It happened a week and a half ago. I know it seems like a new era in politics to you where the president is somewhat vulnerable on security, but your school-girl giddiness shows if you can't even pretend to be able to keep track of time.

MDREW-

You comment captures the essence of Dr. Feaver's posts here: exploitation of opportunities to bash erstwhile Bush administration critics. This is the kernel of nearly all his posts.

Peter Feaver's theme really isn't bashing Bush administration critics; he is not, so to speak, on the muscle end of the family. His posts tend rather toward plaintive defensiveness of the administration which he and his fellow contributors here served.

Now, I don't think much of this for several reasons, as I've made clear here more than once. Most of them have to do with the merits of policies pursued, or not, by the last administration and its successor. There is one other, though, that I thought I'd mention here. It is essentially political.

"Shadow government," in its common usage, refers to a group of officials in a parliamentary opposition who occupy positions analogous to those of serving government ministers. In other words, if the government were to fall for some reason and be replaced by the opposition, the shadow government would lead the actual government -- the term is prospective, not retrospective.

Obviously the analogy cannot be applied exactly to the American government or to this blog. Paliamentary ministers and their shadow government counterparts are mostly elected officials expected to direct policy, and all the contributors here served in staff positions where (officially at any rate) they either advised on or implemented policy. However, to Republicans it matters what the party is to stand for on foreign and national security policy as on domestic issues, because this will influence the likelihood that the party will ever win another Presidential election or attain a majority in either house of Congress.

I am a Republican, always have been, and a fairly conservative one at that. I am also a fairly close observer of policy and government, and know how badly the last Republican President and his closest associates served the country. As of this moment, on foreign and national security policy the Republican Party is still the party of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. As long as it remains so, it is unlikely to regain power in Washington -- and it shouldn't, not in 2012, not ever.

From a political standpoint, there aren't many analogies to the GOP's position today. The closest one is the Watergate period, during which Richard Nixon -- who in many respects served his country and the world very well in the White House -- nearly wrecked the executive authority of the American government through flagrantly illegal conduct pursued in contempt of American institutions and traditions. The Republican Party was able to avoid permanent identification as the Party of Nixon through a combination of Nixon's resignation and self-imposed exile and the GOP's own deliberate effort. Had it not done this, the Reagan Presidency would not have been possible. Nor would a party that believed Nixon's use of government agencies to punish political enemies and his assorted other acts of misconduct were proper have deserved to be restored to power.

George W. Bush was worse for America than Richard Nixon, a lot worse. That is the record. What matters in terms of the electoral politics is that this is also what the public believes. Barack Obama really would have to be a socialist and a Nazi, and a worse politician than Jimmy Carter besides, to lose a reelection race if the Republican opposition's position is to be that we ought to return to how the Bush administration ran foreign policy -- also the economy, and policy toward health care, the environment, the administration of justice and a somewhat lengthy list of other subjects. Obama isn't any of these things, and the Democrat who eventually succeeds him at the head of his party isn't likely to be, either.

So the Republican Party has a decision to make. Is it going to be the Party of Bush and Cheney, or is it going to be something else? (That's actually two decisions, since if it decides to be something else it has to decide what, or whom, that will be). Now, in a sense I'd welcome affirmative arguments in this space that Bush and Cheney were right and Obama wrong, that Bush and Cheney were good and Obama is bad. Obviously I wouldn't agree with them most of the time, but I expect that eventually they would contribute to generating a reaction among Republicans that might someday help separate the GOP in the public mind from the disastrous record of this decade's first eight years.

What appears at Shadow Government now is something else, something that does not serve this purpose at all. It is commentary and criticism of Obama that starts with the premise that he and his supporters should not criticize, either directly or by implication, Bush and Cheney. Such criticism is not held to be wrong, merely unfair and lacking class and respect for the last President's heavy burdens. This is not commentary worthy of people who expect or even hope someday to be leaders of any description. It is instead the commentary of mere acolytes, remembering their time in the halls of power as the good old days and wishing for a restoration.

Contributors to Shadow Government may have their own opinions as to the value of their policy judgement compared to mine. However, it would really save a lot of time if they would just trust me about the realities of electoral politics in the United States. I am way sharper on this subject than any of them, and I'm telling them now that the record of the last Republican administration is not one the Republican Party of the future can build on and expect to get anywhere. Dump it. Bury it. Put as much distance between it and especially the Bush administration's chief, its Vice President, and their senior associates on the one hand, and themselves on the other as they possibly can. Only in this way can they contribute to rebuilding the Republican Party as an earlier generation of Republicans -- the generation of Reagan and Baker and Kemp -- did after Watergate, and someday make it again fit to be considered as the steward of America's destiny.

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