The hallmark of the modern conservative movement -- and by extension, one of the defining characteristics of the Bush administration -- is the vanguardist mentality that drives its actions. Vanguardism in political history has a specific meaning, usually associated with revolutionaries (Lenin is most often cited, although Mussolini, for example, was surely a vanguardist of the right in 1920s Italy) who have persuaded themselves and their followers that everything that existed before them was so compromised and corrupted that it all needed reexamination and, usually, defenestration. Indeed, any practice that had existed before the vanguardist came along was decadent, louche, a vestige of an ancien régime that had no legitimate moral authority.
This describes contemporary movement conservatism, and the Bush administration in particular, to a tee. Not just overtly liberal practices and methods but policies that had been the subject of a long-held consensus like foreign-policy restraint and pragmatism; fiscal responsibility; attempts to insulate the bureaucracies from over-politicization; regulations and rules calling for open and accountable government; all these things and many more, to the movement conservative, were holdovers from the era of liberal dominance (even though most Republicans spent years agreeing on all four of the above). Therefore, by definition they had to be thrown out. Old things are for sissies.
This point has been made before (see, notably, Hendrik Hertzberg's penetrating review of David Brock's Blinded by the Rightin The New Yorker back in 2002). But it's worth making again, partly because it's worth making every so often on general principle, and partly because this week, the vanguardists might finally get their long-overdue comeuppance on two fronts -- and from two unlikely interlocutors.
First, the Supreme Court is expected to rule soon, possibly this week, on three cases involving Bush administration detention practices at Guantanamo Bay. One case, reports Paul Harris in Britain's Observer, has to do with the status of Guantanamo itself and with conditions faced by prisoners there. Two other cases involve particular inmates, Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi, who have been declared "enemy combatants" and held indefinitely without trial or counsel. Lord knows we've learned not to expect much from the Supreme Court, but many experts believe that it will find against the administration in all three cases. The general consensus seems to be that even this Supreme Court will not condone a circumstance under which one lone individual can decide who is and is not an "enemy combatant," and then that person can be held indefinitely as long as we're at "war" with a non-state combatant that by its nature will never declare a surrender or agree to a truce.
If the court acts as these experts believe, look for a rush of lawsuits on behalf of virtually everyone held at Guantanamo. The Justice Department will have to start cutting deals and, eventually, that will be the blessed end of Gitmo.
Joining the Supreme Court is the Red Cross. The British Telegraph's Julian Coman reports (it was a good week for the British papers -- but then, they've been cleaning the clocks of the American media for a couple of years now) that "four confidential Red Cross documents implicating senior Pentagon civilians in the Abu Ghraib scandal have been passed to an American television network, which is preparing to make them public shortly." The article quotes one expert as saying that the "biggest bombs in this case have yet to be dropped." And this is on the heels of last week's reports about a memo that for the first time links the White House far more directly to Abu Ghraib.
That's a controversy Bush managed to avoid while America was busy interring Ronald Reagan. But pressure will resume on John Ashcroft or the White House to release these memos, and if the Red Cross story breaks in anything like the way Coman predicts, that pressure will be immense.
We have here an administration that believed the rules -- those vestiges of an old and useless society they were remaking in their newer and more confident image -- did not apply to them. The Geneva Conventions were to be ignored. The Bill of Rights, or sections of it, had run their course. And none of the rest of us needed to know the details about how and why these conclusions were reached, because full accounting of such details, too, was a vestige of the old and weak habits.
Well, it turns out that not everybody is a vanguardist, and that not all anti-vanguardists are knee-jerk liberals. The Supreme Court is, well, you know who it consists of, and the Red Cross was recently headed by no less a Republican icon than Liddy Dole. If, as these news accounts envision, these two institutions push back against the vanguard, it will be an important sign. Two years ago, liberals (but only liberals) were left shocked and incredulous by this administration's acts of lawless arrogance. Now, finally, it's not just liberals. I'm tempted to say to the others: What took you so long? But I think I'll just say: Hop aboard.
Michael Tomasky is the executive editor of The American Prospect.
