Who better to give George Bush a painfully overdue history lesson than Pat Buchanan?
As much a historian as a pundit, Pat doesn’t pull any punches in his latest must-read column.
Buchanan begins,
On reading George Bush’s discourse to the New York Economic Club last week, Cicero’s insight came to mind: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”
With Iraq entering its sixth year, the dollar sinking to peso levels, the economy careening into recession, and 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens roosting here, Bush alerted us to what really worries him:
“I’m troubled by isolationism and protectionism … (and) another ‘ism,’ and that’s nativism…”
Buchanan proceeds to lay out the historical results of what Bush belittles as ”isolationism, protectionism (and)… nativism”—a dynamic global power inrivaled in wealth, power, and influence. A litany of Bush’s failures follows, concluding with this incisive summation of Bush’s philosophy:
In smearing as nativists, protectionists and isolationists those who wish to stop the invasion, halt the export of factories and jobs to Asia, and stop the unnecessary wars, Bush is attacking the last true conservatives in his party.
Which is understandable. For after the judges and tax cuts, what is there about Bush that is conservative? His foreign policy is Wilsonian. His trade policy is pure FDR. His spending is LBJ all the way. His amnesty for illegals is Teddy Kennedy’s policy.
The real tragedy of the Bush misadministration is that so many of its failures could have been avoided if the president had grounded his decisionmaking less in an obsession with power politics, and more in a conservative understanding of American history.
