Dear Bush-supporters: You can't just say "I'm sorry"

Posted by David Sirota at 12:51 PM on April 2, 2007.

In reading the New York Times report about President Bush’s top strategist Matt Dowd now criticizing Bush, three thoughts came to mind that have been bugging me for quite a while. Here they are, as I want to get them off my chest:

1. I’m tired of Republicans believing that, after destroying the country, all they have to say is “sorry” or "I didn't know Bush was such a right winger" and all should be forgiven. Matt Dowd, Bush’s chief strategist, is the latest guy pulling this nonsense, though certainly not the first. The New York Times ran what essentially was his...

... mea culpa for all the problems of the Bush administration (the cynic in me wonders whether Dowd, a former Democrat, is motivated out of a worry that his affiliation with Bush will prevent him from ever getting political consulting clients again). This is the same thing Lee Atwater tried to pull after he used some of the most underhanded, disgusting tactics to destroy Mike Dukakis. Here’s the deal: When you are a chief architect of horrible things that hurt this country, you don’t get to just wake up one day and say “sorry” and expect that all should be forgiven. Or at least you shouldn’t.

2. Political elites who cite personal interactions with the real world as justification for their sudden reversals on issues are not sympathetic figures. On the contrary, they only reinforce how out of touch the ruling class really is. This happens all the time, whether it is a right-wing, budget-cutting politician who suddenly becomes a passionate crusader against a disease when his family member contracts it, or whether it is a Vice President who decides that the one repudiation of his party’s right-wing will be on gay issues, now that America knows his daughter is gay. Dowd’s mea culpa, in fact, is probably the best example. He implies that because his son, a soldier, is getting shipped off to Iraq, he now is firmly against the Iraq War. That he was for the war when the war didn’t affect his circle of friends and family suggests a sickening self-centeredness coursing through the American ruling class. Only when elites are personally affected by their own draconian policies do we hear regret – but not a peep when those draconian policies hammer the faceless, unfamous masses. Tens of thousands of Iraqis are killed, tens of thousands of American soldiers are killed and maimed, but Bush’s chief strategist only feels regret for the Iraq policy that he championed and that created all this bloodshed when his own son may be put on the line. Could the elitism be any more stark?

3. The knee-jerk cheering by progressives when right-wing lunatics, famous Republican Party operatives and assorted out-of-touch Washington pundits once in a while say something accurate is pathetic and worse, counterproductive. This is a regular occurrence when any number of fringe right-wing pundits like George Will or David Brooks or conventional wisdom peddlers like Joe Klein occasionally writes something that isn’t wholly and completely offensive, inaccurate or divorced from reality. When this happens, the blogosphere lights up with praise, and I’m betting that will happen with Dowd’s mea culpa. I say this is pathetic because touting an opponent for saying something inoffensive one in a hundred times projects a deep insecurity and lack of self-confidence. We tell the world that we feel we need lunatics like George Will, right-wing operatives like Matt Dowd or self-important, lazy intellectual lightweights like Joe Klein to validate our positions, even though our positions are valid on the merits. But even worse is how pro-actively self-defeating it all is. When we trumpet fringe opponents or movement obstacles, we validate those opponents and obstacles as legitimate mainstream voices, when they really are not. By giving any credence to conservative ideologues who are so wrong on the facts or pundits who are wildly out of touch with America, we tell the world that we believe these ideologues are generally important, further empowering these opponents for the future when they inevitably revert back to form. The only treatment fringe columnists like George Will deserve from progressives is derision. The only treatment brain dead power worshippers like Joe Klein deserve from progressives is ridicule (like that which Atrios regularly doles out). And the only treatment Republican operatives like Matt Dowd deserve from progressives is silence. None of them, no matter how they are once in a while correct, deserves any praise. To praise them is to praise the hitting prowess of a designated hitter who bats .051 just because you once saw him hit a single. We don’t do that in sports, and we shouldn’t do it in movement politics.

Tagged as: bush, republicans, ny times, matthew dowd

David Sirota is a veteran political strategist and author of Hostile Takeover, a New York Times bestseller about the corruption of both political parties.