says he's a conservative, but what he does sure doesn't make him a foreign policy conservative. He has thrown conservative caution to the wind and foolishly taken us into the sort of war that General Omar Bradley accurately called the Korean War: "the wrong war in the wrong place, at the wrong time, against the wrong enemy," undermining our vital war on terror.
Bush says he's a conservative, but what he does sure doesn't make him a champion of true freedom. He asserts that we are fighting for freedom in Iraq. But he says that anyone who questions his disastrous course is aiding the enemy.
President Bush seems to believe in freedom and fighting for it - or, rather, sending others to fight for it - but his version of freedom is the sort that the people in Iraq had before the overthrow overthrow of Saddam Hussein: the freedom to agree with the government.
"How dare anyone criticize me?" Mr. Bush's statements imply. "I'm the president of a free country?"
So just what makes this man a conservative? He cuts taxes on the rich. Maybe that's all some people who call themselves conservatives care about. But I don't think that's all that most conservatives want.
Labeling a man with this record a "conservative" is deceptive advertising. It is about as accurate as Fox News, which is essentially a 24-hour-a-day mouthpiece for the Republican Party, claiming that it is "fair and balanced."
Such noted conservatives as Tucker Carlson, Charley Reese, and John McLaughlin have turned against President Bush, largely because of the foolish, unnecessary war into which hehas taken us. When Carlson was asked on Aug. 30 if it was true he wasn't going to vote for Bush, he responded, "I think the war in Iraq was a major mistake."
The word conservative means keeping thingsas they are. If Bush had conserved things the way they were under Clinton,we would all be vastly better off. But he didn't.
Those conservatives who now wish to keep things the way they are in Iraq and the economy should vote for Bush. He's an imposter as a conservative, but he is genuinely someone who can be counted upon to conserve the disasters his administration has produced.
When George W. Bush says, "I'm a conservative," voters who accept anything he says on the basis of faith in their leader will buy it. For those who use evidence to judge if a statement is true, however, that claim is in the same league with his assertions that his record deficit, net-job-loss economic plan is working and that his catastrophic invasion of Iraq has made us safer.
When it comes to his claim that he is a conservative, George W. Bush is what he is on the Iraq war, the economy, healthcare, taxes, the environment, ties to Enron and Haliburton, and his willingness to fight in a war of which he approved: This president is the Great Pretender.
With apologies to William Shakepeare, let us modify Juliet's words so they apply to George W. Bush calling himself a conservative:
What's in a name? That which calls himself a "conservative"
By any other name would smell as sour.
{Robert S. McElvaine teaches history at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, is the author of Eve's Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History, and is currently completing his first novel and screenplay, What It Feels Like.}
Contact information:
Robert S. McElvaine
Elizabeth Chisholm Professor of Arts & Letters
Chair, Department of History
Millsaps College
Jackson, MS 39210
e-mail: mcelvrs@hotmail.com
Web: http://home.millsaps.edu/~mcelvrs
http://evesseed.net
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