George Will vs. the Neo-Cons

*** This entry has been almost a week in the making. While it reflects my personal views, many of the major political bloggers and websites have also weighed in on this issue as the election draws nearer so my thoughts might sound similar to items already published. Ned Lamont has now pulled into a statistical ‘dead heat’ with the incumbent and former President Clinton stumped for Joe Lieberman today to support a long-time ally and friend. With only two weeks to go, it could be a ‘heckuva’ race…

In my Tuesday posting last week, I presented my thoughts about conservative columnists Jonah Goldberg and David Brooks and their recent editorials concerning Joe Lieberman’s difficulties in his current senate primary race against newcomer Ned Lamont. Although neither man is a liberal or a resident of Connecticut (both live either inside or near the DC ‘beltway’), they feel obliged to enlighten their readers about the ideological battles they perceive occurring inside today’s Democratic Party (Goldberg mentions several factions, including ‘the people” versus “the establishment”; Brooks uses the labels ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘quasi-independents’ fighting it out about how politics should be conducted).

To the GOP, this Connecticut primary is politically akin to a huge piñata—a big fragile target expected to break apart when repeatedly struck. We are now witnessing every rightwing columnist worth his/her muster coming forward to take their best swings (sans blindfold), crawl around on the floor, and collect their expected treats. One of those recent ‘swingers’ turns out to be George F. Will, columnist for both the Washington Post and Newsweek.

Like his two conservative compatriots, Will is another DC-tethered journalist that can be counted upon to uphold the finest traditions of that political philosophy. In a January 2001 editorial, he came to within a few choice words of calling the departing Democratic president a rapist and ended his column with the following:

Clinton is not the worst president the republic has had, but he is the worst person ever to have been president.

Will had already established his right-wing bona fides through his alleged assistance to Ronald Reagan when he prepared for his televised debate with Jimmy Carter in 1980—an ethical ‘no-no’ for supposedly neutral journalists (at least in the pre-Fox News days). He maintained his contacts with the GOP through their ‘revolutionary’ 1990s and has sustained his op/ed support to them and the conservative movement to the present day.

Will was one of the more vocal journalists advocating for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. His support was so fever pitched that he was given the nickname ‘war pimp’ by Baltimore columnist William Hughes; however, in the months and years since President Bush’s declaration of ‘mission accomplished’, his declining support for this military occupation has been very noticeable to many—especially those on the right. In his most recent DDN column (July 18^th), he jabs at the administration’s current miscalculations in the Middle Eastern crisis and the ‘advice’ they are getting from their neo-conservative faithful:

The administration, justly criticized for its Iraq premises and their execution, is suddenly receiving some criticism so untethered from reality as to defy caricature. The national, ethnic and religious dynamics of the Middle East are opaque to most people, but to the Weekly Standard -- voice of a spectacularly misnamed radicalism, "neo-conservatism" -- everything is crystal clear: Iran is the key to everything.

(I believe that the term ‘crystal’ was chosen specifically as a direct jab aimed at the Weekly Standard’s editor--and co-founder of the Project for a New American Strategy movement--William Kristol--DDN Op/Ed Critic)

I believe the last sentence above holds the key to his growing discontent with the Bush White House. Mr. Will is a ‘dyed-in-the-wool’ traditional Reagan conservative, who believes in such things as limited government and fiduciary constraint with the taxpayers’ resources. The current administration is buoyed by a neo-conservatism credo—somewhat akin to their ‘paleo’ cousins but one that advocates a unilateral and moralist foreign agenda, focusing less on social conservative issues, and having a weaker dedication to minimalist government policies. In an interview with the Pittsburgh Gazette’s Bill Steigerwald, George gives the following description of individuals who follow that particular political persuasion (with my reddened text for emphasis):

Neoconservatives are persons who in domestic policy often were former Democrats who felt that conservatives had erred in not accepting the post-New Deal role of the central government. They were in their early incarnation focusing on domestic policy and were distinguishing themselves from Goldwater conservatives.

Also in domestic policies, however, as the '60s unfolded into the '70s and '80s, they led the critique of overreaching in domestic social engineering, saying that we accept the post-New Deal role of the central government, but the accumulated powers thereof are being wielded in a way too confident and optimistic and hubristic, if you will.

In foreign policy, and here's where it gets interesting, they have a more ambitious, more confident approach to the use of power than regular conservatives -- if you see the symmetry here? They say that America is a nation uniquely equipped as the sole remaining superpower to order the world and spread our values, etc., etc.

Very telling…he classifies ’neo-cons’ as NOT true conservatives but as former Democrats who wanted to keep some of their New Deal-based roots but also adopted the use of force (either in a coalition or unilaterally) to push American values to the rest of the world. In a question and answer session following his February 2006 keynote address to the Conservative Political Action Committee, Will went a bit further with a back-handed critique to his audience:

They have, in my judgment, an expansive and imprudent understanding of what the United States can do in projecting force and what follows force. The neo-conservatives, it seems to me, make one basic mistake—and these are wonderful people, public-spirited, American nationalists, the kind of people we want to work together with—but they don’t ask the question “But then what?”

Insights like these let observers see how a seemingly unified party can have vastly different political 'wings' and allows them to witness their internal 'marriages of convenience' struck for the sake of the GOP. Will’s discontent with the neo-conservative movement has been rising since the wheels began coming off of the administration’s rational for a preemptive invasion of Iraq (after WMDs were not found to be where officials believed them to be but before they were officially discredited by the Duelfer Report in September 2004). His July 2003 editorial, titled ‘A Questionable Kind of Conservatism’ was one of his earliest swipes at the administration--one he had previously buoyed in the face of heated anti-war criticism—for its “identity crisis of conservatism” due to then unflattering events on the foreign and domestic fronts.

Over the course of the past three years, Mr. Will has found fault with other activities conducted by the White House. During the political turbulence caused by the President’s nomination of his personal friend Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, he stated that "there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks"— a direct swipe at the president’s judgment to nominate the best qualified conservative candidate for the post. After the stinging judicial rebuke the Dover Board of Education received for introducing the theory of intelligent design into the science classroom, he gave the following evaluation of the ‘storm tossed and rudderless Republican party’ that was still stinging from the Miers nomination debacle:

Dover's insurrection occurred as Kansas' Board of Education, which is controlled by the kind of conservatives who make conservatism repulsive to temperate people, voted 6-4 to redefine science. The board, opening the way for teaching the supernatural, deleted from the definition of science these words: ``a search for natural explanations of observable phenomena.''

Mr. Will has turned increasingly critical of the Bush White House following the disclosure of the secret NSA surveillance programs on both foreign communications and domestic calling records. In an editorial entitled “No Checks, Many Imbalances”, he analyzed Congress’ September 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)—cited by the administration as their ‘get out of jail free card’ for these and other classified programs undertaken in the course of combating terrorists. After carefully peeling the veneer off of the numerous arguments made in defending unitary executive prerogative, Will stated the following:

The administration, in which mere obduracy sometimes serves as political philosophy, pushes the limits of assertion while disdaining collaboration. This faux toughness is folly, given that the Supreme Court, when rejecting President Harry S Truman's claim that his inherent powers as commander in chief allowed him to seize steel mills during the Korean War, held that presidential authority is weakest when it clashes with Congress.

He has also kept an eye on the upcoming Congressional elections and he criticized his own party (and his own journalistic community) for their arrogance in deeming only conservatives to be ‘values voters’:

It is odd that some conservatives are eager to promote the semantic vanity of the phrase "values voters." And it is odder still that the media are cooperating with those conservatives.

Conservatives should be wary of the idea that when they talk about, say, tax cuts and limited government -- about things other than abortion, gay marriage, religion in the public square and similar issues -- they are engaging in values-free discourse. And by ratifying the social conservatives' monopoly of the label "values voters," the media are furthering the fiction that these voters are somehow more morally awake than others.

It’s an easy task to lob grenades over a wall to attack an enemy that is safely stationed on the other side. It takes a lot more courage to aim them at someone on your own side of that protective barrier, especially when you know that you may likely suffer collateral damage due to your actions. Although I might regret saying this, Mr. Will might actually understand his party’s current political dilemmas and it would behoove the GOP to listen to his ideas. Luckily for the Democrats, today’s Republicans are too captivated by their own hubris to pay attention.