The least popular American president in recent history appeared on Fox News Sunday a couple of days ago. Polls suggest that Americans have grown weary of George W. Bush and annoyed with many of his key policies. They, and much of the world, can't wait to see him retire.

But what Americans still admire, it seems, is the philosophical outlook by which Bush identifies himself. He came to power promising to create a legacy of conservatism. After seven ruinous years, the word "conservative" remains in vogue.

When a Fox interviewer asked the president about the likely Republican nominee in the 2008 campaign, Bush praised John McCain as a "true conservative." He added "that if John is the nominee, he has got some convincing to do to convince people that he is a solid conservative."

I'm intrigued by the power of that word. What kind of rhetorical magic allows it to survive the ineptitude, the callousness, the countless failures of the Bush administration – and to remain a shining standard by which Republicans are judged?

To lay my cards on the table, I fervently hope that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are "true liberals." But whichever of them wins the Democratic nomination, that person will need to convince large numbers of Americans that he or she is not, in fact, "a solid liberal."

On McCain's website, a section headlined "Why John McCain" begins by announcing: "John McCain is an experienced conservative leader in the tradition of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. He is a common sense conservative ..."

By highlighting the phrase "common sense," and by allying himself with Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, McCain is signalling a sharp break with the neo-cons who infested the White House under Bush. That's a political point. The larger cultural point is that conservatism remains a quality every Republican candidate for president strives to demonstrate. The word itself is unassailable.

By contrast, Clinton and Obama would run a mile from the term "liberal." Clinton did exactly that on a CNN debate last July. Asked if she's a liberal, she replied:

"It is a word that originally meant that you were for freedom ... willing to stand against big power and on behalf of the individual. Unfortunately, in the last 30, 40 years, it has been turned upon its head and it has been made to seem as though it is a word that describes big government, totally contrary to what its meaning was in the 19th and early 20th century."

Clinton preferred to label herself a "modern progressive" – the word "progressive," she noted, "has a real American meaning." In truth, it has no clear meaning; but what matters to Clinton and Obama alike is that it can't be hurled as a rhetorical insult.

"Liberal" can. In the dim swamps of talk radio and loony-tune blogs, people rant about the "L word" as if it were on a par with the N word. Powerful lobbies in the United States have made "liberal" a quasi-insult. Why, I'd like to know, does nobody complain about the C word?

Perhaps it's because liberals – who include, by American standards, the vast majority of Canadians – are nicer than conservatives. More likely, it's because "conservative" enfolds the term "conserve." And it's part of liberal values, as I understand them, to conserve the natural world and hold onto the best of the past.

What liberal values never entail is the kind of reckless stupidity that involves launching pre-emptive wars, wrecking the environment and saddling the public with enormous debt. Leave that to conservatives.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

markabley@sympatico.ca

Read more about: