Salon: Bush loses his aura of invincibility

[Manix]

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Perhaps it's just that we've become so accustomed to performances featuring Bush the Avenging Angel, Scourge of the Taliban and Smiter of Saddam, that seeing him talking about upgrading the electrical grid (a topic that seemed to be introduced solely so that he could get off the line "and reduce America's dependence on foreign oil") feels weirdly anticlimactic. Or it may be that the GOP already attained political nirvana when the massive, irresponsible tax cuts were rammed through (with the connivance of invertebrate Dems) and they really had nothing left to say or do. Or that the Bush administration was listening to the increasingly ominous economic rumblings coming now even from Republican insiders, warning that the $500 billion deficit Bush created by his outrageous tax cuts could not be sustained -- or that Washington Post/ABC poll showing that 58 percent of Americans believe that the economy is the biggest problem facing the country (compared to 39 percent who named terrorism) and that 50 percent of Americans would prefer Democrats in Congress to handle the economy, compared to 43 percent who would prefer Bush. In any case, there was no real story line in Bush's address beyond "cut taxes" and "kill evildoers," and his delivery was not inspiring.

The problem lies not with the delivery but with the policy. The trouble with espousing a radical redistribution of wealth in which the rich get richer and the poor and middle class gets shafted (that $100 or $300 or even $800 tax break is nothing compared to the long-term damage done to the economy and the government services, at all levels, that are beginning to be shut off like a spigot) is that you can't really admit what your agenda is. ("My fellow Americans, let us embrace the ideas of anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist, and return our great nation to its most prosperous time -- the McKinley era!") You are also forced to tell fairy tales, like the absurd claim that under his new budget Bush would halve the deficit in five years, or the baldfaced lie that "jobs are on the rise" when 2.5 million jobs have been lost in the past two years. In any case, on domestic matters Bush looked and sounded far from invincible.



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Bush opened his speech by invoking the war on terror, and claiming that it was a rousing success. "America this evening is a nation called to great responsibilities. And we are rising to meet them. As we gather tonight, hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women are deployed across the world in the war on terror. By bringing hope to the oppressed, and delivering justice to the violent, they are making America more secure." After a detour to claim that "the tax relief you passed is working," Bush fired a crude shot at critics of the Iraq war -- including, of course, his Democratic challengers: "We have faced serious challenges together -- and now we face a choice. We can go forward with confidence and resolve -- or we can turn back to the dangerous illusion that terrorists are not plotting and outlaw regimes are no threat to us."

This flag-waving caricature of antiwar positions has worked well for Bush and the GOP in the past, but without the buttress of Bush's now-discredited claims about Saddam's WMD, it felt egregiously empty. When historians 100 years from now examine Bush's speech, the one thing they are certain to note is that Bush completely ducked the WMD issue -- exaggerating the meager findings of inspector David Kay and, incredibly, not even bringing up the obviously cooked intelligence that provided the justification for war. In the aftermath of a war -- a war! -- this politically motivated failure to even acknowledge that the entire rationale for that conflict was specious is unconscionable, and unforgivable. Instead, Bush engaged in mere empty bluster. "America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country," he proclaimed, throwing a wild, below-the-belt roundhouse at critics who argued that the U.S. should have lined up a genuinely multilateral coalition.

All of this is in keeping with the never-apologize, never-explain arrogance of his administration -- an arrogance that has worked well for it until now. But with Iraq turning into a war of attrition, with its political future increasingly ominous and no clear exit strategy in sight, that arrogance is beginning to look increasingly like a veneer painted over a void.



Full Text

[opihimoimoi]

1. The Coffee is working, People are waking up and coming to their

senses

Pubs are a miserable lot.

They trying to share their misery and make us more miserable than them.

[izzie]

2. Interesting. I can hear them at Free Republic now.

Only trouble is you hear a few over their saying the same thing as the snips I just read. They are usually not treated to well either. At DU you can say you do not like some thing in our party but over their you either say just what a few like or you get it.