QUIXOTIC, AGAIN

Explaining Bush to Italy: The view from here to there. (Michael Novak, August 14, 2003, National Review)

I cannot think of a president who, once in office, so surprised both his critics and his followers as George W. Bush. True, people
expressed surprise at how adroit Reagan was as a political leader, particularly with the Congress, and how truly brilliant as a communicator. But George W. Bush as president had surprised everyone by the high quality of his speeches, and by the bold and ambitious agenda he has step by step organized, one stunning challenge after another. After the suicide attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, for instance, many who had earlier opposed him publicly thanked God that Bush (not Gore) had been elected the preceding year. The young Bush instantly became the voice of the best in the American spirit. He was prayerful and reverent. His public leadership was fearless and steely eyed. When he asked people for their prayers, people who had never met him before knew he meant it. Among evangelicals and others there are many highly active prayer groups, some of them worldwide, praying intensely for him daily.

The desire of G.W. to do the right thing, conscientiously, is palpable.

Never have Catholics had so solicitous a friend in the White House. Bush met early and often with the cardinals, usually without press attention. He also called into existence a lay Catholic "sounding board" led by the editor of the lay journal Crisis, Deal Hudson, to stay in almost daily contact with his top staff. No president has ever been stronger on "the culture of life," or a more consistent supporter of the vision set forth by John Paul II. So pro-Catholic are the president's ideas and sentiments that there are persistent rumors that, like his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, G. W. might also become a Catholic. These rumors probably have no substance but merely verbalize an impression: How could the president's express ideas be so Catholic unless...?

Many Europeans have a hard time sympathizing with the American Republican party. For in Europe they are so inured to statist modes of thinking that there is nothing like the Republican party. From my own experience, I can sympathize on this point. Only slowly, and over intense inner resistance, did I myself come to side more with Reagan's vision of the world than with the social-democratic Democrat-party ideas I had been educated in during my youth. For one thing, the Republican grasp of the dynamism of economic life is much closer to reality, and less statist and (yes) less corrupt. Republicans have a strong sense of community, but their community is the local communities, the "little platoons" written of by Edmund Burke, and families. These are what they reverence, not the state.

Show Democrats a problem, they look for a new state program -- always costly, usually inefficient, and probably counterproductive in the long run. Republicans look to see what people, pulling together in associations, can do for themselves.

For the Republicans, "liberty" is the powerful and dynamic social ideal. For the Democrats, "security" is the most powerful organizing tool. Crying "security," they seek to attract majorities, and to direct the flow of history toward the construction of an ever more watchful and solicitous state. The Democratic style suggests motherliness, the caring nanny. The Republican style suggests manliness and the valiant woman.

Any essay that adopts the freedom vs. security theme is thumbs up in our book, but there's another useful idea here: boiling down George W. Bush's philosophy of government to the "desire...to do the right thing." Such a desire is never a guarante of good results and is quite dangerous if not guided by a restraining morality and genuine humility, but it would explain a good many perceived contradictions in his policies. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 16, 2003 7:20 AM