DUBYA IS BAD. HIS FATHER WAS WORSE.
Sins of the Father
by Tom Frank
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 12.27.04

In the late 1990s, as Americans found themselves learning more than they cared to know about Arkansas courtship rituals, the name Bush began to inspire sentimental feelings. Bill Clinton's predecessor, it was said, had at least shown respect for the office. If he'd never managed to achieve the common touch, neither had he been accused of disrobing and offering suggestions such as "Kiss it" within minutes of making someone's acquaintance. In 1999, The New York Times noted that Bush I was now "basking in the glow of a surprisingly early, and positive, reassessment of his stewardship."

Oddly enough, the arrival of George W. Bush didn't quell the longing for George H.W. Bush; in fact, for some Americans, it only intensified it. Just six months into the younger Bush's presidency, Fareed Zakaria was already writing in Time that Dubya should "embrace his own family values" and emulate his father, who was, in fact, "a pretty good president." Once Dubya began to anger much of the world, others chimed in. The elder Bush was "a master of personal diplomacy," reminisced columnist Maureen Dowd, an "old-school internationalist who ceaselessly tried to charm allies as U.N. ambassador and in the White House." Her colleague Thomas Friedman took Bush nostalgia even further. Days before the 2004 election, Friedman wrote, "The more I look back on the elder Bush ... the more I find to admire." He concluded: "Yes, next Tuesday, vote for the real political heir to George H.W. Bush. I'm sure you know who that is." (Friedman meant John Kerry.)

This was, really, going a bit far. Even in a world where the spectrum of political belief is bounded by the poles of Bush I and Bush II--a world in which, evidently, Friedman and others are now dwelling--surely some norms, such as avoiding nostalgia for our worst chief executives, must be respected. True, whatever your political beliefs--liberal, conservative, libertarian, other--Dubya has done something to bother you. Anyone who invades Afghanistan, occupies Iraq, expands Medicare, passes No Child Left Behind, flouts the Kyoto Protocol, pushes a Constitutional amendment on marriage, sinks the dollar, cuts taxes, and proposes dynamiting the New Deal is bound to step on a toe every so often. But is our current president bad enough to warrant something as drastic as the rehabilitation of Bush I?

Perhaps we should cheer up. In reality, there's something worse than the mix of ideological belligerence and lack of scruples that characterizes Dubya's administration. That would be the mix of cynicism, demagoguery, and ineffectiveness that characterized the presidency of his father.



How quickly Zakaria, Dowd, and Friedman have forgotten what the elder Bush was like. When Bush was elected president, some liberals, noting his Connecticut roots, dared to hope he might prove to be a holdout of a dying breed--the New England Republican with the politics of Eisenhower, Rockefeller, or Ford. But that would have required Bush to have actually had politics. As a Senate candidate in Texas in 1964, Bush denounced civil rights legislation, Medicare, and the nuclear test-ban treaty. By 1988, he favored all three. As a congressman in the late 1960s, he developed an interest in family planning and espoused pro-choice views. By 1988, he wanted to outlaw abortion. In the primaries of 1980, he famously referred to Ronald Reagan's fiscal policies as "voodoo economics." By 1988, he evidently felt such stereotypes were inappropriate for a varied and complex voodoo tradition. Asked once about his changing positions, Bush replied, "I'm not going to get nickel-and-dimed to death with detail."

His demeanor was no more consistent. While known for being delightful in private, Bush had a bit more trouble being tolerable in public. In 1984, The Washington Post editorial page called Vice President Bush's behavior in that year's presidential campaign "blustering, opportunistic, craven and hopelessly ineffective all at once." In 1986, conservative columnist George Will, provoked by what he considered Bush's underhanded pandering, wrote that the "unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one conservative gathering to another is a thin, tinny 'arf'--the sound of a lapdog." By 1988, when Bush was running a presidential campaign widely viewed as the sleaziest in decades, condemnation was coming from all sides. The Washington Post endorsed neither Bush nor his opponent, Michael Dukakis, but felt compelled to point out that Bush had been the "major source and cause of the tawdriness of this campaign."

Bush nevertheless sailed to victory in the 1988 election and immediately vowed to put any ugliness behind him. His first months in the Oval Office actually passed fairly peaceably--admirably, even. He put together a savings and loan bailout, proposed clean-air legislation, diffused a long-standing policy conflict over Nicaragua, and, when Tiananmen Square erupted in China, handled events with a savvy mix of moral indignation and restraint.

It took a Supreme Court decision to reveal what the country was actually in for. In June 1989, the Court ruled 5 to 4 that flag burning was protected by the First Amendment. The judgment, which had been supported by conservative justices such as Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia, caused a minor uproar. The next day, Bush said he understood the "legal basis" for the decision but declared that flag burning was "dead wrong." A few more indignant condemnations of the ruling could have been the end of it. Instead, Bush held a White House news conference a few days later and called for a Constitutional amendment to ban the desecration of the American flag. "As President, I will uphold our precious right to dissent," Bush said, "but burning the flag goes too far and I want to see that matter remedied."

It was an impressive piece of demagoguery. Democrats could either give Republicans an election issue or they could help set a precedent for restricting the First Amendment when something "goes too far." The flag amendment looked unbeatable. George Will pleaded with Republicans: "Conservatives should content themselves with saying that liberals want to read pornography by the light of burning flags. Say anything, just keep your hands off Mr. Madison's document." And Hendrik Hertzberg, writing in The New Republic, was equally angry: "For George Bush, nice guy, the defilement of the Bill of Rights itself is just another tactic for narrow partisan gain. And it's hard to see, at this point, who's going to stop him." (Eventually, enough Senators--including one John Kerry, perhaps not yet aware of being Bush's political heir--did stop him.)

By toying with the Bill of Rights, Bush had shown himself to be grubby and frivolous at once. It was a knack he had. That fall, he delivered a televised speech from the Oval Office about the dangers of drug use in America, pausing at one point to pick up a plastic bag. "This is crack cocaine," Bush gravely informed his viewers, "seized a few days ago by Drug Enforcement Administration agents in a park just across the street from the White House. It could easily have been heroin or PCP. It's as innocent-looking as candy, but ... this stuff is poison." The Washington Post quickly looked into the matter and determined that luring a drug dealer to Lafayette Park had been a serious headache for DEA agents. At first, the suspect had been confused, according to tapes of the phone conversation. "Where the fuck is the White House?" he asked, before clearing it up: "Oh, you mean where Reagan lives." As to whether Bush had a genuine drug policy, no one seemed to know or care--after all, neither did Bush.

Even his foreign policy was unprincipled and heedless--at least when the stakes were low. When officers in Panama's army attempted a coup against the country's dictator, Manuel Noriega, Bush, who had openly advocated such a revolt, now couldn't decide whether to intervene or stand aside. In the end, he managed to do neither, ordering American troops in the country (the canal had not yet been transferred to Panamanian sovereignty) to set up a pair of roadblocks but otherwise wringing his hands. After the press criticized him for timidity, Bush had second thoughts and, a few weeks later, invaded the country. He was, increasingly, a silly man in a serious job.

Other world events just made Bush look small. When the Berlin Wall fell, Bush, taken by surprise, reacted with caution, if not exactly reflection: "I don't think any single event is the end of what you might call the Iron Curtain. But clearly, this is a long way from the harsh days of the--the harshest Iron Curtain days--a long way from that."

Indeed, Bush's presidency may have faded into welcome insignificance had Saddam Hussein not invaded Kuwait in August 1990. At the time, Bush had gone through a rough summer. It was mainly because he had chosen to break his campaign pledge of "Read my lips: no new taxes," leading to the New York Post headline, "Read My Lips--I Lied." In 1988, Bush had repeated his tax promise at every campaign stop--getting the crowds to chant it with him--and pummeled Dukakis for refusing to make a similar pledge. (He'd also eliminated Bob Dole from the GOP primaries with the same tactic.) Now the bill was due.

With Saddam, however, Bush proved that, at least in the realm of foreign affairs, he could occasionally act with seriousness and resolve. Because war was the desired end--without one, Iraq could withdraw and remain a threat--Bush laid out demands in a manner designed to prevent Saddam from negotiating his way to a settlement. In the meantime, he assembled a large military coalition blessed by the United Nations. The offensive began in January, and, by February of the following year, Iraq had been driven out of Kuwait. It was an astonishing rout.

But Bush also had to figure out how he wanted to end the war. Marching to Baghdad would splinter the coalition, but leaving Saddam in power meant trouble, too. So Bush chose to encourage a rebellion in the Iraqi military, in the hope that a new Sunni strongman might emerge to replace Saddam. While the fighting raged, Bush suggested in February 1991 that Iraqis "take matters into their own hands, to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside." Radio broadcasts later linked to the CIA encouraged Iraqis to overthrow Saddam. Things didn't go as planned, however. Shia and Kurds bravely accepted the invitation to rise up, but Saddam's army officers didn't, turning their guns instead on the rebels.

Faced with the prospect of supporting a Shia rebellion--and the possible creation of a Shia state, which friends such as Saudi Arabia opposed--Bush suddenly found the prospect of Saddam's ouster less appealing. So he changed his mind. Saddam, happy to have a free hand, employed helicopter gunships to kill tens of thousands of Shia and Kurds as American forces in the region stood by. By early April, millions of Kurds were fleeing the massacres and crowding into refugee camps in neighboring Turkey, and Bush was starting to come under fire in Washington. "We went over there for a moral purpose," argued Senator Al Gore at the time, "and now we are insisting that our American forces stand by and watch as helicopter gunships, responding to the orders of Saddam Hussein, open fire on innocent men, women, and children--even firing on hospitals--simply because these people who are being killed responded to our request that they rise up against Saddam Hussein."

Bush, in response to such criticism, said he naturally felt "frustration and a sense of grief for the innocents that are being killed brutally, but we are not there to intervene ... that is not our purpose. It never was our purpose." Even when all twelve members of the European Community (yes, even France was tougher than Bush on this one) argued for placing humanitarian considerations above territorial ones--to create safe enclaves in Iraq, say, for those fleeing Saddam--Bush remained obdurate. "The objectives ... never included the demise and destruction of Saddam personally," Bush explained to reporters. Sorry if there was any misunderstanding.

Thanks to the unexpectedly smooth military victory in Kuwait, however, the American public remained pleased with the president, and Bush's reelection looked certain. The only question was how he would choose to spend, as his son might put it, his new political capital. What America would find, however, was that Bush's term up until the Gulf War had provided all the clues necessary.

On domestic affairs, Bush reverted to type--but even more assertively. When a spot opened on the Supreme Court, Bush, who'd previously nominated David Souter to the Court (wrongly thinking he might prove conservative), this time offered up Clarence Thomas. "The fact that he is black and a minority has nothing to do with this sense that he is the best qualified at this time," Bush explained. Thomas had served all of 15 months on the federal bench, earning a reputation for far-right jurisprudence and a rating of "qualified" from the American Bar Association, the lowest passable grade. It was, in short, perfect Bush: flippant and bad for the country. In the end, after history's first confirmation hearings containing the words "Long Dong Silver," America got Justice Thomas, who just recently graced the annals of law with a dissent arguing that prison abuse is not prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.

The most immediate problem Bush faced in the wake of the Gulf War, however, was a country in recession. Bush felt there wasn't much that government could do about it, so he acted accordingly. When Congress passed a bill to extend unemployment benefits for up to 20 weeks, Bush vetoed it. And Bush's own proposal for remedying the situation--a cut in the capital gains tax--seemed uncannily familiar since he'd proposed it before. Once again, Congress said no.

Bad went to worse. As the country limped into 1992, with unemployment rising to 7.1 percent, Bush journeyed to Japan in an effort to lower Japanese trade barriers and boost American exports. Japan refused. Bush, in response, vomited on his hosts during dinner and fainted. Recovering from this embarrassment, he flew home to campaign in New Hampshire, hoping to blunt a Republican insurgency being led by Pat Buchanan. In a famous reading of cue cards, Bush told an audience, "The message: I care. We're trying," and drew on lyrics from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band--"If you want to see a rainbow, you've got to stand a little rain"--once referring to the group, according to The New York Times, as the "Nitty Ditty Nitty Gritty Great Bird." Thus invigorated by meeting with America's working folk, Bush returned to Washington to deliver a State of the Union address in which he called--passionately this time--for a cut in the capital gains tax: "This time, at this hour, I cannot take 'No' for an answer." Congress's answer: No.

Just as in the aftermath of the Gulf War, Bush exhibited neither moral courage nor foresight during the Soviet Union's demise. When the Baltics pressed for independence, Bush expressed chagrin. When Ukrainians sought independence, Bush delivered an admonitory speech to the parliament in Kiev in an attempt to dampen their ardor. His approach to Russia after Boris Yeltsin took over for Mikhail Gorbachev was no more forward-thinking. Richard Nixon grew so frustrated at levels of economic assistance to Moscow that he chose to embarrass Bush in the spring of 1992 with a leaked memo saying, "The stakes are high, and we are playing as if it were a penny-ante game." Current levels of American support would be generous, Nixon wrote, "if the target of our aid were a small country like Upper Volta." But Nixon's prodding didn't help. Bush wasn't a president given to Marshall Plans or Louisiana Purchases. Foreign policy was, rather, a set of challenges or, occasionally, crises to be met, and boldness was a last resort. Russia's subsequent path would show that Nixon had a point. Not that Vladimir Putin isn't perfectly charming.

And even if Bush was mostly polite to allies, such courtesy helped little when married to bad policy. When he journeyed to Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 to attend the Earth Summit, an environmental conference of more than 100 heads of state, Bush refused to sign on to any specific commitments. When he made clear that America would remain the only country to reject a biodiversity treaty, The New York Times reported that Bush had become known as the "Darth Vader of the Rio meeting." "I did not come here to apologize," Bush told the conference, informing his colleagues that the record of the United States on environmental issues was "second to none."

As 1992 went on, more and more people began to think that Bush was a man who, deep in his heart, believed in--what exactly? As a New York Times profile explained, "It is the worst fear of some friends that [Bush] may have sold off too many pieces of himself, in the mistaken belief he could someday get them back." The president's inability to speak coherently only strengthened this theory, as columnist Michael Kinsley argued: "What Bush seems to have no interest in is not just politics in the narrowest sense but political ideas of any kind. ... At bottom, his problem is a simple lack of anything to say. That's why he babbles."

Today, those who miss the elder Bush contend that such talk arose simply because he steered clear of ideological fringes. And it's true that Bush can claim two "moderate" accomplishments: putting together a savings and loan bailout and cutting a deal with Democrats to raise taxes in 1990. But on the first issue, Bush could see that the size of the rescue was growing by more than $1 billion per month--which he could have ignored, but not for his entire presidency. (Not even his son, were he facing something similar today, could manage that.) As for the tax increase, even if we leave aside the obvious ethical problem with breaking a promise, Bush's move hardly constituted a grand show of principle over politics. In 1990, he faced three plausible choices to deal with the revenue gap: let the deficit keep ballooning, take a hatchet to entitlements, or try to raise taxes quietly. Bush feared that the first option would damage the economy by the time he was seeking reelection. He knew the second was political poison. On balance, then, the third looked (at the time) like the easiest way out.

On other domestic matters, Bush simply sought partisan advantage: When the Civil Rights Act of 1990--which had undergone major rewording at the hands of Senator Orrin Hatch in order to satisfy Republicans--cleared the House and Senate, Bush, sensing an opportunity to score campaign points by calling it a "quota bill," killed it. When Congress voted to revoke the gag rule barring doctors at federally funded clinics from talking about abortion with patients (even in cases of a life-threatening pregnancy), Bush, trying to please his base, vetoed that too. When Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act--which proposed to grant three months of unpaid leave to employees with newborn children or medical emergencies--Bush vetoed it. And after signing a clean-air bill--which, incidentally, critics accused him of trying to weaken not long after it passed--Bush opposed new environmental initiatives and condemned existing ones, including the Endangered Species Act. He also called for opening half the country's wetlands to development, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, permitting strip mining for coal in national forests, and lifting restrictions on logging in the northwest. Thus does one become a moderate.

In the end, enough people would get sick of this behavior and boot Bush out of the White House. The relief would be immense. Here's The New Republic at the time:

Good riddance to George Bush, to his negligence, recklessness, and cynicism. Good riddance to his incompetent excuse for a foreign policy, to his ignorance and avoidance of the social ills of our country, to his failed economic agenda, and to his incoherent verbiage that sensible people had to accept as public discourse for four long years.

Well, TNR is an opinion journal.



Yet all this is what, within a few years, we suddenly decided we missed--and still miss. To be sure, the existence of liberal nostalgia for Bush I says a lot about just how bad a president Bush II has been. But is the son really worse?

In the area of domestic policy, our current President Bush has certainly pushed a lot of bad policies. Like Poppy (as the elder Bush is known to his family), Dubya has played revolting, demagogic politics with the Constitution. But unlike the flag burning amendment, which at one point really seemed like a done deal, the Federal Marriage Amendment never had much of a chance to pass. As for rolling back environmental protections, siding with the moneyed over the unmoneyed, and appointing right-wing judges to the federal courts--in all these areas, Dubya is just his father's kid. And pushing a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion? Oh wait, that was Bush I, not Bush II.

As for tax cuts, Dubya does, admittedly, love them more than his dad--a lot more. But there may be an upside. Tax cuts, however irresponsible, can help alleviate economic pain during a recession, and they may, for all we know, be making things better for us now. Reforming social security while cutting even more taxes? Sounds lunatic, but the ramifications are so enormous that assessing the pros and cons is, more than we'd like to admit, guesswork. Dubyanomics are high stakes, dangerous, and--if you put yourself in the right frame of mind--vaguely thrilling, like an Italian cab ride. Perhaps things will work out in the end, and we'll all be surprised and rich, or else they'll fail disastrously, and Republicans will be cast into political exile. There's a lot to be said for either of these outcomes.

In any case, domestic policy differences between Poppy and Dubya are fairly insignificant in light of their foreign policies. And it is, after all, foreign policy that we have to thank for Bush I nostalgia. But here again, Poppy enthusiasts may have exaggerated the contrast between father and son. Sure, Poppy handled the fall of communism delicately, but what would Dubya have done--brought on World War Three? As for the present day, Poppy, to judge from his performance at the Rio summit, would have dismissed the Kyoto Protocol with as much eagerness as his son. Poppy would have behaved in a conciliatory fashion when China was holding an American spy plane and its crew--but so did Dubya. Poppy, like his son, would have gone after the Taliban. Perhaps Poppy would have had friendlier relations with Gerhard and Jacques, but, really, history will not much care.

The real differences between Poppy and Dubya come down to Iraq. Poppy fans think he would have handled things better. Poppy would have assembled a grand U.N. coalition to topple Saddam, or he would have left Saddam alone. He would not have lied to the entire world about the rationale for war.

None of this is crazy to think. Perhaps torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib wasn't such a brilliant idea. Perhaps deceiving the public on the grounds for war and squandering the nation's credibility for at least a generation will be judged to have been impulsive. And perhaps we'd be better off not having gone into Iraq, even if it meant that Saddam held power still. America would probably be financially healthier and less hated abroad, 1,300 Americans would still be alive, and 10,000 more would have been spared devastating injuries.

But let's not let Poppy off so easily. No one could have managed a Poppy-style coalition this time around; some countries, such as France and Russia, were simply beyond persuasion on the topic of Iraq. Worse, Poppy left his son prey to what George Will, in 1992, called the "Desert Storm legacy": "Bush made U.S. policy subservient to the United Nations at a moment when the U.N. was pleased to be subservient to the United States. But there may come a time when the United States will be held hostage to ... the idea that the legitimacy of U.S. force is directly proportional to the number of nations condoning it." Indeed, Poppy had grown gluttonous in 1991, amassing coalition members like servings from an all-you-can-eat buffet, only finally stopping at 34. Dubya, faced with that bequest, had to call up countries like Angola and Micronesia to beat his father with a count of about 54--and it looked a bit daffy. Will's prescience in 1992 reminds us that the blame for this situation lies more with father than with son.

Moreover, legitimacy is not necessarily morality. It makes little sense for liberals who deplore the narrow legalism of right-wing judges here in the United States to applaud it in the context of the United Nations and foreign affairs. Poppy's handling of the Persian Gulf War should never be held up as a moral example. For what is worse: telling the world that you are sure about WMD when you are only pretty sure--or telling a group of people that you support their efforts to rebel and then standing by as they get killed? Killing thousands in an attempt bring democracy to a brutal dictatorship--or allowing many thousands more to be killed in the name of holding together a coalition and maintaining regional stability by preserving a brutal dictatorship? If we are ashamed of the actions Dubya has taken in our name, why are we not even more ashamed of the actions Poppy took in our name?

Those who praise Poppy now are usually using him as a vehicle to extol a certain set of foreign-policy values--namely, non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries, and international cooperation. But Poppy isn't even a good posterboy for these ideas: Whatever one thinks of such principles, they at least set out a coherent worldview; but Poppy always privileged convenience over coherence. International law mattered very little when he invaded Panama, for example, but it became important once Iraq loomed. Intervention looked fine when it came to goading on Iraqis to rebel, but non-intervention looked even better when it looked like the wrong rebels might succeed. There was a bloody price to Poppy's incoherence. Sending mixed signals to the Kurds and Shiites caused vastly more devastation than simply keeping quiet would have caused. In terms of general human suffering, no harm done by George W. Bush is likely to surpass the harm done by his father during those months of 1991.

To be sure, Dubya's values may not appeal to all of us--or at least not to 48 percent of us. But at least he brings a modicum of consistency to his moral outlook. If he has brought unnecessary suffering to Iraq, then he has also brought tremendous hope to what used to be a humanitarian calamity. If he is leading us astray in Iraq, at least his aims are unquestionably good and just. History has already spoken on Poppy's actions following the Gulf War, and the verdict is deservedly harsh; whereas there remains--still--the possibility that history will someday vindicate Dubya's decision to topple Saddam.

But that will take a while, and in the meantime we must brace ourselves for more odes to Poppy. A full length biography is overdue, and it will undoubtedly argue that Bush I was a seriously underrated president, as unjustly dismissed as Zachary Taylor. The book will be embraced as a slap in the face to Dubya, and it will join the bestsellers list. And, once again, liberals will look at Bushes and try to see something other than Bush. It will take the forceful slaps of friends to remind them: Dubya isn't Churchill; and Poppy wasn't John Kerry. There's no need to muck around in such dregs looking for political gold.

For now, though, we can at least enjoy the ride of George W. Bush--incompetent, belligerent, and, maybe once in a while, insanely inspired--for what it is and be grateful for one thing: that we know we can get through this. Thanks to four years with his father, we've been through worse.

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TRB FROM WASHINGTON
Flagellation
by Hendrik Hertzberg
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 01.01.05

[ Earlier this week, TNR's Tom Frank argued that, contra the prevailing view among liberals, the first President Bush was in fact a worse president than his son. In this 1989 piece, Hendrik Hertzberg wrote about Bush's effort to enact a constitutional amendment banning flag burning. Bush's handling of the controversy suggested relatively early in his term the degree to which his presidency would be characterized by a petty, cynical brand of politics--"grubby and frivolous at once," as Frank described it. Hertzberg seems to have sensed that in demagogically calling for a flag-burning ban, Bush was revealing his true colors: The president, Hertzberg wrote, was not acting like "the reasonable, moderate fellow one stupidly keeps hoping is the 'real Bush.'" ]

July 17, 1989

Many a bum show has been saved by the flag. --George M. Cohan

Amid the current hysteria an important ontological point has been overlooked: you can't burn the flag. It can't be done. A flag, yes. The flag, no. The flag, the American flag, is an abstraction, a certain arrangement of stars, stripes, and colors that exists (a) in the realm of Platonic ideals and ( in the minds and hearts of people. To say this is not to denigrate the flag; on the contrary, it is to place the flag where it belongs, in a higher realm of existence than the material. A flag, any particular flag, is merely a copy. You can no more destroy the flag by burning a flag than you can destroy the Constitution by burning a copy of the Constitution.

The flag, as long as it exists in human hearts, is fireproof. The Constitution, however, is more vulnerable. It can be desecrated quite effectively by amending it in ways foreign to its spirit and hostile to its purposes. Members of Congress rushed to do just that in the wake of Texas v. Johnson. George Bush, in the first truly sickening act of demagoguery of his young presidency, has now put the impetus of his support behind them.

Have you read the actual Texas statute the Supreme Court ruled on? It makes it "a Class A misdemeanor" for anyone to "deface, damage, or otherwise physically mistreat [a state or national flag] in a way that the actor knows will seriously offend one or more persons likely to observe or discover his action." What's surprising is not that this bit of legislative flotsam was struck down, but that four of the nine justices deemed it consistent with the First Amendment.

All the opinions in this case are notable for their passion. The dissenters' passion is reserved mostly for the flag, the majority's mostly for the Constitution. The dissenters venerate the symbol; the majority venerates the thing symbolized. Both have emotion on their sides, but the majority has logic, too.

Chief Justice Rehnquist devotes many pages to explicating the special meaning of the flag. His dissent is studded with verse: four lines of Emerson's "Concord Hymn," the opening stanza of "The Star Spangled Banner," two full pages of "Barbara Frietchie." He succeeds beautifully in making the point that the flag is a powerful symbol of a particular set of sentiments and ideas. Or, as Justice Stevens puts it, in a transcendently absurd passage I can't resist quoting:

The message conveyed by some flags--the swastika, for example--may survive long after it has outlived its usefulness as a symbol of regimented unity in a particular nation. So it is with the American flag.

What the justice means is ... well, never mind. But Rehnquist and Stevens want to have it both ways. The flag conveys a message that nothing else conveys, but burning a flag (in Rehnquist's words) "conveyed nothing that could not have been conveyed and was not conveyed just as forcefully in a dozen different ways." These assertions, Justice Brennan remarks in a footnote, "sit uneasily" next to each other. If flying the flag is symbolic speech, so is burning one; and speech, in this country, is supposed to be free.

Rehnquist argues that we outlaw "conduct that is regarded as evil and profoundly offensive to the majority of people whether it be murder, embezzlement, pollution, or flag burning." We don't, however, outlaw murder, embezzlement, and pollution because they're offensive. We outlaw them because they inflict palpable harm on actual people. Flag burning merely offends, and it offends by what it says.

When the decision came down, I allowed myself to hope it would be the occasion for nothing worse than a harmless festival of hokum calculated to bring pleasure to the shades of Mencken and Sinclair Lewis. And that's how it was, the first day.

The inimitable Bob Dole rushed a wild, all caps statement up to the Senate press gallery. It began this way:

MAYBE THOSE WHO SIT IN IVORY TOWERS AGREE WITH THE SUPREME COURT MAYBE, AS THE MAN WHO BURNED THE FLAG, MILLIONS OF PEOPLE HATE AMERICA, HATE THE FLAG. IF THEY DO, THEY OUGHT TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY IFTHEY DO NOT LIKE AMERICA, THAT'S FINE. GO FIND SOMETHING YOU DO LIKE. IF THEY DON'T LIKE OUR FLAG, GO FIND ONE YOU DO LIKE.

That was a paragraph to savor, especially the way the antecedents chased each other like enraged bees. Meanwhile, over on the House side, one rascal after another was having his say. The 15th to rise was Douglas Applegate, Democrat of Ohio, who, after proclaiming that it would be all right with the Court for his colleagues to rip down "the flag right here in this Chamber" and "defecate on it," shouted, "Are there any limitations? Are they going to allow fornication in Times Square at high noon?" As if on cue, up got Donald E. "Buz" Lukens, Republican (and underage girl fancier) of Ohio. "Mr. Speaker, what does it say to the world that Americans can now legally burn the flag?..."

The show got ugly the next day, when the texts of proposed amendments started filling the hoppers with amendments like this one, offered by 17 members of the House:

SECTION I. The misuse or desecration of the symbol, emblem, seal, or flag of the United States is not protected speech under the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

SECTION 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

And so on. An America capable of writing this sort of tripe into its Constitution would be a country at once less serious and less funny than the country we thought we were living in. And less free, too.

President Bush's role in all this is unusually contemptible. His first reaction was to say that while he regards flag burning as "dead wrong," he could understand why the Court decided as it did. That was the reasonable, moderate fellow one stupidly keeps hoping is the "real Bush." After a day's reflection and lunch with Lee Atwater, Bush decided that "the importance of this issue compels me to call for a constitutional amendment."

If Bush has his way, the Bill of Rights will be amended for the first time in American history and for what? Because of what danger? Flag burning is extremely rare, and, though offensive, essentially harmless. It has no "importance." It is not even an "issue," since no one, apart from a few isolated political cultists, is in favor of it. So what's going on?

The mystery vanishes when one recalls Bush's use last fall of the Pledge of Allegiance "issue." Now, if he has his way, the same cynical manipulation of patriotic symbols, as perfected by political consultants, is to be enshrined in the Constitution. Negative campaigning is to be raised to the level of a civic sacrament. The desecration of the flag, which is not a problem, is to be made the pretext for the desecration of what the flag represents. For George Bush, nice guy, the defilement of the Bill of Rights itself is just another tactic for narrow partisan gain. And it's hard to see, at this point, who's going to stop him.

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