And Clinton's crew didn't try to cover up the Monica Lewinsky scandal?

The point: Any party in power will try to cover-up things which can hurt them politically.

Yes the GOP has tried to hide this. But so would the other side if it was their parriah.

This doesn't excuse anybody, but it is a point of fact.

I think there's a more obvious disconnect in George Will's thinking.

There will be some people who'll find agreement with Will that government is an unwieldy - and sometimes ineffective - tool for carrying out social transformation. But what the hell does the War in Iraq - and in particular, the search for WMD, through which Will introduces his article - have to do with social transformation?

The simple fact is, it was not "government" that screwed up Iraq; it was George Bush and his appointees. From first to last, it was their project and they did it their way. The buck stopped in the Oval Office, not in some forgotten corner of government bureaucracy.

"Yes the GOP has tried to hide this. But so would the other side if it was their parriah."

well, what are those bible welding republicans going to think about this?

if hasert tried to cover this stuff up, didn't he let down his entire right-wing? an act that will inject large amounts of cynacism into his party's "claim to morality?"

as far as I can tell, once these moral failures take hold, there might be a 9/11 collapse of the republican party here. people might start questioning the intensions of Bush, Cheney and the rest of them and decide that they're liars, sickos and cheats instead of presidential, vice presidential and congressional.

they might go back and watch john roberts' confirmation hearing and be appalled by the lack of displayed intellect and realize exactly what "rubberstamping" means... or they might go back and watch the republican convention where the language of hate rained down on everything including their damnation of the UN.

they can try to deny what happened, but molestation is an emotional issue which probably isn't counteracted by reason... even if it's sugar coated with colorfully false excuses.

Will has a number of standard responses which he wheels out from time to time . With luck they may even be slightly relevant.

Reminds me of my friend X , a corporate comptroller. When unusual things happened during the month he made note of them. Stuck the good things in his right hand drawer and the bad in the left. When the books closed and the CEO wanted a
variance analysis , if it was a good month X pulled a note from the right hand drawer.... and vice versa. Got mixed up one month , the CEO asked why the profits were down and X pulled an explanation from the right hand , good , drawer. Had to quickly cover by saying "But that was offset by....."

It is a point in fact, but misdirects the conversation away from the important issue.

You're using a forced frame with your question. The covering is not the issue, the illegality of the act and/or the covering is. These are not equivalent; they are night and day, with one being wholly normal (if bad for a marriage) and the other being vile.

Back to topic, Will is perhaps getting a little desperate, and not sure whether to bail completely and say these guys weren't capable, or to perfume the pig by saying "What did you expect, results from politics?"

He is tiresome, continuing the Buckley condescension to the People. ("You don't understand, so let us tell you what matters.")

Wills' view of government was the basis of his opposition to the war in Iraq and also the bais of Fukyama's break with the neo-Cons over Iraq.

One of Clinton's geniuses,can you have more than one, was to show that Reagan was wrong that government was always the problem. He demonstrated that if you could not use goverment to create the utopias of leftwing fantasies government could be used to help make people's lives better.

Will and the few Bush supporters I know do put a lot of effort into ignoring how truely awful this administration is in all aspects of governing.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Thus does George Will avert his eyes from what is systematically, peculiarly, true of the gang in power. His much-longed-for conservative government is dead, so long live conservative government!

This is actually a bit unfair.  George Will, unusually among conservative pundits, has actually called out the Bush Administration as un-conservative, which of course they are.  Will and other like-minded pundits like Andrew Sullivan talk about the Bush Administration as a betrayer of conservative principles.  Radical, spendthrift and given to grandiose attempts at social transformation, the Bushies are almost the total opposite of the conservative vision of people like Bill Buckley, who prized caution and prudence.

It'll be interesting to see the extent to which the current failures will herald a true swinging of the political pendulum.  Back in the 60s and 70s, many former liberals started voting Republican for a variety of reasons and Ronald Reagan came to embody this group of disgruntled Democrats.  Reagan always said that he didn't leave the Democrats, the Democrats left him.  This was always half true and half bullshit, but nevertheless it would probably describe how many felt.  Now that the Republicans have had their run in Washington and have proven to be incompetent idiots, will people say that the Republican party left them?  The answer depends a lot on the behavior of people like Will and Sullivan, who believe above all in small, modest, frugal government and are repelled by the current domination of the GOP by religious conservatives.  Will the Democratic party appeal to people like this?  A lot depends on the answer.

Will does bemoan many of Bush's policies, but some of his ideas and the things his says are just ridiculous. To me, he is the most annoying pundit.

I hate it when he's on a show, because he seems like he knows what he's talking about and then wham, he makes a statement or expresses and idea that is just completely absurd. A couple years ago on This Week, Will said that the "one great conviction" of the Democratic Party "is there aren't enough abortions" (Media Matters).

I think it's the two sides of George Will. The one side is the critical thinking intelligent pundit and writer and the other side is this weird ideologue that seems completely incapable of even an ounce of critical thought.

Where do you begin with this hourglass of a column? George Will started and finished by paraphrasing Woodward to skewer Bush Jr. and his administration. In the middle he said every government is like that, but sighted no examples to prove himself ....Not even Bill Clinton, his favorite target. Then Will said this administration is like pond water. Pond scum is more like it. The GOP drank it and now has dysentery.
I was particularly amused by these passages ["'State of Denial' will take a toll on government collegiality and the candor of its deliberations."] Come again? Collegiality? Squeeze me, I don't think there's been much of that since the "Uniter not a Divider" conquered......["The book does not demonstrate that the president is in a state of denial...It certainly has undermined his reputation as a realist.] A Realist? Get Real! I could go on, and probably will when I catch my breath.

His argument might be compelling if he were talking about No Child Left Behind, but it seems to the whole argument was written to praise Rumsfeld. Will comes around at the end of his piece and denigrates nation building and applauds Rumsfeld's decision to keep the military out of it. This is the kind of discussion you have during peace time. Not right before launching a war of choice. George Will should be asking why we chose to break a nation if the military wouldn't rebuild it and no other department could.

Hypocrisy is the essence of the problem. The Republicans are now being Roved. Karl Rove is noted for attacking his opponents on their strong points, that is, trying to make them out to be hypocrits. This turns out to be projective, because it is the Republicans who are blowing up on their supposed strong points. Clinton's lying was a side issue to his career, but Foley's hypocrisy destroys the core of his career. Similarly, Bush's War on Terror is more than just unfinished, it is a sham, because he is making terrorism worse. The Republicans are now revealed to be frauds. This is a structural problem, completely different from Clinton's problem.