Los angeles Times
October 9, 2004
An editor at the paper suggested that I use this week's column to try to make
the most honest and persuasive case I could for President Bush's reelection. At
first I was skeptical. To say that I consider Bush a "bad" president would be a
severe understatement. I think he's bad in a way that redefines my
understanding of the word "bad." I used to think U.S. history had many bad
presidents. Now, my "bad" category consists entirely of George W. Bush, with
every previous president redefined as "good." There's also the fact that, on a
personal level, I despise him with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.
What I'm saying is, advocating Bush is kind of tricky.
But then I
thought, what the heck. Why not try it for the sake of intellectual
experimentation? After all, lawyers often defend some pretty repugnant clients,
right? In keeping with that, I won't attempt to deny that my client has done
some awful things. What I'll argue instead is that his very awfulness is the
reason he deserves reelection.
Begin with the premise that a
second-term Bush administration is unlikely to make things a whole lot worse.
First of all, domestically, GOP moderates and deficit hawks have finally begun
to wake up and realize that they have to rein in Bush's reckless fiscal
policies. At the same time, if John F. Kerry is elected and tries to raise
taxes or rein in spending, he'll probably suffer substantial political damage,
as Bill Clinton did in 1994. But, unlike Clinton, he'll not enjoy Democratic
majorities in both Houses, which means he stands a good chance of failing. That
would be the worst of all worlds: Democrats would suffer the political costs of
demanding sacrifice from the public, without the corresponding benefit of making
the country better.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker has
estimated that there's a 75% chance of a major financial crisis within the next
five years if we don't reduce our budget deficit. That may be too high, but
assume he's right. Whoever holds office would quickl y become extremely
unpopular, whether he had tried to deal with the deficit or not. If the choice
is Bush doing nothing versus Kerry doing nothing, why not let Bush take the
blame for his own mess? Why have a Democrat bail him out?
The foreign
policy calculus is pretty similar. We don't have enough troops to fight the war
we're in, let alone start another one. So there's no reason to fear Bush
botching yet another war. And, as much as I desperately want to be wrong about
this, the odds of Iraq evolving into a stable democracy look pretty grim right
now. If such a scenario ever had any chance of succeeding, it would have
required lots more ground troops to keep the peace and allow reconstruction.
Now it's probably too late to do anything but salvage something short of total
anarchy. If Kerry is president, conservatives will blame him for the failure in
Iraq — if only we still had a leader of Bush's unwavering resolve, they'll
claim, we would have won the war. If Bush is president, he'll be held a
ccountable for his own bungling of the invasion.
That leaves the usual
trump card — social policy. Plenty of my fellow liberals freak out at the
thought of Bush appointing two or more Supreme Court justices. But maybe he
deserves that too. Hear me out. Right now, Republicans get the best of both
worlds. They get tens of millions of social conservatives marching to the polls
to vote for them every two years but, because key points of the
social-conservative agenda never gets enacted, they suffer hardly any political
consequences for their positions.
Now, suppose Bush does appoint a
couple justices. Maybe they will overturn Roe vs. Wade. If Roe falls,
presumably states would decide how to deal with the abortion issue, and a
reinvigorated pro-choice, center-left majority would be able to protect abortion
rights in most places. In fact, the fear of a backlash would probably cause
Bush's justices to chicken out and uphold Roe anyway. Then how would
Republicans persuade social conservatives to keep supporting them?
Bush's presidency is a great mass of contradictions. There's an enormous gap
between his purported values — fiscal discipline, toughness against
terrorists, a commitment to social conservatism — and his true record.
Sure, it would be emotionally satisfying to see Bush rejected by the voters once
again. But maybe, for this president, defeat is too kind a fate.