Oct. 31, 2007
Ex-Bush Aide Seeks To "Save Conservatism"
Washington Post: With Book, Former Speechwriter Michael Gerson Is Back To Fight For GOP's Identity
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Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for President Bush, poses in front of the West Wing in this file photo. He left the White House last year but now he is back with a new book and a publicity tour intended to fight for the identity of the Republican Party. (AP Photo/USA Today)
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Play CBS Video Video Eye To Eye: Michael Gerson Only On The Web: Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson talks with Jim Axelrod about what to expect from President Bush's State of the Union address.
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For Michael Gerson, the pattern became discouragingly familiar. A proposal to help the poor or sick would be presented at a White House meeting, but Vice President Cheney's office or the budget team or some other skeptical officials would shoot it down. Too expensive. Wrong priority.
By the time he left the White House as President Bush's senior adviser last year, Gerson by his own account had grown weary of the battle, becoming an irritable colleague disillusioned by the conventions of a political party and a government that seemed indifferent to the plight of the downtrodden. Now he is back with a new book and a publicity tour intended to fight for the identity of the Republican Party.
"Traditional conservatism has a piece missing -- a piece that is shaped like a conscience," he notes in "Heroic Conservatism." His ambition, he says, is to help "save conservatism from its worst instincts" and build "a conservatism elevated by a radical concern for human rights and dignity."
Gerson, who now writes an op-ed column for The Washington Post, was best known as the speechwriter who helped a famously inarticulate Texan find words to define his presidency at key moments. He was also an apostle of "compassionate conservatism," Bush's effort to shave the harsh edges off the party of Newt Gingrich.
Gerson's book, part memoir and part political treatise, opens a window on the internal debates that marked the first six years of Bush's presidency, from the response to the mass killing in Darfur to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Time and again, Gerson depicts a lonely struggle to advance measures that would benefit AIDS patients, impoverished children or prisoners reentering society. He rues the Bush team's failure to do more to stand up to autocrats in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to further its "freedom agenda." And he laments that the war in Iraq has sabotaged the president's efforts to redefine the Republican Party.
"Right now, there's a significant backlash against these ideas," Gerson said in an interview at his office at the Council on Foreign Relations last week. "If Republicans adopt a mean, anti-government message, they're not going to be able to win."
Gerson said he also wants to push Democrats to recognize genuine security concerns in an age of terrorism and the value of spreading democracy. But as he hits the talk-show circuit, including Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," his main message seems aimed at fellow conservatives.
A devout evangelical Christian, Gerson was a powerful if soft-spoken and sometimes dour presence in the Bush White House, more comfortable with the Bible studies of his alma mater, Wheaton College, than the towel-snapping Texas environment that surrounded Bush in the early days. Gerson talks in rapid-fire bursts, nervously doodling until his pen has literally ripped the page off a pad of paper.
He describes his initial, awkward relationship with Bush as the Texas governor assembled his campaign team in 1999. "He had a penchant for crude humor," Gerson writes, "that made me uncomfortable; not blasphemous language, but the vulgarity of the locker room."
Yet, he says he grew to admire Bush for his convictions and sincerity, and whatever blame Gerson has for the administration's failings is focused elsewhere.
Gerson was widely -- but not universally -- admired within the West Wing. One of his top two speechwriting deputies, Matthew Scully, wrote a scathing piece in the Atlantic magazine this summer accusing Gerson of "foolish vanity," "sheer pettiness" and "credit hounding." Scully complained that Gerson had assumed authorship of speeches he did not write, at least not alone. The other top speechwriter, John McConnell, still works at the White House and has declined to comment, but he has shared similar grievances with colleagues.
In his book, Gerson has nothing but praise for Scully and McConnell in passages that a friend who had read the galleys said were in the text before the Atlantic piece came out. Gerson describes Scully as "an elegant writer with a gentle manner" and refers to the involvement of Scully and McConnell in key speeches at many points in his narrative.
"For seven years these two speechwriters would be my friends and partners, and hardly a cross word ever passed between us," he writes.
Gerson is more critical of Cheney's office, former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and two Texas Republicans who served as House majority leaders, Tom DeLay and Richard K. Armey.
Gerson writes that he urged Bush to fire Rumsfeld after the 2004 election, but that Cheney opposed the move. He recounts meetings in which Cheney's office tried to kill proposals to increase training of death-row defense lawyers, transition assistance for prisoners and aid for Hurricane Katrina victims.
"The storm had also revealed a political and moral chasm in the Republican Party," he writes. "The president and I saw Katrina as an opportunity to open a debate on race and poverty. Anti-government Republicans saw Katrina as an opportunity to cut off medicine to old people. It confirmed the worst image of Republicans as the party of shriveled hearts."
© 2007 The Washington Post Company


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See all 38 Comments"Traditional conservatism has a piece missing -- a piece that is shaped like a conscience," he notes in "Heroic Conservatism." His ambition, he says, is to help "save conservatism from its worst instincts" and build "a conservatism elevated by a radical concern for human rights and dignity."
The guy is so far off the mark, subsitute the word conscience for the old word moral. Vauge and undefined can run 100 buses through the deifniton.
Try repsect for the Law and the order that comes to the People in society with it and ethics, ETHICS are what the GOP is missing.
And Cheney could not have done a dammmn thing if Bush did allow him too and if Bush would have chosen to show up in Washington and do the hard work of governing Cheney would not have caused the harm he did. GOPer we Americans dislike and believe Cheney to be an untalented reckless man who drank alcohol and shot his friend in the face but we hold Bush responsible for the choice of Cheney and for Cheney%u2019s action and that of his felonious Chief of Staff Libby.
They are not conservatives. A true conservative like a true liberal is a middle of the road.
These nut cases have called true Americans traitors for the last time. They have given America the one thing we need a reason to unify.
His own party will not let him near the White House! They''re his worse e.n.e.m.a.!...I mean ENEMY!
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Glad to see at least one Republican that has a soul. Maybe there is hope for the party yet. Once you get Satan''s evil minions out of the WhiteHouse in 2009.
Gerson,like Bush,is a fake!A pseudo-Chrsitian!
USAProphet, I read all three--and while they weren''t the same there is still some eating at me when I hear what Paul has to say. It doesn''t feel authentic.
If you have to post the same message three consecutive times, the desperation comes across in your message. Do you really think this helps.
The thing I like about Ron Paul is, out of ALL of the candidates on either the right or the left, he''s the one who''s the most in-line with The Constitution, and the intents and the dream that our Founding Fathers had for a FREE AMERICA, with minimul federal government intervention in our daily lives. After ten terms of service as a U.S. Congressman, Ron Paul has demonstarted a consistent track record of adherance to The Constitution which is unmatched by anyone else in government. Remember, folks our country was founded as a Republic, not the Oligarchy that it has become. The time for political revolution is now. The time for Ron Paul is now!
GW never had a vision for Texas. He never had a vision for the United States. He is simply a stooge that sits in the driver''s seat of government to direct government funds into the hands of his Daddy''s cronies.
Mr. Gerson obviously wants to put grandiose adornment on a pig''s ear.
Conservatism is a wonderful thing when it can weed out useless spending and corruptness. But the party representing conservatism at this time, only believes in conservatism of everybody elses money in their pockets.
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