The New Republic’s Steven Groopman wrote a provocative piece today on “how liberals play into Karl Rove’s hands.” The Note suggested that Democratic members of Congress who didn’t “get it” before will “get it” after reading the piece, so my curiosity was piqued. After reading the piece, I’m not sure it’s Democrats who don’t “get it.”
Groopman’s piece reflects on his experience watching the State of the Union at an event sponsored by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, along with some A-list bloggers, Sam Seder from Air America Radio, and about 100 others.
Early on, when Bush invoked September 11, the audience let out a loud groan and snickered. Seconds later, the president mentioned the word “freedom” for the first time. A bell rang, and the audience laughed; then Bush said the words “terror” and “weapons of mass destruction” and bells rang again, followed by more laughter. This ritual was repeated throughout the speech whenever Bush uttered any of these words or phrases.
This made me wonder: Why the visceral reaction to these particular formulations? The speech contained plenty of lines worthy of ridicule, and Bush certainly uses his share of dishonest conservative catchphrases (“activist judges” for instance). But spreading freedom around the world is — or should be — a paramount goal of liberalism. […]
[W]hen Bush spoke of “writing a new chapter in the story of self-government,” spectators burst into laughter. When he said, “Ultimately, the only way to defeat the terrorists is to defeat their dark vision of hatred and fear by offering the hopeful alternative of political freedom and peaceful change,” I heard a mix of bell ringing and belly laughs. Why is the goal of promoting “political freedom” worthy of such derision?
I don’t blame Groopman for asking. He heard the president share idealistic-sounding goals, with which he appears to agree, and found it frustrating to hear activists laughing. He interpreted the derision as mocking the ideas that generated the laughter in the first place.
This is incorrect. I wasn’t at the CAP event and I obviously can’t speak for those who were there, but it in my circles, when Bush generates giggles, we’re laughing at him and his commitments, not the poll-tested, idealistic soundbites used to generate applause.
Consider Groopman’s context again. Bush critics were watching the State of the Union with certain expectations — that the president would rely on certain keywords, repeated almost incessantly, whether they made sense or not. Bush’s reference to “terror” generated laughter, not because terrorism is amusing or unserious, but because Bush himself doesn’t take it seriously.
It’s a word the president uses to excess, usually to avoid accountability for his failures. For years, phrases like “War on Terror” and “Spreading Democracy” aren’t policies; they’re slogans on a stage, set up to take full advantage of a photo-op.
When Bush repeats words like “freedom,” “terror,” and “weapons of mass destruction,” we laugh at the cynical exploitation of words that used to have real meaning, but are now justifications for mistakes. We laugh because we no longer believe that Bush means what he says, and that the phrases themselves are used simply to improve his political standing. We laugh with discomfort because we know that Bush’s carefully-crafted words are hollow and meaningless.
Groopman concludes, “As long as Democrats are required by their base to ridicule Bush’s ends rather than his means, they will have lost the debate over foreign policy before it even starts.” But this simply misunderstands the motivation for the ridicule. I’m yet to see a leading Democrat at any level ridicule the goal of spreading liberal democracy. The mockery is about Bush’s tactics, his sincerity, his dishonesty, and his cynicism.
There’s a big difference.