What makes this presidential election so crucial
isn’t merely that it’s
a referendum on George W. Bush. It also will
test the fundamental
competence of the American electorate. The Bush
presidency hasn’t
merely failed, its failures have been epic. To
award him a second term
would be a bad indicator of our democracy’s health.
By every rational measure,
the nation is worse off today than four years
ago. Bush is the first president
since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss
of jobs. Tax cuts for plutocrats
and heedless spending have turned budget surpluses
into runaway deficits,
imperiling the nation’s fiscal stability. After
vacationing through 9/11, Bush
not only bulldozed the country into a needless
war with Iraq, but conducted it
with supreme incompetence.
"The fact is that today’s ‘Republican’ Party is
one with which I am totally
unfamiliar," wrote retired Maj. John Eisenhower,
the military historian and son
of the former president, explaining his endorsement
of Sen. John Kerry.
"[T] he current Republican Party leadership has
confused confident leadership
with hubris and arrogance."
American Conservative magazine thus explained
endorsing Kerry: "Bush has
behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing
president is supposed to be,
and his continuation in office will discredit
any sort of conservatism for generations.
The launching of an invasion against a country
that posed no threat to the U.S.,
the doling out of war profits and concessions
to politically favored corporations,
the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit
to be passed on to the nation’s
children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for
those outside the middle class and
working poor: It is as if Bush sought to resurrect
every false 1960s-era left-wing
cliché about predatory imperialism and
turn it into administration policy."
Now we learn that after forcing U. N. inspectors
out of Iraq, the U.S. failed to
secure ammo dumps. Some 380 tons of high-grade
explosives vanished into
Iraqi insurgent hands: 380 tons! It must have
taken a convoy of 18-wheelers to
haul it. How many American and Iraqi lives that
blunder has cost cannot be imagined.
The Bush administration reacted characteristically:
hiding the truth, then denying
responsibility. It handled 9/11 the same way.
First, Bush denied receiving any
warning of al-Qa’ida’s intentions. After that
alibi collapsed, he fought against
creating the 9/11 Commission. Then he stonewalled,
refusing to let Condoleezza
Rice testify. After she talked, Bush refused.
Eventually, he agreed to testify only
if Dick Cheney could hold his hand and no transcript
was made. And Bush calls
Kerry a flipflopper.
According to the commission report, Bush swore
the CIA briefings were "historical,"
that nobody warned him that al-Qa’ida had U.S.
terrorist cells. Roughly 40 witnesses
and stacks of documents contradicted him, but
the final report soft-pedaled the
president’s fecklessness for the sake of getting
its recommendations heeded.
Substituting ideology for facts on many issues,
the Bush administration can’t stand up
to rational accounting. So President Junior,
a bit like his once and future pal Pat
Robertson, the TV faith healer, hints coyly that
he takes instructions from God.
If we’re to credit his latest TV ad, the choices
are vote for Bush or be eaten by wolves
—pretty harmless-looking wolves, actually. Without
the voice-over narration, you’d
mistake it for a National Geographic documentary
or a dramatization of Little Red
Riding Hood. Does Bush think he’s running in
Transylvania?
Then come the falsehoods about Kerry’s record,
and it’s clear you’re in Bush World.
No, Kerry never proposed slashing intelligence
budgets after 9/11. How dumb would
you have to be to believe that? The misleading
reference is to a 1993 effort to cut funds
that the National Reconnaissance Office squirreled
away instead of launching a spy satellite.
Former U.S. Rep. Porter Goss, RFla., Bush’s new
CIA director, proposed deeper cuts.
And so it goes. Americans used to congratulate
themselves on their resistance to dogma.
Missouri called itself the "Show Me" state; New
Jersey’s unofficial motto ought to be
"Oh yeah, who says?" But the Bush administration
increasingly resembles a religio-political
cult. Facts are enemies; critical thinking is
suspect. Writing in the New York Times Magazine,
author Ron Suskind recently described a White
House insider chiding him for belonging to
what he disdainfully called the "reality-based
community." The fool told him, "[W] e’re an
empire now, and when we act, we create our own
reality." Evidently so.
A recent survey by the University of Maryland’s
"Program on International Policy Attitudes"
found that majorities of Bush supporters hold
objectively false beliefs about the world situation.
After the Duelfer Report, 72 percent believe
either that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or
strong WMD programs; 75 percent think Saddam
Hussein assisted Osama bin Laden; and 63
percent believe strong proof of an Iraq/al-Qa’ida
alliance exists. Some 80 percent of those who
watch FOX News regularly affirm these delusions.
In short, the stakes for the "reality based
community" couldn’t be much higher come Tuesday.
Remember, the democracy you save
could be your own.
• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little
Rock author
and recipient of the National Magazine Award.
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