Hope and Frustration by Jasonzzz

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Hope and Frustration

POSTED BY: JASONZZZ
UPDATED: Wednesday, November 3, 2004 07:45
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Wednesday, November 3, 2004 7:45 AM

Op-Ed Columnist: Hope and Frustration

November 2, 2004
By DAVID BROOKS

As I look back over the course of this campaign, I should
confess I've gone through several periods convinced I
should vote against President Bush. I know I'm not the only
conservative to think this way. I look at my favorite
conservative bloggers and see many coming out for John
Kerry. I talk to my friends at conservative think tanks and
magazines and notice that they are deeply ambivalent about
the administration, even those who would never vote for a
Democrat.

Like all these folks, I look at the Bush administration
with a mixture of admiration, frustration and anger.

I'm frustrated that Bush didn't build the governing
majority that was there for the taking. He came to power
with good ideas on how to move the G.O.P. beyond the
Gingrich stall. But time and again, he abandoned his
reformist strategy to give spoils to the G.O.P. donor base.

To take one small example: on environmental policy, he
showed interest in moving to a flexible, market-based
system that would have cleaned the environment better than
the current system. But too often rules were written to
please key industries. Voters who could have been turned on
by new, effective approaches were instead appalled at
unseemly self-dealing.

I'm exasperated at the Bush communications strategy. His
advisers came in with one rule: no concessions to elite
opinion. They decided not to be open on how they make
decisions. They would never admit mistakes. They would not
fully engage with Washington or even with Republicans on
Capitol Hill. In so doing, they pushed away many who could
have helped them - most important, pro-war Democrats. They
fed the misconception that this is an administration that
does not deliberate. They further polarized the political
climate, in ways that only make it more difficult to get
anything done.

I'm angry at the decision not to send enough troops into
Iraq. The history of the 1990's suggested that when
societies are transformed, establishing law and order is
the most important thing. Yet that lesson was ignored.
People from the center to the right were screaming for more
boots on the ground, but the administration never performed
the elementary task of statecraft: matching the tools at
your disposal to the goals you hope to pursue.

There are moments when I think, These are exactly the sorts
of mistakes that administrations should be thrown out of
office for.

Then other considerations come into play. The first is
Kerry. He's been attacked for being a flip-flopper, but his
core trait is that he is monumentally selfish. Since
joining the Senate, he has never attached himself to an
idea or movement larger than his own career advancement.

It's not for nothing that people in Massachusetts joked
that his initials stand for Just For Kerry. Or that people
spoke of him as the guy who refuses to wait in lines at
restaurants because he thinks he's above everybody else. If
the Democrats had nominated Dick Gephardt, this election
wouldn't be close, but character is destiny, and Kerry's
could be debilitating in the White House.

Second, for the next many years the madrassas will be
churning out young men who want to kill us. In embarking on
a generational challenge to transform the Middle East, Bush
has a strategy to defeat their ideology. While many around
him understand the challenge, Kerry has no strategy.

I fear his foreign policy would combine Carteresque
pedantry with the cruel "realism" of the first Bush
administration. Under the elder Bush, the realists paid lip
service to democracy, but inevitably stood by whoever was
in power at the moment: for Gorbachev and against the
freedom-loving Lithuanians, for the Russian empire and
against the independence-seeking Ukrainians.

That passive approach was tolerable in the face of a dying
Soviet Union. It is not in the face of radical Islam.

Third, Kerry's Democrats seem to have no interest in
reforming the entitlement programs that are asphyxiating
government. Kerry merely promises to expand the status quo,
thus punting on the central domestic challenge of our time.

I'm not allowed to tell you how I'm going to resolve these
contradictory impulses (Times policy). But if Kerry wins, I
hope he'll pick three things he wants to do - for the
country, not himself - and stick with them. And if Bush is
re-elected, I hope he will see his win not as vindication,
but as a second chance to act effectively on the visions
that inspired hope in the first place.

E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/02/opinion/02brooks.html?ex=1100405690&
ei=1&en=5d25a7bdedc5c8ad

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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