Conservatism abandons Bush

First, George W. Bush turned his back on conservatism. Now, far too late, the intellectual wing of the conservative movement returns the favor.

The first two paragraphs of conservative scholar Francis Fukuyama's New York Times essay, "After Neoconservatism," will blow your hairline back.

As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point.

The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles. The doctrine (elaborated, among other places, in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States) argued that, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, America would have to launch periodic preventive wars to defend itself against rogue states and terrorists with weapons of mass destruction; that it would do this alone, if necessary; and that it would work to democratize the greater Middle East as a long-term solution to the terrorist problem. But successful pre-emption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, while America's perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before. It is not surprising that in its second term, the administration has been distancing itself from these policies and is in the process of rewriting the National Security Strategy document.

It is obvious that the intellectual discipline of conservatism has gotten as much use out of George W. Bush as it can and that it cannot afford to indulge him any longer. Fukuyama's foreign policy critique is of a piece with Bruce Bartlett's dissection of Bush's failed economic tactics. Serious conservatives are apoplectic over the destruction this president has wrought in their name. They want their movement back.

This leaves counterfeit populists such as Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly to defend Bush. These are people for whom conservatism has never been anything more than a meal ticket. They have watched Bush shatter America's standing in the world with his blundering foreign policy and wreck the economy with his promiscuous devotion to tax cuts and spending increases and their only response has been to cheer louder. He betrays Christian values and they reinterpret Christianity in his defense. He lies and they redefine the truth. He breaks the law and they indict the law.

Sadly for conservatism, it is probably too late for its deepest thinkers to correct the damage done under Bush. Conservative intellectuals have reason on their side, but even the sharpest argument is too blunt an instrument to use against visceral conservatives who will, literally, stick their fingers in their ears to avoid hearing what they do not wish to hear.

Fukuyama is a brilliant writer, but to whom does he write? The voting base of the Republican Party don't read the New York Times. They read Ann Coulter, who advocates blowing up the New York Times. If Coulter tells them that killing "ragheads" is the purest expression of American foreign policy, they take her word for it. If Rush Limbaugh tells them they can eliminate taxation without losing the government services those taxes pay for, they say "bring 'em on!" They don't care to examine the intellectual inconsistency of a small-government president who has expanded the size and scope of government to the degree that Bush has. They don't even perceive the inconsistency. What can conservative intellectuals say to persuade such people?

No, what Mr. Fukuyama sees is not merely the end of neoconservatism. It is conservatism itself that lies discredited and discarded at the feet of George W. Bush. He was anointed the standard-bearer for a philosophy he did not even understand. Conservative thinkers looked the other way while Bush set their house on fire. All they can do now is clear away the charred ruins and begin, painstakingly, to rebuild. However, they are fooling themselves if they think the new structure will resemble the old.