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

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]

Comments:

Someone needs to tell him that "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." People got what they paid for when they elected him twice. First time, shame on you. Second time, shame on me.

It was good for Matt Lauer to push him on 9/11 about the detainee treatment. He simply did not want to respond. That is the weakness - not the strength of his beliefs - but the denial of consequences of his policies/tactics.

Also, he needs to say to America that his bottomline is that we are on a 25 year mission in Iraq - that's a minimum based on the experience in Germany, Japan and Korea AFTER the war (we are still in the war). Americans have to decide if that is the commitment we want to make. For his goal, that is what I would think is needed at minimum - basically a commitment of talent and treasure for a little more than a generation.
Best,
Ben

# posted by

Benjamin Davis : 4:18 PM

# posted by

Benjamin Davis : 4:18 PM

I am often stuck by Bush's repeated insistence that he "was elected to protect the 'American people' and that's just what I'm going to do" when in point of fact he was elected to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America", a task to which, given his extraordinary claims of unchecked executive power, he appears entirely resistant.

# posted by

adaplant : 4:24 PM

"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.

Bush isn't confident, he's terrified and insecure.
His confidence is a facade, and he'll do anything to keep that facade in place.
That's the problem.

# posted by

D. Ghirlandaio : 6:39 PM

The guy is nutty as a fruit cake, and let's note especially that superstitions, self-serving assumptions, hypocrisy, fallacies, frauds, delusions, and pure gibberish are nothing that could accurately be described as PRINCIPLES.

# posted by

Charles Gittings : 10:24 PM

The Matt Lauer interview has had an extensive Internet circulation, with a huge comments trail, mostly negative (concerning Bush's principal points).
Without rehashing much of what has been discussed elsewhere, the most disturbing aspect of the man is his self-righteous certainty that his actions to date are entirely justified, not at all troubled by the actual consequences that have piled up at his feet as so much debris after a storm, indeed just airly dismissing them in "talk-tough" platitudes and aggressive gesticulations. We now are told that his convictions of ultimately "being right" come from his "deep faith", that indeed he is simply conferring the blessings of God's will on the peoples of the world: "freedom" is God-given...Bush believes in "freedom"...therefore Bush is in fact doing God's work. A faulty syllogism to be sure, but that is how his benighted personality structures and justifies his actions. The man is a real piece of work, ever so much dangerous in his blind dogmatism coloured by a corrupted religiosity. A mirror-image of his nemesis bin Laden, in fact.

# posted by

Archimedes : 11:35 PM

Adaplant said:

"I am often stuck by Bush's repeated insistence that he "was elected to protect the 'American people' and that's just what I'm going to do" when in point of fact he was elected to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America", (...)"

That is, in a nutshell, THE point. Thanks for hitting it on the head.

So many centuries, so many wars, so many lives destroyed ... Humanity had to go through all that to discover the value of the rule of law and come along Bush and Co. and decide they're above it. Makes me feel that survival of the species doesn't depend so much on superior intellect, but on our capacity to control our inherent stupidity.

# posted by

randomopinion : 5:03 AM

Many on the Left have made the mistake that Bush does what he does for selfish reasons (e.g. Bush took us into Iraq for the oil). In fact, he does what he does because he is a unblinking adherent to his principles. In this way, he has much in common with the communists of yesteryear who would either deny or rationalize the brutality of Stalin, because nothing matters more than the Theory.

# posted by

Zathras : 12:26 PM

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

# posted by

QuiteAlarmed : 1:44 PM

Bush has a fragile, rigid personality structure that does not allow for either self-examination or introspection. He has zero internal flexibility. Any threat to this fragile structure -- such as surprise, unexpected consequences, variables, the vagaries of life, the fog of war -- produces unbearable anxiety for Bush. He therefore spontaneously creates for himself a Mannichean world of good and evil, black and white ("You're either with us or against us"), the only kind of world in which he can navigate psychologically. Because he can neither take responsibility for his decisions, nor adjust his internal compass to changing conditions, he ascribes his lack of internal freedom to "principles."

Better yet, these "principles" are derived from God.

How's that for a character defense?

# posted by

MD : 4:39 PM

No one cries they are right so loud as those who secretly know themselves to be wrong.

# posted by

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# posted by

Unknown : 2:24 AM