Sunshine Patriots

By: Paul Begala

Who are the patriots in times of national crisis? For decades Republicans have questioned the patriotism of Democrats. Richard Nixon got elected to the Senate by calling his Democratic opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, "pink right down to her underwear". George H.W. Bush attacked Michael Dukakis's patriotism throughout the 1988 presidential-election campaign. Rich Bond, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, once said that Democrats were not "real Americans". And we all remember the elder Bush darkly hinting that Bill Clinton's student-backpacking trip to Moscow in the 1960's somehow made his patriotism suspect.

But in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States, it is enlightening to examine who has been patriotic and who has been partisan. Though there have been plenty of policy disagreements, the Democrats have stood behind their commander in chief, whatever their doubts about his fitness for office or how he attained it. Senate majority leader Tom Daschle and House minority leader Dick Gephardt issued statements of unwavering solidarity. Former President Bill Clinton called on all Americans to rally behind George W. Bush. In a rare public statement, Al Gore put patriotism ahead of the fact that a majority of Americans had wanted him to be president - and he bear-hugged Bush. Even a hard-core partisan like Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, ordered a cease-fire, going so far as to remove any criticism of Bush from the party's Web site.

To be fair, most Republicans, too, have set aside their partisan fervor. The Bush administration wisely pulled two controversial nominations. And House Speaker Dennis Hastert pledged to extend unemployment compensation and health insurance to laid-off workers.

But there have been cracks in the patriotic veneer, ugly moments in which vicious partisanship has supplanted patriotism. And every one of them has come from the right.

In the days after hate-filled fanatics murdered thousands of innocent people on American soil, the Reverend Jerry Falwell described those cowards as instruments of God's divine retribution. Appearing on the 700 Club (hosted by the Reverend Pat Robertson), Falwell uttered this gem about the mass slaughter: "God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve." He went on to say that the American Civil Liberties Union has "got to take a lot of blame for this", then added to his indictment judges and others who are "throwing God out of the public square".

Then Falwell got specific. "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked", he said. "And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen'."

A spokesmouse for George W. Bush called the remarks "inappropriate".

Inappropriate? I thought Junior knew what inappropriate was. Inappropriate is using the wrong fork during salad. Inappropriate is getting too loaded at the fall mixer and hurling all over your girlfriend's shoes. This is not inappropriate. This is unpatriotic, un-Christian, un-American.

I have yet to hear any of the judgmental blow-hards of the right distance themselves from Falwell. If Louis Farrakhan had said the same thing, every Republican in America would be screaming for his head.

Speaking of inappropriate, get this: The American Conservative Union, ever-sensitive to the carnage of September 11, ran an ad in Democratic Congressman John C. Spratt's South Carolina district saying that Spratt "doesn't want to help President Bush defend America" - because Spratt, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, disagrees with the president's funding for Star Wars (Bush's faith-based missile-defense system).

This time, no comment from the White House. Not a peep from the punditocracy. No stern lectures from Republican Party elders to keep partisanship out of a national crisis. Why should the fact that we're at quasi-war keep you from kicking a good guy in the rocks?

One of the most reliable rules in Washington for the past decade has been that if you want to hear a truly idiotic statement, all you need to do is stick a microphone in Dick Armey's face. Armey (R-Insanity) is the House majority leader. Two weeks after the terrorist attacks, when it had become clear that the Bush recession was causing massive layoffs, Armey announced that he was going to back away from Hastert's commitment to unemployment and health benefits for Americans who've been laid off. "The model of thought that says we need to go out and extend unemployment benefits and health insurance benefits and so forth is not, I think, one that is commensurate with the American spirit here", he said.

You want more? How about Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and the principal organizer of the right-wing coalition? After lamenting that the bad thing about war is that it makes governments bigger (others might think that death, dismemberment, dislocation, and disillusionment are bigger downsides of war), Norquist suggested that people who support expanded funding for Amtrak in the wake of concerns over air safety "should be hanged as war profiteers".

Can we have the hangings in stadiums, Grover, so we can be just like the Taliban?

Of course, the official gasbag of the kook right is Rush Limbaugh. He took to The Wall Street Journal's editorial page to savage - the Taliban? al-Qaeda? global terrorists? Naaaah. He attacked Bill Clinton. Even the slaughter of thousands of innocent souls doesn't deter Lardbutt from going after Clinton. He even tried to blame the former president for the September 11 crisis.

But the truth is that Clinton tripled the budget for counterterrorism, increased FBI counterterror manpower by 500 percent, tried repeatedly to capture or kill Osama bin Laden (efforts the right wing denounced at the time), asked for new law-enforcement tools (which the GOP-controlled Congress denied), and appointed Al Gore to propose sweeping improvements in airport security (which the GOP Congress failed to enact fully).

The surest proof that Limbaugh puts partisanship ahead of patriotism in attacking Clinton's antiterrorism record comes from none other than George W. Bush. Of all the talented people in the Clinton administration, Bush saw fit to keep only two on the job: Dick Clarke, who ran counterterrorism for the National Security Council, and George Tenet, director of the CIA.

There is a pattern here. Once again, we see that the Democrats and Republicans are more than two different political parties. They have two fundamentally divergent ways of looking at the world.

Democrats are children of the Enlightenment. They believe in the perfectibility of humanity. They revere systems even more than they do results. And so, in a crisis, they exhibit a nonpartisan patriotism that would make George M. Cohan proud.

Republicans are not process-oriented; they are results-oriented. Hence, Florida 2000 and the Supreme Court's theft of the election. And hence, the party's casting aside of a long-standing American tradition of eschewing partisanship when American lives are in danger.

Knowing all that, I shouldn't have been shocked by Falwell, Armey, Norquist, and Limbaugh. But I was. I suppose that, with my Democratic rose-colored glasses, I at least expected them to wait until the rubble was cleared and the funerals had been conducted.