Conservatives on Bush's Inaugural ...

On Richard Jensen's Conservativenet, there's been considerable comment about Bush's inaugural address and reactions to it. Matthew Richter, a graduate student in comparative literature and intellectual history at Columbia, was most critical."Given that his 1st Inaugural was so good," said Richer,"I was surprised that this speech was so bad, even occasionally inscrutable. Its religiosity lacked any sense of modesty. It was messianic, almost megalomaniacal. Does our livelihood really depend on our ability to spread liberty to the backwaters of Asia and Africa? Hard to believe he had just sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution."

Ken Heineman, a Contributing Editor at Cliopatria, was positively euphoric:

I was deeply moved by President Bush's address. Its beautiful language and soft-spoken, heart-felt delivery, seemed to me to be on a par with the second inaugural address of Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt's first, and John F. Kennedy's.

President Bush made it clear that the work he set out for us will be one spanning generations. He exhorted us to look inside ourselves for our better natures and to form communities of hope and freedom for all, regardless of nationality, race, and religion. President Bush did not declare his intention to make the world perfect--contra Noonan--but for all of us to strive to struggle against fear in an effort to make life a little better, a little freer.

I believe, as Ben Wattenberg has written, that we are the"first universal nation." Universal not just because we have within our borders people from every corner of the globe, but because our ideals are universal. And we are defined by ideals, not by race and blood. American ideals, President Bush is arguing, are worth defending, even as we struggle to live up--not always successfully--to those very same ideals.

Quite honestly, there has within my own lifetime (born in 1962) a President that I can remember who moved me as much as President Bush has, in the past and especially yesterday.

The comment by Alonzo Hamby of Ohio University, was more measured, but it strikes me as the best positive reading of the inaugural address that I've seen.

Much of the comment thus far on the inaugural could use a little perspective. Bush is hardly the first American president to proclaim the virtues of democracy. And it seems clear that he uses the word, as Americans invariably do, in the sense of liberal democracy, a creed that reconciles majority rule with individual rights. The proclamation of an American mission to spread liberal democracy in the world is often connected with Democrats such as Wilson, FDR, Truman, and Kennedy (did Bush really outbid"pay any price, bear any burden"?), but Reagan staked a Republican claim to it. Bush needs to be understood as the latest comer to a long-established rhetorical tradition.

As for operational meaning, does anyone out there really think that he is going to try to overthrow the government of Pakistan? There is no reason to think that he and Condoleezza Rice do not understand the meaning of such terms as"lesser evil" or that the US in the next four years will rampage around the world. In fact, a"senior official" has identified a hit-list of the world's six most repugnant regimes that we would do well to try to change and have a clear interest in changing. No one can deny that doing something about these six is a big order that probably will not be achieved in Bush's second term, but what is the argument for ignoring them?

The realist tradition in American foreign policy has a long and honorable tradition. I happen to think that it served us pretty well during most of the Cold War, when we faced a nuclear-armed foe. But in today's world, the promotion of liberal democracy seems a pretty good strategy against Islamic terrorism. It won't be easy, but neither was nearly a half-century of containment. And, of course, we need to avoid moralistic hubris.

Let us also remember that realism has its own dark side. If asked to name the most shameful act of American foreign policy in my lifetime, I probably would refer to the decision of Brent Scowcroft and Bush 41 at the end of the Gulf War to encourage the Shia and Kurds to revolt against Saddam Hussein, then to do nothing as Saddam slaughtered them in horrific numbers. It was all about"stability," we later learned, after some embarrassing dissembling.

At this juncture, I'd rather see American foreign policy tied to the banner of liberal democracy, and I'm willing to bet that the administration can manage it intelligently.

Correction and Update: I have corrected an error in my original post. Kenneth Heineman is not a former student of Alonzo Hamby. Ken's doctorate is from the University of Pittsburgh. Responding to Hamby's remarks, Cliopatria's Contributing Editor, Michael Kazin, asked:

On what evidence does Prof. Hamby base his"bet" that Bush and co. will handle an idealistic foreign policy"responsibly"? They certainly failed that test in Iraq and could easily do the same in Iran, if they follow what seems to be Cheney's desire and bomb the nuclear facilities in that nation without winning approval first from our NATO allies.

And, in my opinion, the most shameless act of US foreign policy in my lifetime was the Clinton administration's failure to intervene in Rwanda in 1994, when doing so would probably have spared hundreds of thousands of lives. And I say that as a liberal Democrat.

For other reactions by historians, see these on HNN's mainpage.