August 15, 2004

LOS ANGELES TIMES

FALSE HOPES BEAT NO HOPE
* Laura Bush weighs in on stem-cell study.
 
 Michael Kinsley:

Maybe I missed it, but it seems as if Laura Bush has not had her Lady
Macbeth Moment. This is the period, hallowed by tradition if not actually
written into the Constitution, when the media discover that a president's
wife is the power behind the throne. She is not the sweet helpmate she
appears to be. Underneath, there is steel. In fact, she is a (insert a word
‹ there are more than one ‹ beginning with "b"). She is her husband's
closest advisor and a fierce protector of his place in history. She curbs
his partisan instincts or, alternatively, she keeps him on the ideological
course. A well-known male rival for the president's ear has been fired on
her instructions.

Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush all had their moments.

It was a challenge to fit Hillary Clinton into this template, but with a few
little fixes (the demure helpmate stuff had to go), she was squeezed in as
well.

But when does Laura Bush get her turn? For almost four years, she has
loyally played along with the treacly conceit, assigned to her at the
beginning of the administration, that her only public policy passion is
libraries. As far as anyone knows, she has never questioned or failed to
obey the instructions of the president's official advisors and spinmeisters.
Of course, neither has her husband.

Then, last week, she suddenly popped off about stem cells. But this was
hardly her breakthrough moment. A lot of Republican politicians and
operatives spoke out about stem cells last week, all miraculously making the
same argument ‹ an argument so embarrassingly silly and disingenuous that it
could only be an official campaign talking point. Anyone thinking for
herself would have a hard time getting it out without giggling.

As Laura Bush put it, George Bush "is the only president to ever authorize
federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research." She noted that "few
people know" this. Few may have known it, but many might have guessed.

It is true indeed that Bush's predecessors, from George Washington to Bill
Clinton, failed to fund embryonic stem-cell research. Even Abraham Lincoln.
Not a penny for stem-cell research from any of them. Historians believe this
might have been because it didn't exist yet. But that's just a guess.

George W. Bush gave this nascent research a tiny sliver of money and piled
on a smothering load of restrictions. As Laura Bush did not note, that makes
Bush the only president to ever authorize federal rules against stem-cell
research.

It is characteristic of Bush that he would not see, or have no patience for,
the irony of justifying a policy on moral grounds and then, when it comes
under attack, claiming that the policy is not having the very effect he is
supposed to want. Meanwhile, it is characteristic of the Bush political
machine to be utterly fearless about insisting that things are the way it
would be convenient for them to be, despite the evidence that things are the
way they really are.

The purpose of Bush's stem-cell policy is to discourage medical research
using embryos. Bush supposedly thinks that these clumps of a few dozen cells
are every bit as human as the people who will suffer and/or die from
diseases that stem cells could cure. He had better believe that, because
stem-cell research uses embryos being discarded by fertility clinics and
doesn't actually add to the embryonic death toll at all. Only a deep
conviction about the humanity of these microscopic dots (which have fewer
human characteristics than a potato) could justify sacrificing real human
lives to make the purely symbolic point that the dots are human too.

Scientists are in agreement that Bush's policy is succeeding. Stem-cell
research has been drastically slowed. Yet Bush surrogates now pretend that
the policy's real success is its failure to stop this research completely.
Hey! You're supposed to think all those embryos being used in privately
funded research are human victims, remember? It's a huge tragedy, remember?
Stop bragging about it.

In a display of her husband's famous compassionate conservatism, Laura Bush
scolded that "it really isn't fair to people who are watching a loved one
suffer" to overplay the promise of stem cells. She said, helpfully, "We
don't know that stem-cell research will provide cures for anything." As
someone with a loved one (myself, as it happens) who has the disease
(Parkinson's) for which stem cells hold the most promise, please allow me to
say: Thank you so much, Mrs. Bush, for trying to make sure that I don't get
too hopeful. While your husband and John Kerry make a major issue out of who
is more optimistic, it is inspiring to have a first lady with the courage to
say, Let's be pessimistic! Optimism is unfair!

But talk is cheap. While Laura Bush is destroying hope by the traditional
method of spreading gloom and pessimism, her husband is bringing the
pessimist's art into the 21st century by actually destroying the objective
basis for hope. While she battles rhetorically against false hopes, he works
to ensure that there is no hope at all.

On balance, I think I prefer her approach.

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