Tim Graham of the media/whiner organization NewsBusters complains that Robert Kaiser of The Washington Post positively reviewed Andrew Bacevich‘s Limits of Power and referred to the author as “conservative.” Graham writes, “Kaiser’s rave review touted Bacevich as a ‘self-described conservative,’ but that description stretches credulity when an author is the darling of the radical-left media, as Bacevich is right now. Kaiser’s review very neatly describes how much Bacevich’s argument sounds just like standard left-wing media boilerplate.”

Graham’s complaint is that Bacevich doesn’t chant “USA!!, USA!!!, USA!!!!”; so he can’t be a conservative. Instead, according to Graham, he says:

2. President Bush is horrible, and the Congress is worse than wimpy in opposing his “imperial presidency.”

Bacevich’s political crisis involves more than just George W. Bush’s failed presidency, though “his policies have done untold damage.” Bacevich argues that the government the Founders envisaged no longer exists, replaced by an imperial presidency and a passive, incompetent Congress. “No one today seriously believes that the actions of the legislative branch are informed by a collective determination to promote the common good,” he writes. “The chief…function of Congress is to ensure the reelection of its members.”

I can’t imagine a conservative ever complaining that the government of the founders has disappeared or ever questioning the motives of the members of Congress. But let’s give him this: If Tim Graham is a conservative then Andrew Bacevich isn’t. And if Graham is typical of what passes for conservative these days, the movement is even more intellectually bankrupt than I had previously thought.

P.S. Graham also says that Bacevich favors a draft. He shoud read page 152 where a subhead reads, “Why the Draft if Not a Good Idea and Won’t Happen.” Also, on page 168 he writes: “America doesn’t need a bigger army. It needs a smaller—that is, more modest—foreign policy.”