Free A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency by Glenn Greenwald Page B

deficit-plagued Reagan administration, and during the budget-balancing Clinton administration, it decreased by 8.2 percent. All of this led the AEI report to conclude: “It seems incontestable that we should conclude that the country’s purse is worse off when Republicans are in power.”
    The Bush administration has also repeatedly asserted the prerogatives of federal power in areas traditionally reserved to the states. It has, for instance, sought to eliminate the right of the states to enact laws governing marriage, assisted suicide, and the use of medical marijuana. In each of those areas, various states have enacted laws—in some instances by referenda—that President Bush disliked. As a result, the Bush administration fought to override the judgment of the states by federalizing those issues and imposing the policy preferences of the president as a uniform, compulsory standard, which no state was to be free to reject. Hence: No gay marriage. No physician-assisted suicide. No permitting terminally ill individuals to obtain prescriptions for marijuana to treat their afflictions or alleviate their symptoms.
    The Bush administration’s disdain for the ostensibly conservative belief in limited federal power and the sanctity of states’ rights became most apparent in the case of Terri Schiavo. A lifelong Republican and Southern Baptist state court judge had been presiding over the Schiavo matter for several years, faithfully applying clear Florida state law to resolve the battle between Schiavo’s husband and her parents as to what end-of-life decisions would be made about Schiavo. Florida appellate courts upheld virtually all of that judge’s substantive rulings.
    But the outcome of those state judicial proceedings deviated from the president’s moral preferences and those of his “conservative” Congressional allies. As a result, in an atmosphere of intense drama, Congress enacted and the president signed “emergency” legislation vesting authority in the federal courts to override the judgment of the Florida courts. Wielding the tools of federal power, they sought to take it upon themselves to resolve the end-of-life issues faced by Terri Schiavo’s family, issues that were controlled by clear Florida law.
    The list of the Bush administration’s systematic deviations from fundamentally “conservative principles” (as they exist in theory) is too lengthy to chronicle here. Suffice it to say, while the Bush presidency is consistent with the actual decisions and policies of previous “conservative” politicians, a belief in conservative theories of government is plainly not what has guided the president or his administration.
    MORALISM TRUMPS CONSERVATISM
    T hat political conservatism (in its theoretical sense) has not been the North Star of the Bush presidency defies reasonable dispute. That reality leads to the question, What does drive the president? When aggregated, the Bush administration’s actions, policies, and political arguments can appear jumbled and incoherent, bereft of a philosophical center. But the opposite is true. At the heart of the Bush presidency exists a coherent worldview, one the president has applied with exceptional consistency and unyielding conviction.
    Many Bush critics, and even some of his supporters, have long depicted the president as a weak and malleable individual—more of an aimless figurehead than a resolute leader—whose actions are the by-product not of personal agency but manipulation and control by advisers shrewder and more willful than he. But that portrayal is pure mythology, for which there is virtually no support.
    It is certainly true that throughout his presidency, Bush has relied heavily on advisers who focus on details, has delegated even significant tasks to aides, and has trusted those around him to inform him of critical matters and to educate him on issues about which he knew little. In those regards, his reliance on his advisers and top aides is