President Bush: A Man of Conviction and Principles, But...

Brian Tamanaha

Rich Lowry of the National Review reports on his fascinating interview with President Bush. Here are excerpts:

Basically right after “hello,” the next words out of [the President's] mouth are: “Let me just first tell you that I’ve never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions. I firmly believe — I’m oftentimes asked about, well, you’re stubborn and all this. If you believe in a strategy, in Washington, D.C. you’ve got to stick to that strategy, see. People want you to change. It’s tactics that shift, but the strategic vision has not, and will not, shift.”

Never been more convinced. It’s that kind of certainty that drives Bush’s critics batty. For Bush, it is essential to meaningful governance: “If you don’t have a set of principles to fall back on, you flounder, and it matters. It creates waves, and the waves rock the decision-making process. I’ve just got a set of principles I believe in. And I tell people out there when I speak to them, I say, one thing about my presidency is when I get home — and home is Texas — I’m going to look in the mirror and say, ‘The same set of principles that were etched in my heart when I told the people in 2000 what I believe are still there.’ That may be — tactics are different, you adjust, you make different decisions. But the principles are inviolate.”
….
Bush’s faith in the rightness of his strategy in the broader war is deep-seated — it is, indeed, a product of faith. “Freedom is universal,” Bush says. “And I recognize there’s a debate around the world about the kind of — whether that principle is real. I call it moral relativism, if people do not believe that certain people can be free. I mean, I just cannot subscribe to that. People — I know it upsets people when I ascribe that to my belief in an Almighty, and that I believe a gift from that Almighty is universal freedom. That’s what I believe.”

....

These are extraordinary statements by President Bush, the most striking of which is: "Let me just first tell you that I’ve never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions." A jarring assertion of confidence this is, given the ongoing political, social, economic, and humanitarian disaster in Iraq.

There are ample reasons to believe that President Bush is indeed a man of conviction and principles, but having these admirable qualities are not enough in a person or a President. Another character trait of equal importance is the capacity to recognize and acknowledge that one--that everyone--makes mistakes. Without this, conviction and principles become blind dogmatism.

What the principles are, and how they work out in practice, also matters, at least as much as being principled. President Bush is committed to human freedom, he says, yet at the same time his Administration has engaged in many acts that flout the rule of law (as documented repeatly in this blog--see sidebar--and elsewhere). The rule of law has arguably made a greater contribution to human freedom than any other human invention. Acts that diminish or threaten to deteriorate the rule of law, therefore, strike blows against human freedom.

President Bush is committed to universal freedom owing to his faith in an Almightly who has conferred this freedom on all human beings. An inseverable aspect of human freedom is respect for human dignity and the inviolability of the human spirit. Yet Bush is condoning the use of techniques--under the euphemism "alternative set of procedures"--against prisoners that fail to respect their dignity as humans and that aim to destroy their human spirit. A President who proudly avows his commitment to principle and belief in the Almighty has directed our country to engage a terrible flirtation with torture (call it whatever you want).

Addendum: With respect to President Bush's commitment to principle in connection with torture, watch this video (thanks to Michael Perry on Mirror of Justice) and judge for yourself. And here is a thoughtful, principled position on torture from a Christian viewpoint.
Posted 1:33 PM by Brian Tamanaha [link]