Tom Junod, a writer for Esquire magazine, has written a compelling (and long) essay about George Bush titled, “The Case For George Bush.” 
Obviously a liberal, Junod examines what he believes about Bush and why.
The gist of the piece is that Bush’s style, which Junod doesn’t like, doesn’t (or shouldn’t) obscure Bush’s substance — his moral pronouncement that Islamofascism is “an unequivocal evil” and that we are “morally superior to it.”
I recommend this essay for both sides of the political landscape, but especially for liberals, who really believe that appeasement politics (and the approval of the French) is the way to defeat people who don’t care if they die trying to kill you.
I admit that I am partisan. I am a conservative who believes that conservatism is better for America socially, financially, morally and politically. I’ll go to my grave believing it with every fiber in my being, from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. Consequently, I’m drawn to articles that highlight positive aspects of Bush’s policies. At the same time, I’m not repelled by negative criticism; the criticism has to be placed in a rational context. Junod’s article does just that. He writes:
George W. Bush is an a**hole, isn’t he? Moreover, he’s the first president who seems merely that, at least in my lifetime. From Kennedy to Clinton, there is not a single president who would have been capable of striking such a pose after concluding a speech about a war in which hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis are being killed. There is not a single president for whom such a pose would seem entirely characteristic — not a single president who might be tempted to confuse a beefcakey photo opportunity with an expression of national purpose. He has always struck me as a small man, or at least as a man too small for the task at hand, and therefore a man doomed to address the discrepancy between his soul and his situation with displays of political muscle that succeed only in drawing attention to his diminution. He not only has led us into war, he seems to get off on war, and it’s the greedy pleasure he so clearly gets from flexing his biceps or from squaring his shoulders and setting his jaw or from landing a plane on an aircraft carrier — the greedy pleasure the war president finds in playacting his own attitudes of belligerence — that permitted me the greedy pleasure of hating him.
Then I read the text of the speech he gave and was thrown from one kind of certaint — the comfortable kind — into another. He was speaking, as he always does, of the moral underpinnings of our mission in Iraq. He was comparing, as he always does, the challenge that we face, in the evil of global terrorism, to the challenge our fathers and grandfathers faced, in the evil of fascism. He was insisting, as he always does, that the evil of global terrorism is exactly that, an evil — one of almost transcendent dimension that quite simply must be met, lest we be remembered for not meeting it . . . lest we allow it to be our judge. I agreed with most of what he said, as I often do when he’s defining matters of principle. No, more than that, I thought that he was defining principles that desperately needed defining, with a clarity that those of my own political stripe demonstrate only when they’re decrying either his policies or his character. He was making a moral proposition upon which he was basing his entire presidency — or said he was basing his entire presidency — and I found myself in the strange position of buying into the proposition without buying into the presidency, of buying into the words while rejecting, utterly, the man who spoke them.
I believe that if liberals examined the moral issues involved in fighting the war and directed their discontent with Bush to the scourge of terrorism and bloodthirty Islamofascism, their anger would be better served. Bush is but one man albeit a man with a lot of power. But leftist hatred for the man is unlike anything I’ve seen. Republicans didn’t hate Clinton, a master manipulator, with this viciousness and contempt.
Focusing on the morality of war may be difficult for most liberals to do. One has to believe in Truth, that there are moral absolutes in this world in order to judge one thing as “bad” and the other as “good.” Without this ability to discern, one can make a case that we had no right to unseat and capture Saddam Hussein. While he’s writing poetry in prison, his victims are in their graves or walking around with missing limbs and are otherwise traumatized by his evil machinations. Junod has a grasp of this liberal mentality:
What haunts me is the possibility that we have become so accustomed to ambiguity and inaction in the face of evil that we find his [President Bush] call for decisive action an insult to our sense of nuance and proportion….
I, for one, believe it is and feel somewhat ashamed having to say so: having to aver that 9/11/01 was a horror sufficient to supply Bush with a genuine moral cause rather than, as some would have it, a mere excuse for his adventurism….
Ashamed or not, Junod has to admit the truth.
Junod’s piece is a good segue to another article. Dean Esmay commented on a blog post by writer Virginia Postrel, “The Voice of Fear.” Postrel writes:
When I was in New York a few weeks ago, a friend in the magazine business told me he thinks the ferocious Bush hating that he sees in New York is a way of calming the haters’ fears of terrorism. It’s not rational, but it’s psychologically plausible — blame the cause you can control, at least indirectly through elections, rather than the threats you have no control over.
I don’t think liberals hate Bush because of fear of another attack. They hate Bush because he’s a Christian. Here’s my response to Dean’s post:
On Postrel’s explanation — That’s not all there is to it by a long shot. The left’s hatred of Bush has more to do with his being a Christian than any war on terrorism. Upholding absolute moral standards turns people off, especially coming from someone occupying a powerful office. Fear, resentment, disgust — whatever adjectives people want to use — are definitely part of the hatred, but morality and faith in Jesus Christ are by far the biggest reasons.
I am convinced that Bush’s faith in Christ scares the daylights out of the unbelieving, whether they admit it or not. Let’s assume there is no God and all Christians are deluding themselves. After we die, that’s it. No resurrection, no eternal life. But what if Christians are right? What if Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, returns to judge the world, just as He said He would?
Wouldn’t you rather err on the side of believing and struggling with your faith than living as if there were no consequences to the innumerable evil acts you commit in a lifetime? What if this God is gracious and merciful to forgive every single one of your sins? I know where I stand.
