Sullivan gets letters
Andrew Sullivan today put up an email from a reader with a claim so batty that I can't help but wonder if Andrew put it up in order to discredit the rather frightening personality cult it represents:
You ought to give President Bush some slack. He has had to face more in his presidency than arguably any other in the last 100 years. He inherited a recession, 9/11 happened, the Iraq war and this hurricane. He is only human and I think he is doing better than most.What? Have we forgotten about FDR, who, let's see, faced the Great Depression (let's compare - 6% unemployment in 2003, 25% unemployment in 1932) and the threat of two fascist powers who, rather than using suicide bombings as a tactic of weakness, actually invaded several countries and were on the verge of developing nuclear weapons? Or Truman, who had to deal with the end of WWII, rebuilding Europe, and the beginning of the Cold War? Or even the much-maligned Nixon, who inherited a war still far deadlier to U.S. soldiers than the current one, went to China, and also had a hurricane of his own (Camille, 1969)? Or.. well, I could go on, but you get the point.
I don't like the big spending nor the illegal immigration crisis. But I do believe the President is a man of integrity facing outstanding and overwhelming problems in his office.
posted by Andrew @ 9:03 AM
5 Comments:
God I hope not. I mean he has been taking an increasingly anti-Bush line over the past year and a half; you would think by now he would realize the absurdity of the idea that Bush has faced more than any other president in the last 100 years. (I'm at least thankful that Sullivan's correspondent didn't say "in U.S. history" given the example of, say, Lincoln who had only to face, you know, the bloodiest war in American history!)
By the way, he's just put another email from a reader rebutting the previous email, specifically on the idea that Bush is a man of "integrity."
I'm not really interested in defending Sullivan, but as far I can tell from a quick Googling of his site, he actually is a supporter of free market approaches to the AIDS crisis, i.e. relying on the profit motive to get pharmaceutical companies to do research into developing new anti-HIV drugs. For example he seems to oppose price controls on anti-HIV drugs or reducing patent protections to allow generic drug production, and blames political pressure on big pharma for a decline in private AIDS research in recent years.
Though, in the course of the googling I did find this rather ironic quote from April 2001: "And how's this from an anonymous "conservative lobbyist": "I certainly don't approve of the homosexual agenda, but I know the president has a different view. He's pretty comfortable with these guys as long as they're on board with the rest of his agenda." I guess I didn't screw up endorsing W after all."
Yea, you're right, he does approve of government expenditures on AIDS research (I think - they've mostly been approving references as you say, not full-throated defenses). At one point he referred to the fact that the Reagan administration one tried to put all the government's money into HIV vaccine development and said something like "imagine if those government fools had done that - money down the drain!" or something to that effect. Maybe if you pressed him on it he would say that he'd rather it was all taken care of by the private sector, but who knows...
I had a post several months ago about the issue of scope v. intensity of government which I think the term "big government" confuses. I guess you might say Sullivan would say the proper scope of government is things that benefit him?
Actually (and pardon me if you already know this) you can use Google to search his blog, with the syntax "blah blah site:andrewsullivan.com" like this.
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