Who knew, in 2000, that “compassionate conservatism” meant bigger government, unrestricted government spending, government intrusion in personal matters, government ineptitude, and cronyism in disaster relief? Who knew, in 2000, that the only bill the president would veto, six years later, would be one on funding stem-cell research?

A more accurate term for Mr. Bush’s political philosophy might be incontinent conservatism.

On Capitol Hill, a Republican Senate and House are now distinguished by—or perhaps even synonymous with—earmarks, the K Street Project, Randy Cunningham (bandit, 12 o’clock high!), Sen. Ted Stevens’s $250-million Bridge to Nowhere, Jack Abramoff (Who? Never heard of him), and a Senate Majority Leader who declared, after conducting his own medical evaluation via videotape, that he knew every bit as much about the medical condition of Terry Schiavo as her own doctors and husband. Who knew that conservatism means barging into someone’s hospital room like Dr. Frankenstein with defibrillator paddles? In what chapter of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom or Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind is that principle enunciated? ~Christopher Buckley, The Washington Monthly

In fairness, there were always some conservatives who recognised “compassionate conservatism” as the big-government swindle that it was, and this fear was confirmed almost immediately by Mr. Bush’s extensive federal intrusion on education.  There were some of us, Constitution Party and Buchanan voters mostly, who saw the “faith-based initiative” (which happily died an unremarked, unlamented death early on, and was buried in one of the unmarked, shallow graves where all fatuous government programs end up) as just another way for government to interfere in those private institutions that were managing just fine without the state.  But our sort of conservatism, as the saying goes, “doesn’t win elections”; galloping government expansion and socialism apparently do, which is apparently the only standard by which the Bush Era conservative movement measured things.   

The name “compassionate conservatism” itself gave you a feeling that something was terribly wrong with it, and not just along the lines of the usual complaints.  Some pundits complained that we don’t have to say that we’re compassionate, since only some kooky liberal would assume that conservatives are heartless.  This was a silly objection.  What was really wrong with the phrase was that it betrayed a belief that all of the bleeding-heart, “I feel your pain” crap that we endured during the Clinton years was not only good politics but a good basis on which to make policy, as if I wanted my government to “care” about me.  I would normally much prefer my government to take as little interest in me as possible beyond the basic necessities of guarding against invasion and regulating currency.  As the record shows, this caring is typically a lot of hot air mixed together with a lot of new government programs that are supposed to symbolise the “compassion” of the GOP–as if ripping off the taxpayers with a bafflingly complex drugs program that its own beneficiaries cannot understand were compassionate–and when crunch time came in the wake of a natural disaster government “compassion,” like government competence, was (surprise, surprise) nowhere to be found.  People who talk about compassion in politics should be watched very closely, because they are either trying to rip you off or they are so astonishingly impractical and naive that they will promise you the moon and give you policy disaster after policy disaster.  People used to stereotype the two parties as the Daddy and Mommy Parties (neither is particularly inspiring for a country of supposedly free people), but the GOP over the last six years has been a sort of divorced absentee dad who spoils his kids on the two weekends out of the year when he actually pays attention to them in a desperate bid to keep their affection (in between lectures to his daughters on the dangers of gay marriage). 

All of the “compassion” talk was mixed up with Mr. Bush’s heart-talk and his soul-talk, where he would keep assuring people that so-and-so whom he appointed to head, let’s say, the Department of Agriculture “had a good heart” or that the soul of this or that fellow was a good soul.  That’s nice.  It’s nice to have nice people in government.  While I’m entirely in favour of having people with integrity and good character in office, there is just something about these sorts of descriptions that leave me scratching my head.  I don’t know if this is something that Mr. Bush thinks makes him sound like he comes from the heartland, or if there are people out there who really do normally talk like this, but the effect is to make one want to break into laughter.  Then, once the laughing stops, the terror begins to creep in as you think to yourself: “Good grief, the man is entirely serious!  He thinks he can see into men’s hearts!”  Which, gentle reader, is normally one of those things Christians try to leave to God.