That “Miss Me Yet?” billboard that generated more buzz on the Internet last year than in its rural Minnesota location may have been intended to fuel electoral remorse over President Obama. At the same time, however, voters of a conservative stripe are far from ready to lift up George W. Bush as a model president on par with Ronald Reagan. Perhaps until now.
With the publication of a memoir by Timothy Goeglein, who served as Karl Rove’s deputy in the Office of Political Liaison, conservatives may need to rethink their laments, gripes and criticisms of the 43rd president.
While Goeglein concedes to being an “outer-ring” player “with little influence” in the White House — where he was commissioned to sell Bush and his agenda to the “broad spectrum of the American conservative movement” — this is no insignificant book.
Indeed, “The Man in the Middle: An Inside Account of Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era,” represents a serious assessment by a gentleman and scholar who embodies the best of the conservative intellectual and cultural tradition, as mediated through Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley, his personal mentors.
Grounded in his wide liberal arts reading, as well as his classic, confessional Protestant faith, Goeglein sifts through the major episodes of the Bush presidency while exploring its meaning for conservatism as “a culture and a way of life,” as opposed to an ideology.
Well aware that many decisions of the former president do not sit well with conservatives, Goeglein nonetheless reaches the verdict that Bush “was right on the most consequential decisions of his presidency.”
By focusing on the forest, not the trees, Goeglein sees the contours of a gifted statesman. Those contours begin with how Bush fulfilled his most important constitutional duty: defending America against her foreign enemies.
Goeglein makes the case that Bush reluctantly became, after 9/11, “one of our country’s most effective war presidents,” in the pattern of Lincoln, FDR and Reagan.
“Unstinting about preventing another attack on our homeland,” “he kept us safe on our domestic soil” and “prevented a second attack.” The fact that President Obama has continued many of the disputed war-related policies of his predecessor only reinforces Goeglein’s estimation of his former boss.
As might be expected, the current vice president of Focus on the Family praises Bush’s leadership on social issues. As with his war decisions, Bush was fully engaged — intellectually, morally and strategically — on the issues, soliciting the best counsel and advice, arriving at decisions only after deep reflection and prayer.
From Bush’s reinstatement of Reagan’s Mexico City policy banning taxpayer funding of abortion overseas and his prime-time television address spelling out his nuanced stem cell research policy, to his 2004 endorsement of a federal marriage amendment to the Constitution, Goeglein sees Bush as the most pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family president of the modern era.
Those commitments to American middle-class values also shaped Bush’s two outstanding appointments to the Supreme Court: John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
Goeglein won’t convince everyone of Bush’s virtues. Yet his book deserves attention, especially by those fascinated by the tricky intersection of religion and public life, the tensions between conservative ideals and governing realities, and the nexus between personal character and public leadership.
Indeed, the book is so well-written that one may wonder why this gifted observer was exposed as a serial plagiarizer in early 2008, forcing him to resign from the president’s service in disgrace. “The Man in the Middle” answers that question, too.
But in also revealing how the author found redemption, the memoir offers hope that the Bush record might likewise find redemption, especially among Americans still conflicted about his presidency.
Robert W. Patterson is editor of “The Family in America.” He served as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration.
