Just when you thought Labour leaning types had scraped the bottom of the barrel with their pathetic attempts to smear Cameron, you find that there is a new low that they can sink to. And here it is, in
this question:
Is David Cameron the new George W Bush?
No. But let's look at the counter-argument laid out in the article anyway.
It may seem an odd comparison, with Bush drifting into discredited semi-retirement – one of his few relatively recent public appearances has been a pre-match coin toss for the Dallas Cowboys – while Cameron enjoys one of the most energetic prime ministerial honeymoons for decades.
Yep. If you want to compare the discredited Bush with another discredited former world leader living in a muted, enforced retirement that borders on seclusion, then you could try one Gordon Brown. The comparison makes far more sense there, particularly since both of them managed to fuck up the response to the global recession in their respective countries.
Yet in their backgrounds and how they have presented themselves, in their political trajectories and, most important, in their style of government, there are striking parallels. These parallels may tell us where Cameron's premiership, which will be 100 days old on 19 August, is heading.
Actually, if your intention is anything other than baseless speculation and crude party political point-scoring, comparing the administrations a US president who left office in 2009 with a British Prime Minister who first assumed office in 2010 is bound to be an exercise limited in its relevance.
Both men come from elite families, but rebranded themselves – with useful help from supposedly "anti-elite" parts of the rightwing media such as the Sun and Fox News – as relatively ordinary citizens.
Bush Junior was the son of a President. Cameron, even given his privileged background, cannot claim anything similar. If you want to compare Bush Junior with anyone in this country, then Prince Charles might be your best bet. It is the same sort of nepotism that made George W President that will make Charlie-boy king in this country.
Both men were political slow starters: Cameron not active in student politics in the 80s, despite the decade's crucial and absorbing ideological battles; Bush not winning elected office until he became governor of Texas in 1995 at the age of 48.
And here we see a delicious u-turn in the rhetoric of Labour types - gone are the attacks on the younger Cameron for working for Lamont during Black Wednesday. Instead, we get attacks on the younger Cameron for not being active in student politics. The poor fucker can't win - whatever happens, his past is a big stick to hit him with. The problem is a fundamental lack in the consistency behind these attacks.
Rather than doing early political apprenticeships, like the earnest young Milibands, Bush and Cameron had some hedonistic times as young adults, which may continue to interest their opponents and biographers.
And again, we see the reverence of the emerging professional political class in this country. Those who have lived more of a life than the Milibands are automatically judged as less capable of holding office - even though some sort of a life outside of politics is valuable for potential leaders. For the first, but not for the last, time in this post I will label part of this argument as pathetic.
Having missed the heyday of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the two men began to rise instead when voters were losing their appetite for transatlantic conservatism's more caustic remedies, and positioned themselves accordingly as "compassionate conservatives". Most journalists took this carefully constructed moderation at face value.
So both men tried to be electable in order to win elections? The fuckers. Completely unlike say... Tony Blair, who never tried to appear as a moderate in order to garner electoral success. Again - pathetic.
Voters were less impressed. In the 2000 presidential election Bush, infamously, received about half a million votes fewer than Al Gore, despite Gore's over-complicated and stiff public manner, and a jittery economy. In this May's general election, it is already less remembered, Cameron's Conservatives scraped 36% of the vote – only a slight improvement on the share the party won in its heavy defeats in 2005 and 2001 – despite Gordon Brown's Gore-style presentational problems, and despite a British economy that was not so much jittery as post-traumatic.
Ok, time to crunch some numbers. In the
2010 General Election, Cameron's party won 10,703,954 votes. Brown's party won 8,609,527 votes. So, unlike the Bush/Gore 2000 contest, Cameron gained 2,094,427 more votes than Brown. The Tories also won 97 seats while Labour lost 92. This wasn't a narrow defeat for Labour - the Tories kicked their arses. The Tory problem lay in the parliamentary system in this country. Had it been a presidential system, these figures would have seen Cameron becoming President on the day after the election.
Oh, and on that 36% -
Blair got 35.2% of the vote in 2005 compared to Howard's 32.4%. So to claim that Cameron's vote is only a slight improvement on previous results is disingenuous to say the least. He bettered Howard's total percentage easily and also beat Blair's - despite the fact that the latter went on to form a government with no real problems.
Comparing Cameron's problems with Bush's in 2000 does not stand up to even the most basic scrutiny, and actually comes across as deceitful. Oh, and a bit pathetic as well.
And yet, out of Bush and Cameron's poor election showings in 2000 and 2010 has come a new, bolder British and American conservatism. You could call it a politics of wishful thinking – or of bluff.
Except, as we've seen, Cameron's party did the best in that election and cannot be compared to Bush's showing in 2000. The comparison is neither reasonable or meaningful.
First, the two men spun their thin or nonexistent electoral mandates as decisive expressions of public support. Thus, in America, throughout the month-long tumult of recounts and court challenges that followed the 2000 election, Bush presented himself as the contest's victor and Gore as the loser, when there was plenty of evidence that the situation was unclear or even the opposite. Similarly, in Britain this May, on election night, with a mere three seats declared (all retained by Labour) and the exit polls predicting a hung parliament, Cameron's key ally, George Osborne, told the BBC: "I do not think there's any question of Labour being able to continue [in office]." A few commentators fleetingly raised an eyebrow at Osborne's characteristically cocky, premature triumphalism, but it helped create a conventional wisdom about the election result that led directly to the formation of the coalition.
By God, there are just so many attempts at spin in this paragraph it is nearly unbelievable. Firstly, owing to the curious electoral college system in the US, the results of the 2000 election were unclear until Florida declared. Secondly, Osborne was absolutely spot on - there was no question of Labour continuing in office. The Tories didn't win outright, but the Labour party clearly lost. Even with the Lib Dems, they would not have been able to form a majority government. They were a discredited government led by a massively unpopular leader. Finally, what led to the formation of the coalition was Clegg deciding - quite rightly - to talk to the party that did best in the election first, and then the synergy between the Tories and the Lib Dem negotiators. The "conventional wisdom" wasn't created by triumphalism - it was created by the real politics of the election results and the coalition negotiations.
Once in government, Cameron, like Bush, has again exceeded the electorate's instructions. The cautious, inclusive, compassionate conservative has turned into a divisive rightwing radical.
Cameron has done nothing - nothing - that could be considered right-wing or radical. Nor did Bush Junior, for that matter, until he was able to manipulate a shell-shocked and traumatised USA in the aftermath of 9/11.
Both men have used national emergencies as political cover. For Bush, it was 9/11 that justified his huge, reckless neocon experiment. For Cameron, the emergency, more contrived, has been the double one of a hung parliament and a large national deficit – neither of them remotely unprecedented, but scary enough, in a Britain recently grown accustomed to political and economic stability, to make a shrinking of state spending drastic enough to satisfy the zaniest of 80s Thatcherites look like common sense, for the time being, to an impressive 55% of voters.
What is the charge here? That politicians use events in order to bolster their popularity? Because they do - and they have done so for pretty much all of recorded history. It is just that some are better at it than others. Gordon Brown, for example, constantly tried to do it but, unfortunately for him, was shit at it.
And the reason why 55% of voters might be supporting Cameron is because they understand that the cuts aren't zany but essential.
Will Cameron's shallow and opportunistic radicalism succeed? The Bush precedent suggests it may, but only for a few years. Bush was re-elected in 2004, and his approval ratings remained healthy until mid-2005. During this post-9/11 period, it sometimes seemed as if his government could be kept aloft almost by agenda-setting rhetoric alone, without the clever thinktank ideas and canny legislative arm-twistingand basic administrative competence that sustained Thatcher's and Reagan's administrations. In 2002, a Bush aide told the New York Times magazine writer Ron Suskind that he dismissed critics as members of the "reality-based community". "When we act, we create our own reality … We're history's actors ... and you will be left to just study what we do.''
Again, I'm not quite sure why Cameron is being compared to Bush. He doesn't rule like Bush, he isn't facing the same challenges as Bush, and there is no reason to think that the history of the USA in the early part of this century should suddenly be transferred to Britain in 2010.
At times, there has been a whiff of that gravity-defying arrogance about the coalition: in Michael Gove's careless handling of the school building programme; in Cameron's desire to give his government a fixed five years in power, after the public have just voted for a fluid British politics.
Firstly, Gove isn't Cameron and it is possible that the coalition will learn from Gove's errors. They certainly should do. And Cameron wanted, along with the Liberal Democrats, to create a stable government in this country. I really don't see what is so wrong with that. Finally, the assertion that the British people voted for a "fluid British politics" is shite. They voted for particular parties; the "fluid British politics", if it exists, comes from the lack of a decisive result - which is likely to change at the next election.
When government gets difficult, ambition and rhetoric will only take you so far. In 2005, Bush was found wanting by Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq; his ratings never recovered. Eerily, Cameron has enjoyed a first three months in power almost free of awkward events and accidents.
So what? I don't get this comparison. Yep, Cameron may yet be tested by events. But given Hurricane Katrina occurred in a different country in the bastard past, I don't see how it has any bearings on the challenges that Cameron may face in the future.
But he has inherited a weaker economy than Bush, and is likely to face a stronger opposition leader and has a coalition to keep happy.
Which rather makes my point - you can't compare Cameron with Bush because they are not facing the same circumstances. But the comment about the opposition leader makes me chuckle. Given the charisma vacuums vying to be Labour leader, there is no chance of Cameron facing a stronger opposition leader than Bush did.
He will be lucky if, like Bush, he gets five good years.
Well, let's hope that Cameron doesn't get five "good" years like Bush - given those five good years for Bush involved mass murder on American soil and the invasion by Bush's country of two nations.
I'm not a fan of Cameron, and I can already see a number of reasons and ways to attack him. But to compare him to Bush is an insult to Cameron and to the challenges facing this country. I'm all for actually taking the fight to Cameron; to criticise him for what he is and what he does. However, to attack him for being like Bush is deceitful, lazy and incompetent. Even for The Guardian, it is utterly pathetic.
Labels: Bush, Cameron, Hysteria, The Guardian, Witless Morons
