Like Mr. Auster I think Kerry will not be too believable in security area. But it is possible that the voters will accept somebody well short of Bush standard in security domain.

As 9/11 fades away and Bushanomics keeps creating millions of jobs in India and China, economic insecurity very well may become The Deciding Issue.

With the Republican propaganda machine in full blast, many people don’t realize how bad the things are in the labor market:
“Even though production has been growing for more than two years, the United States has just experienced the sharpest loss of jobs this far (33 months) into a business cycle since the Great Depression, with 2.9 million private-sector jobs lost, a 2.6-percent contraction”.

More data is at http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2004/01/mishel-l-01-20.html.

This recession is the worst since the Great Depression, the second worst since the Great Depression was recession of 1991-1993. And we remember who was the prez then and what happened to him.

Mik may well be right; but he will have to excuse us if we are somewhat dubious of numbers and arguments presented by The American Prospect — the same numbers and arguments advanced vociferously by the various Democratic candidates. This is part of the larger problem of the decay of ourselves as one people: partisanship is so predominant that is very diffcult to find a trustworthy account things.

Mr. Cella has pointed to a central problem of our age. In the absence of a common loyalty and common standards of truth, partisanship and self-seeking have taken over. Just think of all those self-interested former generals and colonels commenting on television during the Iraq war. You would have thought that such men would have had the interests of the country and the armed forces foremost in their minds, but they did not. They were pursuing their own agendas. As for The American Prospect, the mean-spirited partisanship that informs the left in general and The American Prospect in particular means that one cannot simply accept their economic claims. I’m not absolving the right of dishonesty, but the left is virtually committed to lying as its m.o. The more it lies, the more people tune it out. It is the boy who cried wolf.

Mr. Auster’s statement of what has always been intuitively obvious to me and was the reason I voted third party—that Bush is a liberal—is a sobering and unpleasant fact which explains why Bush (1) will never change regardless of pressure from his party or from letter writers or from a belief that he will lose and (2) must be removed from the Republican Party (assuming that Party is still worth anything). People’s justification for their support and vote for Bush is the stoic, irrational belief that one must always vote for the lesser of two evils.

This belief at best seems to result in no change of any major significance and at worst is a prescription for disaster, the disaster that has occurred over the last half century while liberalism has marched over legions of conservative voters who, faced with the unpleasant thoughts of a peaceful Valley-Forge-like war and of potential defeat, began accepting the ideas of their liberal attackers. (If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.)

Here is my main point. Perhaps the fundamental aspect of this belief is that it is essentially a defensive tactic: don’t risk losing the war or having to sacrifice, just retreat and hope for the best.

But there still exists the fact that wars are never won by armies content with staying on the defensive: an example is Union General McClellan, who was incapable of movement, just as Republican voters are immobile while led by their attackers’ sympathizer. The degree of irrationality is so profound that Bush can publicly protect infiltration by foreign attackers and publicly call for a rout by the foreign attackers yet his retreating supporters clutch more tightly than ever their irrational belief in voting for the lesser of two evils.

What makes this election drastically different from prior elections is that Bush is literally leading an invasion by a foreign country. Coupled with the irrational belief in voting for the lesser of two evils, the country is very close to becoming a conquered country.

(Should I have made my main point very briefly and then have stopped, or did the other parts give it valuable context? Thanks for wading through the comment.)

The statistic of jobs lost is of course totally meaningless unless one also considers the number of jobs created; the failure to do so is pretty much the definition of tendentiousness. “Bushanomics”, i.e. deficit spending with mild tax relief, is indistinguishable from the policies of most every president in the last seventy years or so and it is ridiculous to imagine that a president has much influence over the economic choices of billions of people. I’d add that, to the extent that women with children are working less, “jobs lost” is a net positive for civilization.

Partisanship is a problem in interpreting economic statistics because economic statistics are so untrustworthy that they can be massaged to support whatever claims are desirable. Tax cuts, for example, are good because they reward work and investment and because the state will use tax monies to promote disorder and injustice. Whether they result in a net increase in monetarization of the manufacturing sector in accounts payable relative to the price of gold can’t be the basis for policy making.

To answer Mr. Murgos’s question first, his entire comment, not just the opening, is interesting. His analogy between Bush and McClellan is spot on.

But his opening point is the most interesting to me, as it spells out further implications of what I had said about Bush. Conservatives and Republicans assume that Bush takes the positions he takes for merely “political” (i.e. electoral), reasons, which means that he doesn’t really believe in his own policies. This gives them hope that he can be persuaded under the right circumstances to adopt a more conservative line, or that, after his re-election, when he doesn’t have to run again, he will bring out his “true,” conservative agenda. So they keep supporting him, living in hope.

But if they understood what I believe to be the case, that Bush is a liberal, then they would realize that there’s no realistic hope of his adopting more conservative policies in the future, except, of course, as a ploy to win over conservatives.

Thus, ironically, the key to conservatives’ continued support for Bush is their belief that he is a cynical politician!

I remember before the 2000 election Paul Weyrich writing in several columns, “Friends of mine who know George W. Bush tell me that he is far more conservative in private than in public.” Weyrich predicted several times that conservatives wouild be “pleasantly surprised” by GWB. I forget the author’s name, but I saw something like this in NRO, “He’s (GWB) very conservative when you meet him.”

This, of course, was so much wishful thinking. Most of the Republican cheerleaders are still saying this. See R. Emmett Tyrell’s columns on Townhall.com.

It didn’t occur to these great conservative intellects that Bush was a politician, and that making your audience believe that you think and feel just like them is what politicians do.

In an old Bob Dylan song:

“Well, the politician’s out there in front of the steeple,
“Tellin’ me he loves all kinds of people.
“He’s eatin’ bagels,
“he’s eatin’ pizza,
“he’s eatin’ chitterlins.”

In my last comment I said that conservatives believe in Bush because they think he’s really a conservative and they don’t understand that he’s a politician adapting to his (conservative) listeners. In the comment before that I said that conservatives believe in Bush because they think that when he adopts liberal positions he’s only being a politician. The statements may appear to be contradictory, but are not. They are both consistent with my view that Bush at bottom is a sincere liberal.

When I poll friends who think of themselves as conservative (I don’t always think they are, but it’s what they think that matters here), another consistent reason for supporting Bush comes up: he is not a Democrat. Fear of Democrats is what keeps Bush alive politically, and is what allows him constantly to veer farther Left. He may be getting as far Left as Democrats in some areas, but - as many VFR contributors have said - he gets a pass simply because he has the right party label.

Even after Bush’s despicable Death to America amnesty/guest-worker proposal, and even now that it seems certain that the demented Dr. Dean won’t be the Democrats’ nominee, I get the same answer. Every self-described conservative I have asked opposes Bush’s amnesty betrayal (although many of them employ hispanic invaders for assorted tasks, and pay no attention to their legal status), yet all still plan to vote for Bush - because he is not a Democrat.

Another constant theme is that when I try to get people to think of Bush as what he is, a liberal, most cannot do it - because he is a Republican. Democrat = liberal is an equation everyone makes, because it is true. Republican = conservative is still an equation most people make, even though it ain’t necessarily so.

The scales may be slipping, but they have not fallen from most people’s eyes - yet. HRS

We can count on Limbaugh and other conservatives to keep on repeating the argument that GWB is employing a brilliant political “strateegery” that will utterly destroy the Dems in November, after which the real conservative will come out of the closet and all will be well. At the same time, they’ll attack those of us who realize what Bush is as ‘single-issue fanatics who don’t understand the incremental nature of politics.’ No matter what is before their eyes in plain view, they will simply refuse to observe that man behind the curtain. Perhaps they can’t face the reality of a Republican Party having been hijacked by liberals. On the other hand, maybe they - like a great many Democrats - are so completely partisan that they are unable to separate truth from fiction.

Mr. Cella writes:
“Mik may well be right; but he will have to excuse us if we are somewhat dubious of numbers and arguments presented by The American Prospect — the same numbers and arguments advanced vociferously by the various Democratic candidates.”

Those numbers come from Bureau of Labor Statistics, they are as reliable as a goverment agency can possibly produce. Among economists of all stripes BLS has a reasonably good non-partisan reputation.

I understand the sentiment about TAP, I knew those numbers from other sources and TAP article was a convenient place where those numbers were pulled together.

mik’s point only underscores what I said about the boy who cried wolf. TAP is such a partisan magazine that one assumes its information is not true even when it is.

Agricola writes:
“The statistic of jobs lost is of course totally meaningless unless one also considers the number of jobs created; the failure to do so is pretty much the definition of tendentiousness. “Bushanomics”, i.e. deficit spending with mild tax relief, is indistinguishable from the policies of most every president…”.

1. Numbers cited are NET, Num of jobs created - num of jobs lost = -2.9M.
Every year, recession or not, tens of millions of jobs are created and destroyed. What is interesting of course is the difference between two. Also is very interesting a wage new jobs pay vs a wage lost jobs paid. Currently new jobs pay 20% less than lost jobs, a real bad sign for Bush.

2. Deficit spending by itself does not tell us if it is good or bad. Devil is in the details. Many people think that Bush admin uses ax where a surgical knife is called for.

mik wrote: “Those numbers come from Bureau of Labor Statistics, they are as reliable as a goverment agency can possibly produce. Among economists of all stripes BLS has a reasonably good non-partisan reputation.”

True, but the BLS produces two sets of survey numbers on jobs, and the Democrats pick the lower number for partisan reasons. One survey is of households, in which thousands of households are contacted and asked if they are working, seeking employment, given up on seeking employment, etc. The second survey is of businesses, asking them how many they employ.

The first survey produces the “household” statistics, while the second produces the “payroll” statistics. The payroll statistics are always more pessimistic. Let me give an example from a recent TownHall.com column (sorry I cannot find the link right now). A company decides that, instead of employing 1000 white and blue collar workers at its factory, along with 300 other workers who do janitorial work, run the cafeteria, service the vending machines, mow the grass, etc., it is going to outsource those 300 jobs to a couple of outside companies who specialize in that kind of thing, or even to a company that some of its own ancillary service workers decide to start on the spur of the moment to avoid being laid off.

Two interesting things happen: The BLS does not necessarily get hold of the small company to record its new or increasing payroll, but the big established company reports that it employs 300 fewer people. Thus, total jobs get undercounted. Second, the company now claims to produce just as much product with 1000 workers as it did with 1300 workers, meaning its “manufacturing productivity” has just increased by a quantum leap. Thus, trends towards outsourcing lead to claims that an economic recovery is “jobless” because “productivity gains” mean that companies must not need to rehire workers in order to increase output during the recovery.

For more on the issues of deceptive and partisan use of statistics:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20040122.shtml

For more details about the wage trends in the computer field and the exporting of jobs to India, China, etc.:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/alanreynolds/ar20040104.shtml

For the best explanation of the BLS statistics, including exposition of pinko chicanery by the Democrats:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brucebartlett/bb20040106.shtml

Bruce Bartlett also notes that the household statistics have ALWAYS been used to compute the official unemployment rate, yet the Democrats want to compute their own rate using the payroll statistics and their own methods.

There is something I would like to add to my post about those who claim that “Bush is very conservative in private.” One reason for this is that Bush NEVER expresses a strong conservative belief in public. Remember how he started babbling about “compassionate conservatism” at the start of the 2000 campaign? Or his speech at how glad he was to hear Spanish spoken in virtually every large city? So these great conservative intellects rationalize this away by claiming “Bush is very conservative in private.”

Good point by David. Can you imagine people saying, “In private, General Washington is a very patriotic man.”

David and Mr. Auster have put things very well. But I wonder what evidence there is even for the claim that Bush sounds conservative in private. As far as I can make out, in private he is the same stumbling, inarticulate fool he looks like in public whenever he is not able to follow the script handed him by Rove. His sole commitment is to reelection and a family dynasty. After the immigration foulup, it should be impossible even to pretend that Bush is a conservative. I am afraid that that conclusion, however, does not quite show that a Democrat will not be even worse. People have a habit of voting for the lesser evil because what seems to be the lesser evil is less evil. I say that though I myself fully intend to vote against Bush.

I’m sorry for repeating myself on this point but I must. It is not the case that Bush cares only about his re-election and his family’s dynasty. He BELIEVES in open borders. He BELIEVES in the Hispanicization of America. If he wasn’t a zealous believer in these things, do you think he would have signed on to the transparently counterproductive strategy of opening the borders in the hope of gaining Hispanic votes, when it’s obvious that the Democrats will always be able to offer the Hispanics more than Republicans can, and that the only thing the policy will accomplish is alienating the GOP’s conservative base? Only someone who already BELIEVED in open immigration would have bought into such a wacky political strategy.

It’s like what Michael Medved used to say about Hollywood’s propensity to keep churning out anti-Christian movies. The Hollywood types themselves would explain their choice this way: “We just produce what the public wants, we’re not trying to be anti-Christian, we just want to make money.” Yet the reality, as Medved pointed out, was that these movies kept failing in the box office, and that Hollywood kept producing them anyway. This shows that they produce such movies because they believe in them; and they then use the money-making argument as a rationalization to give a “pragmatic” cover to what is really a personally and ideologically motivated act.

It’s the same with Bush and immigration. At one level of his mind, he may well be thinking, “Rove tells me this will win the Hispanics.” But unless he ALREADY wanted to let the Hispanics in anyway, it is extremely unlikely that he would have bought into Rove’s ridiculous logic.

Mr Auster makes an exellent point.
Bush takes political gambles. Iraq was quite risky politically. Yet he did it because he probably believes it was a right thing to do.

Revolutionary Immigration Manifesto is a very risky strategy in an election year. Bush did it because he believes it is a right thing to do.

“Revolutionary Immigration Manifesto is a very risky strategy in an election year. Bush did it because he believes it is a right thing to do.”

Exactly.

I may have overstated the case in saying that Bush’s sole commitment was to his and his family’s political fortunes; yet it seems to me to be very difficult to find the commitment to ideology or principle that seems so obvious to Mr. Auster. To Bush, the immigration “strategy” may be all wrapped up in his own family’s Hispanic association. We are agreed, of course, that in terms of realistic politics, it is a miscalculation - but how often do modern American politicians do the realistic or sensible thing? It may be that in general, I find it increasingly hard to credit our political leaders with any real allegiance to anything, except when it is to leftwing ideology, and I doubt a man so obsessed with business interests can be accurately diagnosed as being a leftist ideologue.

One doesn’t need to think that Bush is a leftist ideologue to think that he wants to make America more diverse, more brown; that he believes any opposition to that agenda is based on resentment and thus is deserving of no respect; that he thinks America has a racist legacy which still is to be overcome. Leftism/liberalism is not a single comprehensive package; people tend to believe particularly strongly in some aspects of it. Bush could believe in our present capitalist/corporatist system and also believe in the Hispanicization of America.

While I don’t we should ignore the dynastic aspect of Bush’s motivation, I do believe that he is very ideological in his actions and policies. Mr. Levine, one can be a leftist and a corporatist at the same time, that’s the Gramscian model for achieving utopia. It is this Gramscian marriage of corporatist globalism with a leftist “social gospel” that has made Bush and the Coutry Club Republicans such a toxic force. Bush and Rove are feeling free to open the borders because they are well aware that there will be no opposition from the Democrats - only complaints that he hasn’t gone far enough. The rest of the campaign can be spent in allowing the Democrats to expose themselves as Marxist lunatics in order to scare the conservative base into voting for Bush.

I wonder if our best hope might lie in trying to get enough genuine conservatives elected to congress instead of voting for a Democrat. As it stands, we could very easily face the prospect of a hard leftist like Kerry in the White House with only a token Republican opposition. Kerry’s leftist ideas would be enacted with solid Democratic support plus that of RINOs like Collins, Snowe, Hatch, McCain, Frist, etc. The rot runs deeper than George W. Bush.

Mr. Levine says, “As far as I can make out, in private he is the same stumbling, inarticulate fool he looks like in public whenever he is not able to follow the script handed to him by Rove.”

I believe there is a lot to this argument. A while back, there was a piece in the New Republic on why liberals detest GWB so much. A reason given is that a man so lacking in knowledge has attained so high a position. The writer mentioned seeing Bush take a question at a press conference concerning Jonathan Pollard. “It was evident that Bush had no idea who Pollard was,” he wrote.

I don’t think the neocons have a high regard for Bush’s intelligence either. I remember a piece by Christopher Caldwell during the 2000 campaign praising Cheney’s strong performance in the 2000 VP debate. Caldwell noted that you didn’t have to worry about Cheney’s capacity to discuss national and international issues. He then inferred that there was concern that GWB would make a stunning gaffe or reveal a lack of knowledge during a debate. I don’t remember the exact words, but Caldwell wrote something to that effect.

Bush has never had any inclination or curiosity to question what he picked up at Yale and Harvard, or the attitudes of Big Business-Country Club Republicans. The hardship his policies will cause middle class Americans are invisible to him. As Mr. Auster says, GWB strongly believes in “making America more brown and diverse.” If Bush really was an intelligent man, he would not insult his base so obviously, but would take a more stealthy approach.

“If Bush really was an intelligent man, he would not insult his base so obviously, but would take a more stealthy approach.”

Ok, with David’s addition, we’re now approaching a Copernican theory of Bush’s motivations which replaces the inadequate Ptolemaic theories most people have been struggling with.

1. Emotional. He likes and identifies with Mexicans.

2. Ideological. He has a messianic belief in the diversification of America, overcoming the legacy of racism, and so on.

3. Ignorance and thick-headedness.

4. Political calculation. Since the calculation is so obviously wrong, Bush’s investment in it is best explained by a combination of the non-rational factors 1, 2, and 3.

As I think Mr. Sutherland said recently, Bush is not smart, but he’s sly. Well here’s an example of that. Bush is very sly, but because his slyness is not backed up by intelligence and knowledge, the slyness is counterproductive. However, even when the counterproductive nature of his immigation policy becomes evident, he doesn’t give it up, because he’s emotionally and ideologically committed to it as well.

Mr. Auster’s neo-Copernican bushmological theory (maybe we should call it the Austerian Unified Theory) summarizes President Bush well. Applying it, we have a man whose: emotions override the national interest even to advocating flooding his own country with foreigners whom his countrymen do not welcome; ideology makes him incapable of defending his country in the ways that most matter, indeed make him willing to sacrifice his country and its citizens (not himself or his family, though) so that foreigners can take jobs here; ignorance and thick-headedness prevent his seeing what his policies would do to his country, or even to his re-election prospects.

It is very hard for me to see how any Democrat could be worse, especially given that Bush’s emotional Mexiphilia, which no major Democrat shares because none has Bush’s Mexican links, leaves him incapable of acting against the greatest single threat to American unity: mass immigration, in the first instance from Mexico. HRS

Bushmological! I like that.

When David wrote: “Weyrich predicted several times that conservatives wouild be ‘pleasantly surprised’ by GWB. I forget the author’s name, but I saw something like this in NRO, ‘He’s (GWB) very conservative when you meet him.’

“This, of course, was so much wishful thinking. Most of the Republican cheerleaders are still saying this. See R. Emmett Tyrell’s columns on Townhall.com.”

David has scored a bullseye, here. If you didn’t live in Texas while Bush was governor, you wouldn’t even know that this has been his and his mouthpieces’ MO since the beginning. One of Bush’s first acts while governor was to purge the Republican Party of its “radicals” (aka “conservatives”) in the first state Republican convention over which his minions presided. And every step of the way he had the state’s major newspapers, especially the Dallas Morning News, supporting him—as he still does. (If this alone doesn’t tell you about his real nature, nothing will!)

I remember midway through Bush’s term as governor that I met a friend for lunch who brought along Bill Murchison. Murchison, a former member of the Dallas Morning News’ editorial staff (whose columns can still be found at townhall.com) was enthralled with Bush. Every time I made a complaint or brought up Bush’s stances on affirmative action and Latin immigration (yes, he advocated them back then, too), I was reassured that this was all “window dressing” to appeal to groups on issues he could do nothing about anyway. The selling point Murchison kept making was just how “great” his judicial appointments were and how, yes, “conservative” he was in private.

Murchison and the others are still mouthing this mush (see, for example, Murchison’s recent column on “immigration realities” http://www.townhall.com/columnists/billmurchison/bm20040113.shtml ) These shills not only have an emotional attachment to Bush, I believe their personal professional and *financial* well being is tied to pumping out lies about him.

I had stopped reading Murchison’s stuff years ago, as it just seemed to be liberal mush, with some vague residue of Catholicism mixed in (didn’t he used to publish in The Wanderer, or NR?). But Paul C.’s background on him makes sense of where he’s coming from.

Mr. Auster wrote: “I had stopped reading Murchison’s stuff years ago, as it just seemed to be liberal mush, with some vague residue of Catholicism mixed in …”

Funny enough, he’s an Episcopalian. Didn’t you just know it without having to ask?

Here’s Bill Murchison, a mind in the final stages of mushiness:

“Immigration is the thorniest of realities. On the one hand, a nation has the right to say who comes in and who doesn’t. On the other hand, cars, airplanes, TV, movies, free trade and commercial interdependency have drawn the world together in a way wondrous to see. You could fairly say that society is becoming global: not exclusively this, that or the other, but a mishmash. All this is happening regardless of our druthers….

“And then, there are immigrants like the parents of Colin Powell, not to mention the parents of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who happens to command our troops in Iraq just now, under the overall command of Gen. John Abizaid, an Arab American. It is a curious fact that so many on the front lines defending America — sometimes dying for her — have names other than Jones and Smith.

“We live every day with realities like these. It is no use trying to blink them away.

“We don’t really know how this conversation, once begun, is going to end up. But, conservatives or liberals, we should be glad the president has invited us to it. The only realities that ruin a man, a woman or a nation are the kind that go forever ignored.”

Think about that. Murchison’s bottom line is that we should admire President Bush for making an immigration proposal that looks reality squarely in the face, a reality that everyone else but Bush has been ignoring.

Here are Paul Weyrich’s current thoughts on Bush and immigration: http://www.freecongress.org/media/040112.asp

Why does even Weyrich fall for the “we are all immigrants” canard? An American child of American parents is not an immigrant to the United States. An American descended from Colonial settlers is not even the descendant of immigrants to the United States - he is the descendant of settlers, FOUNDERS of the United States.

Unless we can get past the notion that America is uniquely a “nation of immigrants” and nothing else, we are going to lose this fight. If the United States is merely a nation of immigrants, what principled basis is there for denying entrance to anyone? If there was a United States that predated waves of immigrants and to which immigrants are supposed to give their allegiance, then we natives have an argument for preserving what remains of it: immigrants must conform to the existing society that welcomed them. More important, it enables us to argue that our society has the right to exclude immigrants for any reason or none at all - but especially if we natives think it necessary to preserve our society as we wish it to be.

It’s no surprise any more that GW Bush (descendant of founders, not immigrants) cannot see this. It is more of a surprise that more intelligent men like Paul Weyrich and William Murchison, who I know from personal experience loves the particular ways of Texas and the rest of the South, cannot see it either. Or is it just that they dare not say it? HRS

I dislike going into Bush’s motivations and psyche yet again. But it may be worth pointing out that hot air, not ideology, is a Bush family tradition. Recall Bush senior’s bloviations “a thousand points of light,” “a kinder, gentler, America,” and “a new world order.” Noone would regard these utterances by Bush’s father (who was probably more intelligent and perhaps more decent than his son) as revelations of a serious ideology. Why take the babblings of the retarded offspring so seriously?
One can only hope we will not have to listen to them too much longer.

While I agree with Howard Sutherland’s exasperation with the “nation of immigrants” cant, it may be worth pointing out that one can start from a diametrically opposite point, and still justify restricting immigration. Even if we are all immigrants or “descendants of immigrants,” so what? Virtually all human populations are the products of some migration or other. The Finns, to take a minor example, migrated from Estonia in the last 2000 years or so, and only recently completed occupying northern Finland at the expense of the Lapps. Does that mean that the modern day Finns have no right to prevent the Russians, for example, from seizing their country, with by force of arms or infiltrating it? Sanity dictatest that nations have a prescriptive right to the territory they occupy and to preserve their society. Anything else amounts to announcing a right to steal.
By the way, I have heard, grapevine wise, that the Bush family are not descended from New England settlers, but from much later arrived German-Americans, who falsified their genealogy and Anglicized their name from Busch! I can’t say I care very much, but does anyone know anything about this?

Seems most unlikely. The Bushes are in all probability descended from the Puritan migration into New England of 1629 to 1640, from which such a large part of the population of the United STates is descended.