National review: The continued decline of a once great magazine

A few days ago I noted that National Review had been far more supportive of GWB than they had been of other GOP presidents. That puzzling trend continues with this piece:

“Conservatives Left Behind”

K-Lo summarizes the main reasons why the Right has lost patience with Bush. Nonetheless, she still is not willing to make a clean break of it. Her “logic” is interesting even if it is not compelling.

She speaks of “Bush Estrangement Syndrome” as though not supporting politicians who don’t support your causes is a form of mental illness. Yet her defense of Bush sounds like nothing so much as the rationalizations of an abused and neglected spouse:

Pre-January 2009, can this marriage be saved? You know, as his luck would have it, staying together is worth it for the kids. And every once in a while say, if there’s a Supreme Court opening this summer, as has been rumored, and he nominates a judge like Alito or Roberts President George W. Bush may just remind us why we fell for him in the first place. It might not be the best marriage, but we share a love a love of country, a love of democracy, a love of the Constitution. Yeah, he created a dubious Cabinet department. But we also haven’t been attacked for six years under his presidency. He’s not perfect, and he may not always know how to express himself, and he may not always know how to appreciate his friends, but he’s our guy, with enough of the right instincts to make us never truly regret the choice. And history may rightly gloss over the mistakes his frustrated friends saved him from in the end, there’s some leadership there. And that makes all the difference.

We’re talking about a president here, a politician, and National Review starts channeling Ladies Home Journal.

Lopez does not address the fundamental issue of a war leader who will not lead us to victory. A war president who, scandalously, pursues an arrogant, wrong-headed, and misbegotten domestic agenda while American troops die in a quagmire of his own making. Peggy Noonan touched on something important when she described the motivation behind the immigration bill.

They are trying to lay down markers for history. Having lost the support of most of the country, they are looking to another horizon. The story they would like written in the future is this: Faced with the gathering forces of ethnocentric darkness, a hardy and heroic crew stood firm and held high a candle in the wind. It will make a good chapter. Would that it were true!

This is low, cynical politics. Having FUBARed Iraq, and with no solution to offer, this White House decides to do a little legacy-polishing. I do not remember Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton stooping this low. Yet, Lopez still thinks of him are “her guy”. Somehow, I don’t think it is the estranged conservatives who are pathological; it is the girls and boys at NR who need a shrink.