A president gleefully bathes in muck
Nov. 3, 2006. 01:00 AM
Toronto Star
Nov 3, 2006As President George Bush throws himself into the final days of a particularly nasty campaign season, he's settled into a familiar pattern of ugly behaviour. Since he can't defend the real world created by his policies and his decisions, Bush is inventing a fantasy world in which to campaign on phony issues against fake enemies.
In Bush's world, America is making real progress in Iraq. In the real world, the index that generals use to track developments shows an inexorable slide toward chaos. In Bush's world, his administration is marching arm in arm with Iraqi officials committed to democracy and to staving off civil war. In the real world, the prime minister of Iraq orders the removal of American checkpoints in Baghdad and abets the sectarian militias that are slicing and dicing their country.
In Bush's world, there are only two kinds of Americans: Those who are against terrorism, and those who somehow are all right with it. Some Americans want to win in Iraq and some don't. And at the root of it all is the hideously damaging fantasy that there is a gulf between Americans who love their country and those who question his leadership.
Bush has been pushing these divisive themes all over the nation, offering up the ludicrous notion that if Democrats manage to control even one house of Congress, America will lose and the terrorists will win. But he hit a particularly creepy low when he decided to distort a lame joke lamely delivered by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. Kerry warned college students that the punishment for not learning your lessons was to "get stuck in Iraq." In context, it was obviously an attempt to disparage Bush's intelligence. That's impolitic and impolite, but it's not as bad as Bush's response. Knowing full well what Kerry meant, the president and his team cried out that the senator was disparaging the troops. It's not the least bit surprising or objectionable that Bush would hit the trail hard at this point, trying to salvage his party's control of Congress and, by extension, his last two years in office. And we're not naive enough to believe that either party has been running a positive campaign that focuses on the issues.
......SNIP"
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