I got an e-mail the other day from someone urging me to get behind
George W. Bush so that the Republicans could unite behind someone
(anyone?) and, supposedly, win the presidency.
I have said for months that I simply would not support George W.
Bush. My decision was confirmed again this week when Bush announced that
as president he would not have a “pro-life litmus test” for his judicial
nominations. Of course, Gore and Clinton will put death-dealers on the
Court no matter what, and make it very clear that this is what they are
going to do. So why should those of us who understand the devastation
that our abandonment of moral principle is causing in American life and
conscience be expected to put up with so-called “pro-life” Republicans
who simply decline to oppose the culture of death by straightforwardly
championing the agenda of life?
When George W. Bush says that he isn’t going to have a pro-life
litmus test, we should ask, “Why not have a litmus test?” The
pro-abortion forces have a litmus test. Why does the supposed Republican
champion hold that evil people can make evil a litmus test, but good
people shouldn’t make good a litmus test? Let’s examine a little more
closely what is really implied by the phrase “litmus test.”
Refusing to have a litmus test on abortion means, in my opinion,
refusing to defend principle, or to uphold integrity. Because if you
have integrity and principles, then the principles themselves, and your
active defense of them, constitute a litmus test. Since principles have
consequences, certain stands on certain issues will be reflective of
those principles. So if a leader has a clear sense of the principles
that need to govern his judgment and conscience he will be alert for
those great issues that can arise under our Constitution — I call them
“Declaration Issues” — in which our fundamental principles come to the
surface and must be defended and renewed.
Such principles aren’t arbitrarily chosen, and they aren’t dependent
on the “personal philosophy” of any particular leader. The notion that
we put a president in office so he can seek out people who agree with
his “personal philosophy” is fundamentally wrong. Our presidents should
be
seeking to give judicial and other appointments to men and women who
will act in light of the publicly recognized general principles of
American life and justice. There are such principles; we know where they
are clearly and authoritatively stated — in our great Declaration of
Independence; and we know that we owe our liberty and national happiness
in large measure to the great statesmanship of the Founders, of Lincoln,
and of others who adhered to those principles and made them such a part
of the warp and woof of American life. We know that the
great American statesman does not bring new principles to a tired
people, even under catchy titles like “compassionate conservatism” —
the great American statesman devotes his energy, ability, and wisdom to
conforming himself and this people to the moral principles that gave
this nation birth, are older than anything else in the country’s soul,
and yet retain the power to make us young again with the vigor of virtue
and the zeal for justice.
The principles that govern ought to be the great principles of the
American creed, which constitute our understanding of justice, are the
basis of our claims to rights, and define our duty to maintain
government by consent and due process.
We should start, as did the Founders, with the fundamental principle
that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights. This is a principle that on the clear face of it
makes abortion a travesty. For any American leader who understands the
most basic implications of this principle and is willing to apply that
understanding, a litmus test is inevitable. Such a leader simply will
not admit into the precincts of his judgment and consideration
individuals who toss the founding truths of American life aside on
issues that are of great import to the nation’s integrity.
I think that everything George W. Bush has said about abortion has
been just what some advisor told him to say because it would get support
from all sides. He is working hard to put on a mask that is supposed to
placate pro-life sentiment while leaving him room to go as far down the
pro-abortion road as he needs to later.
In place of the dreaded litmus test, Bush has said that he would
nominate Supreme Court Justices based on three criteria: judicial
temperament, whether the judges share his “overall philosophy,” and
whether the judges will “strictly interpret the Constitution as opposed
to using the bench to legislate.”
These are the standard expressions of the squishy right, meaning
nothing, and worth nothing. “Overall philosophy” means a vacuous
willingness to commit to nothing, stand for nothing, and tolerate
everything. Judicial temperament is likewise a conveniently vague and
elastic criterion, and strict interpretation can’t mean much to people
like G.W. Bush, since unless he is interpreting the Constitution in
light of a clear set of principles — a litmus test — then strict
construction is just a phrase, and means nothing.
Beyond the specific question of judicial appointments, Bush is no
better. He has essentially dismissed the project of seeking a Human Life
Amendment to the Constitution because he says the American people won’t
accept it. This means that he decides what is necessary for the future
of the country based on popularity and polls — just like Bill Clinton.
The fact that our abandonment of our most basic moral principles is
destroying our conscience, destroying our principles, undermining our
sense of moral self-confidence, and thus contributing to the surrender
of self-government and rights on all fronts isn’t even on his mind.
Mr. Bush’s statement that he will impose no litmus test shows that in
his political role he is fundamentally unprincipled. His entire
discussion of abortion includes no references whatsoever to the great
American principles that ought to be most telling upon one’s judgment
when it comes to constitutional issues. He has taken on consultants and
advisors who have put into his head what he has to say — formulae for
expressing himself — that have nothing to do, in fact, with the great
context of American life and justice.
In this omission Bush is entirely typical of the leaders of our day,
who clearly do not measure up to the stature of our great leaders in the
past, and yet have greater arrogance. American leaders in the past were
humble before our heritage. They acknowledged it and consented to be the
instruments for expressing it to the American people in their
generation. But today’s leaders, who seem to have much less in the way
of real stature and capacity, yet have much greater arrogance in that
they apparently navigate without any reference to our great founding
principles, thinking themselves in that regard superior to the founding
generation. They cut loose with whatever it is they think will serve
their interests, desperate to be liberated from the constraint of
principle — because they know that at some point any real principle may
require that they take a stand that isn’t in their immediate political
interest.
This is the real meaning when somebody like G.W. Bush says there will
be no litmus test. He means “I shan’t allow the requirements of my
ambition and political expediency to be governed by any principles
whatsoever. So when it gets right down to it, there shall be no
sacrifice of my immediate political interest to anything that even
vaguely resembles a principle.”
This refusal to serve our heritage is what distinguishes Bush and
most of the rest of the politicians of our day from those who really
rose to the level of statesmanship required for great leadership in
American life — the Founders, Lincoln, and even Ronald Reagan. For such
men there was a constant need to refer, in one form or another, to the
overarching truths that had been expressed and put in place at the
beginning of America to guide our conscience and to shape our sense of
justice and rights in the context of American life.
But what about winning elections? Isn’t it time, as my e-mail
correspondent asked, that we get serious about winning?
Moral conservatives should be very clear about our choice. Liberals
are putting enormous hype behind George W. Bush precisely so that the
Republicans will once again stupidly nominate somebody who stands for
nothing and can’t possibly win. However their lying polls hype him —
claiming that he is trouncing Gore by 30 points — as soon as he gets
the nomination they will unveil all the polls telling us how it is
tightening up, just the way they have before.
The Republican Party will continue to lose ground until it remembers
that a lack of conviction leads ultimately to a lack of success. How
many times will Republicans have to be smacked over the head with this
truth before they finally get it? I would think that two or three
defeats at the presidential level, and hanging by our fingernails to a
razor-thin margin in the Congress thanks to congressional leaders who
practice the “go-along to get-along,” “stand for nothing,” approach,
would teach people a lesson. But the George W. frenzy suggests
otherwise.
There is a painful irony in the suggestion that we should put aside
truth, principle and what is best for the country in order to try to
“unite the Republican Party” behind an blank banner, and a man who is
willing to fill up his speeches with whatever formula he thinks is going
to do the most polling good. The George W. Bush movement really
shouldn’t object to Bill Clinton. If we are willing to follow people
with the Machiavellian, time-serving mentality, Clinton has proven
himself to be a master at it. Perhaps we should just repeal all the
technicalities about serving third terms and work to have both parties
nominate Slick Willie one more time. Then both parties would win.
As I have said before, the George W. Bush movement is the Republican
wing of the Clinton movement. The real Bush supporters are those who
think it is not government’s place to stand for those principles which
defend the basic rights which come to us from God. They say these are
difficult issues, which is what was said a century and more ago about
slavery. But slavery was never a difficult issue in light of our
Declaration principles, and neither is abortion. When we temporize with
abortion, what we are confessing is that we have a greater heart for
injustice than we do for American principle. I think that is true of
G.W. Bush, and it is why I will not back him.
The people to whom Bush gives comfort are the folks who want to act
as if there is some doubt about the great issue of principle that
confronts us in abortion. That doubt is precisely — in spite of all his
rhetoric to try to appeal to pro-life people — what G.W. Bush really
represents. We can see it also in his flirting with the homosexual
lobby, and in other respects. At the level of moral principle, he is
rhetoric without principle. He will figure out what words to string
together to sound like he is interested, but when it comes to the real
test of conviction, we will not be able to count on him.
It is worthwhile to reflect on the real challenge that we are faced
with right now. The airwaves are filling up quickly with the horse-race
chatter of the upcoming presidential decision. One of the things that
gets lost these days as we talk about “politics” is that if the debased
understanding of our political life that prevails in the media and in
the minds of the pundits comes also to prevail in the minds of the
electorate at large it will represent a very serious destruction of our
citizenship. If the citizens of America come to accept the absolutely
systematic trivialization of political life that the chatter of our
elites invites, we will have ceased to take serious thought for our own
self-government, and the soul of the regime — government of, by and for
a reflective and rational people — will be gone. This is especially
true in dealing with the presidency, where we are talking about a choice
that reflects — and reflects upon — our national identity in a way
that
almost nothing else does.
We have discovered this, of course, in painful ways in the course of
the last several years with Bill Clinton. This is a rather negative
illustration, to be sure, because we have gotten a good taste of the
depths of the humiliation that can be visited upon our nation by
somebody in the White House who lacks the character and integrity to be
there.
We should reflect on what caused that national humiliation, as the
purported Bush juggernaut struggles to gain momentum. Because the sin of
Bill Clinton’s ambition is heavy upon this country, an ambition that has
voided all sense of conscience and integrity so that whatever serves
that ambition — truth, lies, coercion — he is willing to do.
But there is another danger in Bill Clinton. It is the danger that
when we approach the presidential choice we will think that it is simply
about avoiding that kind of depravity. But simply avoiding a really bad
president like Bill Clinton isn’t good enough. When this country began,
George Washington set a high standard for what we came to associate with
the office of President of the United States — leadership, true
statesmanship, and insistence on the courage to stand for the right
things for America regardless of whether it is to anyone’s personal
political advantage.
People used to look for this in their leaders. We need to look for it
again. Why not make it a litmus test?
