Michael Gerson in Denial
On Friday the Washington Post published its biweekly column by Michael Gerson, this time titled “Democrats in Denial.” Before we discuss the basis of the article and the claims made within it, a little about Michael Gerson himself.
Gerson is a former senior policy adviser to the Heritage Foundation, an important and influential conservative think tank. He left that position in 1999 at the bidding of Karl Rove who thought that Gerson would be a nice addition to the presidential campaign for George W. Bush. After Bush was elected, Gerson became one of his speech writers and eventually became the head of the White House speech writing group. If anyone were to doubt the effect that his work has had on the rhetoric and political language of the current time, they would only need reminded that, according to Gerson himself, he was the originator of the “smoking gun - mushroom cloud” image, the term “axis of evil” and that he was one of the most prolific speech writers for Bush (it should be mentioned that other White House speech writers have accused Gerson of exaggerating his contributions, although the point is that even if he did not come up with all of the memorable lines of this administration, he desires to have people believe that he did - which may be even more revealing). In 2006 Gerson left the White House, wrote for a time at Newsweek, and ultimately was given a column at the Washington Post.
Now that we are familiar with Gerson’s past and his obvious interests in defending the actions of the administration, policies that he himself helped persuade the American public to accept, let’s look at some of the claims made in his latest piece.
The mood of this article strongly suggests that it is a reaction to the events in Iowa last night; specifically, that such an overwhelming amount of independents and even Republicans came out to participate in the Democratic caucuses. Gerson seems angry about this, and would like to convince us that most of the platforms of the Democratic candidates are no better - in fact, much worse - than those of the Bush administration. First he takes on the Iraq war. Again, let’s keep in mind the “smoking gun - mushroom cloud” metaphor that convinced the world that the war was justified in the first place, a metaphor that proved to be meaningless.
Gerson says:
“In Iraq, coalition casualties are down significantly, along with Iraqi civilian casualties, roadside bombings and suicide attacks. Large sections of Baghdad have been pacified, and the military rolls toward Mosul. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is in reeling retreat. And, most impressive, we have seen the first example of a large-scale Sunni Arab uprising against Islamic extremism. By one estimate, 30,000 former insurgents and tribal leaders are now fighting the enemy in Iraq, adding their surge to our own.
This progress is reversible, especially while Moqtada al-Sadr’s militias maintain the capability to mount their own mini-Tet Offensive. But Gen. David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy has succeeded with disorienting speed. Its combination of vision and competence will fill chapters in military textbooks.”
If the statistics Gerson is referring to are assumed to be accurate (this administration has been less than competent in compiling accurate numbers, especially in respect to the war where they have bet so much of their credibility. A key phrase here is “by one estimate” - almost certainly the highest estimate), then they do reflect that the surge may be working. And this is, at the risk of stepping out of the holy party line, a very good thing. We can debate the merits of the war as a whole, whether or not it should have happened in the first place, but if the surge is working, and therefore fewer Americans and innocent Iraqi’s are losing their lives, it should be congratulated. In this case, partisanship is not only irrelevant, it’s irresponsible. However, Gerson’s characterization of the surge as having worked with “disorienting speed” is an obvious exaggeration meant to insinuate that Petraeus completely blew everyone’s expectations out of the water. I also highly doubt that it will appear in future military textbooks. He wants us to believe that this has been one of the most impressive military undertakings in history, a claim that is almost laughable.
Next, Gerson says:
“In spite of these gains, Democratic presidential candidates still insist on reckless timetables for withdrawal — the surest way to rescue defeat from the jaws of victory.”
One wonders how closely Gerson has actually listened to the Democratic Candidates. Now that the race has effectively been reduced to Obama and Clinton, with moderate hopes left for Edwards, only one of the candidates has pledged to pull out all combat forces by 2013 (Edwards). Surely, both Obama and Clinton would like the war to be over, and they would definitely take whatever measures necessary to achieve these goals. But no matter how politically advantageous it is for any of them to claim they will end the war immediately (which they really have not anyway), they all know that a complete, and in Gerson’s words, reckless immediate withdrawal would indeed probably be a bad idea, and none of them would actually do it.
So far, the column is nothing too spectacular, embodying what most people on the right and definitely everyone inside the White House already thinks. But then he turns his attention to education and the Orwellian No Child Left Behind.
“Democratic rhetoric on education is also an assault on reality. Attacking No Child Left Behind is a reliable campaign applause line — Hillary Clinton promises to “end” the law, because it is “just not working.” Actually, the imposition of educational standards and testing has improved math and reading scores and begun narrowing the gap between disadvantaged and affluent students.”
While Gerson is very correct that attacking the law is a great platform for a campaign, he reveals in this statement more than he means to. Why is it, I would like to ask him, that so many people feel so passionately against No Child Left Behind? Gerson condescends to the nearly the entire American public in his assertion that he knows more about what is or is not working in their own school districts than they do. People are angry about NCLB because they see what it is really doing. It is taking the focus off of real education, the kind that molds students into free thinkers and better members of society and instead concentrating solely on arbitrary test results. If a school fails to meet up to these pointless standards, then they do not get sufficient funding. There is a GLARING logical problem here. Shouldn’t those schools that are not meeting the cut actually receive more funding so that they have a chance of improving their programs? Instead, in the twisted mind of Bush administration members like Gerson, schools that are already disadvantaged and poor (a subject that requires an entire look of its own) are punished and their students are, well, there’s no other term for it other than “left behind,” hence the Orwellian, call it exactly what it is not, sense of the program. In addition, it would be nice if Gerson would provide us with some of the data that he interprets as showing that the gap between rich and poor (sorry, “disadvantaged and affluent”) students is closing. Surely, these incredible findings should be on the front page of every major newspaper, since they directly contradict what any respectable social scientist has found lately.
“There is an angry backlash against NCLB among some Democratic interest groups. Suburban districts resent being labeled as failures just because some minority and disabled children aren’t making progress. But that is the whole purpose of the law — to prevent districts from hiding the poor performance of minorities behind the success of other students. Such districts should feel less resentment and more shame.”
I kid you not, I gasped when I read these sentences. This, above anything else Gerson posits in this piece, is shocking. He doesn’t even make an attempt to conceal his racism. Disabled children?! School districts should be ASHAMED that their disabled students are not meeting up to George Bush’s standards?! No, Mr. Gerson, YOU are the one who should feel shame.
Whether it is intentional or not (and I would bet that at some level, it is), the real result of education policies like No Child Left Behind is to form students into the kind of intellectually numb, power yielding adults that fit so well into the corporate world, where idiotic targets and goals are now the norm as well. And those schools who do not mold enough of their students into this picture will simply have to fend for themselves. It has resulted in many schools being forced to abandon many of their usual and time tested curricula and only teach “to the test” in order to ensure that they don’t fall short. A shocking number of students entering college are entirely unprepared for the sort of real challenges that await them, because they will be required to actually think once in a while.
Gerson accuses the Democratic presidential candidates of being out of touch with reality. But obviously it is he who has become so indoctrinated with the Bush-world view, having spent many years shoving it down the American public’s throat, that he can no longer see reality. The policies that he helped articulate for the president are, in his mind, beyond scrutiny, even as their blatant failures are becoming obvious throughout the country and the world. Now that there is good evidence that the Democratic party is stronger than it has been in a very long time, Gerson and others like him will scramble to find reasons why they are not to be trusted and are incompetent liars. But the public is sick of the nonsense that is constantly spewed by the administration, and many of them can feel at a visceral level and see at a intellectual one that there is in fact substance to what the Democrats are saying. They are finding a vision that has been completely absent in the current administration. And when one of them is elected as president, Gerson is going to have to finally pull himself out of his own denial and myopia and see that it was partly his own fault, with his glaring lies and misconceptions, that the Democrats are back in power.