Taking a look at Bush with stars in his eyes

BACK in the 19th century, before media consultants and television ads, political leaders routinely hired sympathetic writers to confect biographies that extolled their virtues and disparaged their opponents.

That’s the tradition Fred Barnes seems determined to resurrect in “Rebel-in-Chief,” his brief but extravagantly starry-eyed look at President Bush. The White House staff didn’t contract with Barnes, executive editor at the conservative Weekly Standard and a commentator on Fox News Channel, to write the book. But they wouldn’t have changed much if they did. Barnes doesn’t so much assess Bush as measure him for Mt. Rushmore.

Like so much political argument in this polarized age, this book seems addressed to those who already agree with its conclusions. Those who admire Bush will find plenty to celebrate in Barnes’ portrayal of a president who is resolute and visionary, yet humble and pious. Perhaps inadvertently, Barnes also includes plenty of evidence likely to horrify those who oppose Bush (for instance, Barnes reports that the president fundamentally doesn’t accept the theory of global warming and was reinforced in that belief by a private meeting not with any scientist but rather with novelist Michael Crichton, whose novel “State of Fear” revolves around the issue).

Those who simply want to learn more about the president will find surprisingly little nourishment. Barnes says he received extensive access to Bush and his top decision makers, and he writes in a clean, accessible style. But aside from some fleeting backstage glimpses and a few telling quotes, the book mostly operates at the level of broad generalization and unqualified assertion.

Barnes effectively documents the extent to which Bush, backed by a cohesive Republican-led Congress, has tilted the terms of debate to the right in both domestic and foreign policy. But Barnes’ determination to find brilliance in almost every Bush move and his undisguised disdain for those who question Bush’s direction lead him to judgments that strain credulity. Is there anyone else in America who believes that the faltering White House response to Hurricane Katrina revealed Bush’s “proactive tendencies”? Almost as remarkably, Barnes insists that while “the elites of the world” dislike Bush’s foreign policy, “the masses” around the globe support it. International popularity isn’t necessarily the best measure of a foreign policy’s value, but has Barnes missed the mountains of polling data showing widespread disapproval of Bush -- and declining esteem for America -- in countries as varied as Turkey, England and Indonesia?

In other instances, Barnes’ judgments seem wildly premature. He insists that the election of an interim Iraqi government in January 2005 vindicated Bush’s decision to launch war there. But since then about 800 Americans, and untold Iraqis, have died, and, despite some important political progress, America’s ability to forge Iraq into a stable, peaceful entity remains in doubt.

Barnes is almost as hasty in insisting that Bush has built a “new Republican majority” in American politics. Boosted by the public approval of his response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Bush has clearly provided a thumb on the scale for the GOP in the 50-50 nation that he inherited. He’s tightened his party’s hold on culturally conservative voters and demonstrated an ability to inspire massive turnout from Republican partisans. In turn, that’s helped the GOP solidify its congressional majority by winning more House and Senate seats in the “red” states that supported Bush for president. Those are genuine, even formidable, political accomplishments.

But the Republican advantage, especially at the presidential level, remains fragile: Although Barnes never notes it, Bush’s margin of victory in 2004, measured in percentage terms, was the smallest for a reelected president. And the anemic approval ratings Bush registered through 2005 -- with support among independent voters routinely stuck below 40% -- provide little evidence for Barnes’ conclusion that Republicans now control “the middle ground in American politics.” If anything, Bush seems engaged in a long-term experiment to test whether it is possible to maintain power while pursuing an agenda that aims almost entirely at the preferences of his core supporters, while alienating Democrats and straining his relationship with moderate swing voters.

Still, Barnes’ analysis of Bush’s political strategy constitutes one of the book’s best sections. Given Barnes’ sympathetic perspective, it’s not surprising that the book is strongest when it examines those areas where Bush has the strongest claim to success. Barnes provides some of his sharpest backstage glimpses in recounting Bush’s decision to reshape, and ultimately re-energize, the Arab-Israeli peace process by refusing to deal with the late Yasser Arafat.

And Barnes is at his best in a taxonomical chapter that concludes Bush doesn’t precisely fit any of the existing categories of conservative thought; Barnes, adopting a phrase from Republican speechwriter Daniel Casse, persuasively argues that the president should be seen as a “strong-government conservative.” That chapter is a reminder of the tenacious and insightful reporting that Barnes has often provided, especially in his coverage of Ronald Reagan during the 1980s.

Yet such moments of insight only interrupt an extended diatribe against the mainstream media, the career foreign service, the Washington social establishment, European leaders, Democrats and anyone else Barnes considers resistant to Bush. Barnes might have broadened his audience beyond hard-core Republican partisans if he holstered the invective long enough at least to seriously consider and contest the arguments of the president’s opponents.

Future historians probably won’t argue with Barnes that Bush has been “a president of consequence.” Or that Bush has been an “insurgent” leader willing to “overturn major policies,” especially in foreign affairs. But it will take an author with more independence to assess the consequences of Bush’s choices, and to judge when he has been bold and when simply rash. In this worshipful account of a “visionary” and “man of character” whose “commitment to Jesus Christ as his personal savior makes temporal success in politics less important to him,” Barnes has framed the picture of the president that Bush’s supporters want history to accept. But Barnes has painted with such rosy colors that history -- as well as any contemporary reader not already sold on Bush -- is likely to find this book useful mostly as a record of the fervor this polarizing president stirred in his most ardent supporters.