I voted for W in 2000. Not good.

Okay, the ethos of this blog is under serious strain. What I have to say here ventures away from the more important subject matters of zucchinis and vegetable tyranny and sad songs and the undermining of art by pod people, so it feels awkward and wrong. And yet I proceed. Just this once.

This is why I’m down on poor ol’ W: it's not because of any single policy decision (except his pushing of war in Iraq with scant evidence that they threatened us). Nor is it because of the alleged massive deregulation Obama complained about--because frankly I didn't see a whole lot of deregulation going on in his administration apart (regrettably) from environmental controls. It's good for government to be cautious about issuing regulations. No, my problem with W is his hypocrisy and his unwillingness to own up to simple truth. I'm talking about the twilight-zone feeling I have when I listen to the man speak--a "holy crap, this man is walking around in the buff and I can see his wee little winky right there floating in the breeze and he pretends he's wearing a tux" kind of incredulity.

Now admittedly finding instances of hypocrisy in politics is as about as challenging as finding photos of eyeballs on this blog (the crucial difference being that my readers clamor for more eyeball photos), but W’s is a special kind of hypocrisy. It is a hypocrisy that has poisoned politics and has led to the lowest levels of confidence in how things are going since such polls have been taken. Here are three expressions of his special brand of not walking the walk.

1. Irresponsibility. In 2001 Bill Clinton left office after having governed over eight years of peace and prosperity. More or less. How much credit he deserves for this is up for debate. I speculate that he deserves more credit than his critics would give him but (a lot) less credit than what his supporters would have us believe. His failures weren't policy but personal, specifically with his discreditable lack of self-control. The man was blessed with extraordinary ambition and the ability to connect lots of dots, but he was enslaved to his enormous appetites and he indulged them like an adolescent. By all accounts he was shamelessly self-rationalizing about his own personal foibles, and he ran the White House like so many late-night bull sessions. But he was smart and he was lucky (no, not in that way, perv, but in that he presided over a bull market and the downsizing of the military from the end of the Cold War), and he used his presidential powers effectively and competently. You might have disagreed with the man, but he knew what was happening on the ground. He was informed. His most formidible opponents such as Newt Gingrich admitted that when they discussed matters with him in private that they found him disarmingly persuasive. He made decisions based on information. He offered reasons for his decisions.

W campaigned in 2000 as an adult alternative to the teenage-minded Clintonites. He was morally serious. Self-controlled. He chose CEO types in those most sober and adult stiff-collared types like Rumsfeld and Cheney. True, they were the whitest human beings in the history of the planet, but everything comes with a price. This would be the accountability president—the president that would make the hard decisions, take the unpopular route if it was the right route to take, and claim ownership over the consequences. I found that promise very attractive. (Admittedly W did capture the unpopular part.) http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/10/bush.transition.poll/index.html

What W delivered instead was the most chronically, systematically, jaw-droppingly irresponsible administration in history. No qualifications there. Just ever. Period. Regarding Iraq and the lack of WMDs. Regarding the events around 9/11 and the administration’s shameless misleading of the public's thinking on Iraq's connection to those evil actions. Regarding the hundreds of prisoners from Guantanamo who W said could just never ever ever—just ever!!--be released because of the threat they posed to civilization, but then who were quietly released years later because, um, oops, many if not most of them them turned out to be unconnected to terrorism. ("Ha ha. Just kidding. Anyhoo, it was good knowing you, and enjoy the rest of your life not blowing things up. No hard feelings, right? The weather here in Cuba. PER FECT!! Okay. See ya!")Regarding Katrina. Regarding our deficits. And on and on. Never once has the Bush team owned up to their mistakes in a simple and transparent way. Not regarding its treatment of Valerie Plame. Not regarding an Iraq occupation which felt like one of those bad dreams of taking a test over something you forgot to study.

Not regarding nuthin'.

The party of responsibility and morality and virtue and manliness turned into the party of moral and political abdication. And prevarication. And cowardice.

Hypocrisy.


2. Disregard for the rule of law. W’s was an administration that championed the rhetoric of constitutionalism but which systematically put waste to the Constitution. Its assault on the rule of law was sometimes subtle (signing-statements) and sometimes “slap you in the face” obvious (its claim it did not need Congress to wage war), and it was ongoing and corrosive. And intentional. This was an administration that understood one thing: Power. Getting what it wanted. Using any scare tactic available to get it done.

From illegal and unconstitutional wiretapping, to creating military commissions without congressional authority, to the suspension of U.S. treaties, to ignoring the writ of Habeas Corpus, to unwarranted uses of executive privilege for partisan gain, and on and on, this is a presidency that embraced as constitutional gospel Nixon's stupid throwaway line to David Frost that "if the president does it, it's not illegal." I confess that I'm no crazy radical leftwing court guy. I’m a little uncomfortable with a number of liberal rulings. I, too, want justices who attend to the text of the Constitution. Fair enough. But I will also say this. At least these crazy wacky liberal judges all acknowledge the existence of Article I (Congress) and the Bill of Rights.

People criticize Bush for not asking folks to sacrifice more in the war on terror. I disagree. He did ask us to sacrifice something: namely the Constitution.

Hypocrisy.

3. The myth of small government. I’m kind of a fiscal responsibility dude. When Clinton was prez and the R’s were in Congress, it was ugly but it was a nifty combination for sane budgets. The R’s ensured that no wacky progressive program got off the ground (for both good and bad), and Clinton ensured that the R’s desire to cut taxes was held in check. Combine Clinton’s cutbacks in the military, the R’s unwillingness to spend much more socially, the booming economy, and the comparatively high taxes on the rich, and the planets aligned perfectly for a shift from a 290 billion dollar deficit in 1992 (Bush’s last year) to a surplus of 236 billion in Clinton’s last year.

W. took that 236 billion dollar surplus and squandered it. A perfect storm of bad luck and worse judgment ruined it. He cut taxes on our taxpaying citizens (the rich), increased spending enormously—and not just on the military but also on Medicare—and these measures coupled with a weak economy led to deficits of over 400 billion dollars.

Clinton took a federal government that accounted for 22.1% of the economy in Bush’s last year in office and reduced spending to 18.4% of the economy—a remarkably large drop. Spending under Bush is once again over 20%. And this is not an anomaly. The Reds like to spend money. Reagan’s highest year for spending accounted for 23.5% of the economy. George Bush’s was 22.1%. Carter’s, in contrast, was 21.7% of GDP.

Those out-of-control spending liberals.

It’s not just spending where we see more federal government under W. Consider W’s willingness to intervene in local and state government—for example, in education in unprecedented ways, or in his willingness to overturn California emission standards. Consider his desire to intervene in the cases of Terry Schiavo or gay marriage—what old-time conservatives would think to be matters of state and local concern. Consider the new layers of bureaucracy created by the Department of Homeland Security. Consider the new creepy intrusion into our personal lives (such as library reading habits) made legal through the Patriot Acts.

If you want small government, the Republicans are right in claiming you shouldn’t vote for a Democrat. But they’re wrong in thinking you should vote Republican. But here's a difference. Though both parties support lots of regulations and lots of spending, only one party is willing to pay for what it spends. The other would have you believe that really it's not spending loads of money and therefore you don't need to pay for it and, moreover, if anyone suggests to you that you should pay for what you're getting, you can't trust them. They're being fiscally irresponsible, out-of-control liberal tax-and-spend politicians.

Which surely makes sense in some "alternative logic" world.

If you want limited government, vote libertarian. Because if you vote Republican, you’re going to get huge government. Republicans just won’t admit it.

Hypocrisy.

To which all I can say is this: you're doing a heck of a job, W.