The Man Who Wasn't There

By Charles P. Pierce, Esquire Magazine

25 February 12

ne of the more telling moments in last night's Carnival of Dickitude in Arizona came when Rick Santorum - and have I mentioned recently what a colossal dick he is? - was trying to explain why he'd voted in favor of No Child Left Behind, the education-reform program that was the signature achievement of President George W. Bush prior to Bush's actual signature achievement of Screwing Up The Entire World. Most of the attention has been paid to the fact that Santorum wound up drowning in oatmeal trying to explain how senators do their jobs. Some indiscreet booing went up, but I don't think the booing had anything to do with Santorum's ungainly tumble into the abyss of Palinspeak.

I think they were booing George W. Bush.

He is the man who isn't there. Until NCLB came up last night, the years 2000-2008 had been successfully written out of the narrative of the 2012 election. For these jamokes, time effectively began in January of 2009. It was Year Zero on the Kenyan Muslim Socialist Calendar. I do not believe that Bush's political non-personhood is an accident. It is now an article of faith among the Republican base that Bush's failures stem not from the fact that he was a manifest incompetent, but that he was too liberal a president. Putting through Medicare Part B without paying for it is a greater sin to these people than running two wars off the books was. No Child Left Behind had the endorsement of Teddy Kennedy! (Aieeeeeeee!) If only Bush had tried conservatism, the fairytale goes, then conservatism would have succeeded, as it always does. It never fails. It is only failed. C-Plus Augustus failed conservatism.

(It is important to note, by the way, that, when NCLB actually passed, Mitt Romney was substantially to the left of everybody else on the stage. Not that it matters any more.)

Since the crimes and bungling of the Bush Administration resulted in a thrashing in the 2006 midterms and, ultimately, in the election of the current president in 2008, this feeling within the Republican base has hardened into an immutable faith. The Republican party has become more extreme, not less. It has become so resistant to compromise that it has become completely resistant even to political logic. (Make no mistake. The party faithful really want this fight over contraception.) I fully expect that, by August at the latest, Willard Romney will be calling the last president of his party a socialist.