For Gerson, this is the key to Bush. According to him,

It is one expression-maybe the least controversial expression-of the organizing principle of the Bush era: an idealism of amazing historical ambition. President Bush's religiously informed moralism, his impatience with political "small ball," his indifference to establishment criticism, have combined to produce far-reaching changes in domestic and foreign policy; far-reaching changes in Republican Party ideology.

And as he sees it, these changes are overdue. He believes that "Republicans who feel that the ideology of Barry Goldwater-the ideology of minimal government-has been assaulted are correct." For Gerson, religion is essential. Thus he believes in government-funded faith-based programs that can help instill moral values, something that is anathema to Goldwater types who believe that Washington does best when it does least. Gerson, by contrast, wants it to do good, which is why he also lauds Bush's support for foreign-aid programs. Gerson, you might say, is proselytizing on behalf of a missionary conservatism.

Previous religious awakenings have helped spur America on to greatness, he believes, and an attentiveness to morality can carry it forward once more, both domestically and abroad. Bush, he suggests, rejects the moral relativism that became chic in the 1960s, where one country was as good as another. In Gerson's view, America has a unique, divine dispensation to lead the march for freedom. And Bush agrees with him. In contrast to Feith, Gerson notes that Bush was indeed intent on promoting democracy in invading Iraq. In 2002, Bush

set out a reform agenda that included all the institutional prerequisites for the exercise of political freedom. His argument represented a clean break with the Middle East policies of the president's father, and nearly every other president.

Unfortunately, Bush's grand plans have triggered a backlash in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Democrats have become the new realists, averse to loose talk about human rights, nation building and intervention abroad. Gerson is confounded by this. He believes that Democrats have simply become unhinged by their personal contempt for the hated Bush. They are throwing away their patrimony, the heritage left behind by John F. Kennedy, not to mention Franklin D. Roosevelt. "What," he asks, "can liberalism possibly mean apart from idealism in the cause of liberty?"

Having sketched out the problem of the Democrats, Gerson turns to the GOP. Once again, he sees darkness where there should be light. He laments that realists such as Brent Scowcroft have expressed concern about the idea of upending the Middle East. These fuddy-duddies fail to recognize, Gerson explains, that

the Middle East's mixture of tyranny, radicalism, and stagnation is not only toxic, it is explosive, resulting in the mass murder of American citizens on American soil. The status quo in the Middle East is not stable or sustainable. . . . Yet some foreign-policy realists, of every ideological background, have chosen this moment to call for retrenchment and retreat.

But is military intervention the most efficacious way to lance the boil of terrorism in the Middle East? Or is the expansion of American commitments abroad itself a recipe for the diminution of American power and prestige? Has American intervention in Iraq in fact promoted terrorism? Gerson elides these nagging questions to soar into the empyrean, issuing moralistic calls for national grandeur abroad. Indeed, the main weakness of Gerson's book is that it substitutes exhortation for analysis. Niggling matters like the fact that the occupation of Iraq has proved both a disaster for its citizens and America are airily dismissed with the contention that only cynics and congenital grouches could possibly wish to deny the Iraqis their true liberties. Gerson may be a Roman Catholic, but he sounds more like an evangelist who seeks to persuade his flock that a new crusade will purify it and the world than someone who believes in tradition and hierarchy.

If this sounds reminiscent of liberal zeal, that's because it is. While it would probably be a mistake to call Gerson a neoconservative, he fits, for the most part, snugly into that camp. He is an unabashed champion of big government. He wants to redeem the rest of the world. And he's scornful of conservative instincts.

Whether Gerson's exhortations will serve as a guide to the future, however, is questionable. They have a distinctly musty quality to them. An America crippled by debt and by a sagging economy seems most unlikely to embark upon new and grand crusades to save the rest of the world. In retrospect, the Bush era will probably be seen as a bizarre interlude, a moment when America adopted a eupeptic salvation doctrine that substituted wishful thinking for the cold, hard realities of international politics. Even as a new round of self-exculpatory memoirs appears soon-Donald Rumsfeld is finishing his and Condoleezza Rice is apparently preparing hers-the next four years will likely see more penitence than impenitence as America atones for its past profligate behavior.

 

Jacob Heilbrunn is a senior editor at The National Interest.

Essay Types: Book Review