Politics & Power Quote by Pete du Pont

A conservative lament disguised as a civility critique, Pete du Pont frames "business as usual" as the real betrayal of the Bush years: not just policy drift, but the restoration of Washington's comforting habits. The line works because it treats compromise not as a democratic virtue but as an anesthetic. "Tragedies" signals moral drama, yet what follows is oddly procedural: deal-making, friendship, philosophy. He’s indicting a style of governance that, in his telling, turns ideological conflict into a clubby transaction.

The subtext is a warning about absorption. Washington doesn’t simply oppose reform; it metabolizes it. By pairing "make a deal with the Democrats" with "let's all be friends", du Pont suggests that bipartisanship can be less about solving problems than about protecting the institution's social equilibrium. The phrase "philosophy" is doing sly work: it implies this isn’t an occasional tactic but a governing religion, a reflex to smooth over differences even when differences are the point.

Contextually, du Pont is speaking from a post-Reagan conservative posture that prized confrontation with the "establishment" and viewed accommodation as weakness. Applied to the Bush administration, the charge isn’t that Republicans lost arguments; it’s that they stopped wanting to win them. He’s also teasing out a perennial conservative suspicion: that Washington friendship is a kind of corruption, not measured in envelopes of cash but in softened edges, diluted agendas, and the quiet comfort of belonging.