"No One Doubts Bush's Sincerity"? Why the Hell Not?

In his column in today's Washington Post, E. J. Dionne writes about his friend David Kuo, the former deputy director of the Bush administration's office of faith-based initiatives. Kuo has been criticizing his former boss, specifically with reference to the harsh cuts for social programs in the new budget. Kuo's conclusion is that Bush's "compassionate conservativism" is ultimately superficial: "From tax cuts to Medicare, the White House gets what the White House really wants. . . . It never really wanted the 'poor people stuff.' "

So far, my reaction is "Duh." But then Kuo (along with Dionne, quoting him) strikes an attitude that drives me just a little nuts. Dionne writes: "To this day, Kuo speaks warmly of the president he served. 'No one who knows him even a tiny bit doubts the sincerity and compassion of his heart' . . . "

Well, why the hell don't they? Since when is the "sincerity and compassion" of a person--in particular, of a public official--judged on the basis of the things they say and the facial expressions they wear in private conversations . . . as opposed to the decisions they make, the policies they pursue, and the priorities they establish? If I knew someone who talked a lot about caring for the poor, but then used his enormous power primarily to help the wealthy at the expense of the poor, I think I might harbor some doubts about "the sincerity and compassion of his heart."

Michael Kinsley, my favorite commentator in the MSM, long ago demolished the kind of sloppy, personalized thinking we see in Kuo and Dionne. Back in 1990, writing in Time magazine about the current president's father, Kinsley commented:

[L]et's . . . stipulate that George Bush is a pleasant person and, more than that, genuinely decent in his personal dealings. There is a difference between that kind of niceness and decency on the public stage. Bush has perfected the art of substituting the one for the other. . . .

Bush's facile ability and his willingness to switch off his niceness when convenient makes you wonder how genuine it is. . . Bush's repeated cool response to distant suffering and struggles gives the impression that at some level he just doesn't get it. He may give his coat to a beggar on the street--noblesse oblige--but his sleep is not disturbed by things he can't see. . . .

In sum, Bush is basically a decent man whose decency, unfortunately, is about an eighth of an inch thick; a man whose personal decency masks, rather than enhances, his public role; a good person, if there's no reason not to be, but a sucker for a Faustian bargain. He can be had cheap--political convenience will certainly suffice. And that's not nice at all.

In this respect, the acorn didn't fall far from the tree.

I don't see Bush fils as identical in character to Bush pere. W strikes me as having been embittered by his father's political setbacks, which apparently led him to conclude that success in the Washington arena calls for more cynical cunning than his father ever possessed. Thus, I think the younger Bush is more consciously manipulative and deceitful than his dad was.

This comparison is not intended to exonerate the father, not even a little: I believe that honest awareness of one's own motives, weaknesses, and failings is a moral responsibility, which makes the willfully blind morally culpable. I'm just suggesting that Bush 43 has taken the cynical phoniness of his father to new depths.

After nine years of this style of presidential leadership, I'm fed up with Washington insiders--including those who recognize and decry the meannesses of the Bush policies--waxing eloquent about the "niceness" and the "sincerity" of the private Bushes. This is one of those circumstances in which you get a clearer view of the subject by being further away rather than closer.