BUSH AND 9/11….James Joyner, noting the harsh tone evident in many of the lefty blogosphere’s 9/11 posts today, says that “the stridency of these posts, even from bloggers and publications on the moderate side of the lefty blogosphere is surprising.”
Speaking only for myself, I’m not sure this should come as a surprise to anyone. My biggest disappointment of the past five years ? the biggest by a very long way ? has been the way that George Bush transformed 9/11 from an opportunity to bring the country together into a cynical and partisan cudgel useful primarily for winning a few more votes in national elections.
Compare and contrast: FDR was surely one of the most partisan presidents of the 20th century, but after Pearl Harbor he announced that “Dr. New Deal has been replaced by Dr. Win the War.” And he made good on that. World War II was largely a bipartisan war and FDR largely governed as a bipartisan commander-in-chief.
And Bush? Within a few months of 9/11 Karl Rove was telling party members what a great issue terrorism would be for Republicans. Andy Card was busily working on the marketing campaign for Iraq, timed for maximum impact on the midterm elections in 2002. Joe Lieberman’s DHS bill was hijacked and deliberately loaded with anti-union features in order to draw Democratic complaints and hand Bush a campaign issue. The UN resolution on WMD inspections in Iraq was kept on fire until literally the day after the midterms, at which point the version acceptable to the rest of the world was suddenly agreeable to Bush as well. Democrats who supported Bush on the war were treated to the same scorched-earth campaigning as everyone else. Bipartisanship bought them nothing.
What else? Bush never engaged with Democrats in any way. Bill Clinton and Al Gore were both hawkish Dems who could have been co-opted early if Bush had had any intention of treating the war seriously. He didn’t even try. He continued pushing divisive domestic issues like tax cuts and culture war amendments. (“Dr. Tax Cuts has been replaced by Dr. Win the War” would have been more appropriate.) He showed little interest in funding anti-proliferation efforts or working with serious Democratic proposals to improve domestic security at ports and chemical plants. The national security rhetoric from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the administration was relentlessly inflammatory and divisive.
I think this is a complaint that most conservatives don’t accept ? even conservatives who have soured on Bush over the past couple of years. But believe me: on the Democratic side of the aisle, Bush’s intensely and gratuitously partisan approach to 9/11 and the war on terror is keenly felt. Sunday’s Republican Party photo-op at Ground Zero was just more of the same.
UPDATE: Spencer Ackerman puts it this way: “By using September 11 to aggregate power for himself, and to make his opponents ? you, me, and every other liberal who needed to feel like we could trust our leaders after we were attacked ? feel disloyal to their country, he prevented us from healing.”
