George Bush’s Stepford Critics

Doug Wead was presumably aware of the commonly held view that it isn’t very nice to secretly tape-record conversations with your friends and then release those tapes to the New York Times.

Wead also could no doubt have surmised that when he did so, the friend in question, George W. Bush, would not react with gratitude. (Especially because one tape revealed Bush essentially admitting to past marijuana use.)

Yet somehow Bush, or his allies, managed to make these issues far more compelling to Wead after the fact than they ever had been before. Earlier this week, Wead was proclaiming that he made his tapes of Bush public for the sake of “history.” Perhaps the large pile of money he stood to gain from his forthcoming book also factored into his decision. But within a couple days he was desperately backpedaling. On Wednesday, he announced that “I have come to realize that personal relationships are more important than history.” He pledged to direct all book profits to charity and to hand the tapes over to Bush.

Most presidents have to face betrayal sooner or later. (See John Dean revealing Nixon’s cover-up, or David Stockman revealing the underside of Reagan’s fiscal policies.) What’s uncanny about the Bush administration is that its dissidents invariably recant, usually in zombie-like fashion.

Enough apostate Bush loyalists have retracted their heretical views that certain recognizable tropes have emerged. First, the heretic’s repudiation of his own deeds should obviously contradict his own principles. Take the first known example of the type, Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.). A former dentist, Norwood had grown infuriated at the callousness of health maintenance organizations and made a patient’s bill of rights his crusade.

Bush sought to kill Norwood’s bill by promoting a toothless, industry-friendly alternative. In the spring of 2001, Norwood blasted Bush’s sham bill as worse than the status quo and vowed to “personally exhaust every effort to defeat” Bush’s plan. Then Norwood was summoned to the White House. As one newspaper reported, he “emerged from the hourlong meeting looking haggard” and instantly announced his support for Bush’s bill.

Norwood’s only explanation for renouncing his life’s work was that “what I’m against is not having a change in the law.” (To the surprise of no sentient observer, no patient’s bill of rights was ever enacted.)

Second, there should be little or no explanation as to how the apostate came to change his mind. Consider John Weaver, a top advisor to John McCain. The lodestar of Weaver’s ideology for years had been hatred of Karl Rove -- who, Weaver complained, had spread vicious slanders about him when the two worked in Texas politics. Weaver was strategist for McCain’s guerrilla campaign against Bush and Rove in 2000.

But then, last spring, Bush and the popular McCain began barnstorming the country together. It came out that their rapprochement had followed a meeting between Weaver and his arch-nemesis, Rove, whom he called “gracious” -- perhaps the first time anyone had ever called Rove this. Weaver declared that the pair had “a very honest and very frank discussion, and let’s just leave it at that.”

Third, the recanting heretic’s explanation should make no sense. Indeed, this very implausibility is part of the mystique. In 2002, John DiIulio, the former director of Bush’s faith-based initiative, criticized the administration. “There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you’ve got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm,” he said, fleshing out the critique with damning details.

The next day, DiIulio announced that “my criticisms were groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples. I sincerely apologize and am deeply remorseful.”

Or, as Galileo said of his declaration that the Earth revolves around the sun: “With sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies, and generally every other error and sect whatsoever contrary to the said Holy Church, and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me.”

If I recall, this statement was preceded by an honest and frank discussion.