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I remember the 2000 Republican cry--"The grown-ups are in charge!" And here it is 2006, and the play-pretend "grown-ups" have asked if their parents might not like to step in and "really" be in charge. For the past 6 years, we have seen the installment, the everlasting, never-ending year 2000 campaign to get George W. Bush accepted as president--to restore "dignity and honor to the White House". And he has, even despite the high post-9/11 polls, even despite the 2004 "re-election" (which, I guess, presupposes one was elected in the first place, but you know I'm not going there...except maybe briefly)never really done any such thing. He hit the "trifecta", searched high and low for WMD's--even at a Press Corps bash, and choked on pretzels. He's pretended he didn't know Ken Lay, and maybe wished he didn't know Tom Delay, and damn if he didn't know Jack Abramoff. He's tried to walk out through the in door in China. He's been tagged as having a little black box on his back during his debates with John Kerry--which he lost. Maybe it connected him to Karl Rove, or Dick Cheney, or the Mothership--we just don't know. And yet he's never really stopped preaching to us.
We know it's hard to be president. We've been told by W.--and he's president--so he would know. Not since Nixon sweated openly before us did we ever see such hard work--and maybe that is no coincidence. He's working hard to overcome the good economy he inherited by widening the deficit, and definitely tried his very hardest to make sure his tax cuts are preserved (working hard!) and always makes sure we're spending more and more on the war in Iraq (war on Terra!)to boost the economy (lush war contracts grow the economy, no doubt!)
The tax cuts did not affect the middle class, or even the working classes so much, as the proposed end of the alternative minimum tax the Democrats right this very minute are talking about, would do. In fact, the war on Iraq did not affect our immediate safety, what with them not having any nuclear capability and no WMD's and all, as much as negotiations with North Korea (who was, all things considered, all that much closer to "da bomb"---and had a yearning lust to proliferate) would've done. He's been wrong about so many big things ("significant intifada"--does this statement ring a bell? Something like late 2002, this adminitration tried to tie the previous administration's involvement in the M.E. to "significant intifada." So very goddamn glad that isn't still around, in the year of our lord 2006, you bastards.)
So what I'm inching towards is this--Bush is toast. He is the most stupid, bad, horrible, example of executive abuse of power, ever. The "R" word has been used: relevancy--and if he isn't relevant, anymore, he did it himself. His legacy, which he probably hoped would be a remade Middle East, is a disaster. Even Tony Blair, his good buddy, says so.
Am I forgetting 9/11--hell no. I remember Condi Rice saying they had "no idea" planes (BANZAII!) would be flown into buildings. ("Lone Gunman Pilot"), not after the 8/6 PDB. Damn, how would we ever connect terrorists to hijacked planes. Craziness.
This has been a preaching president. His bully pulpit had made us more moral--signing against the stem cell research that might save all kinds of folks--Alzheimer's patients, Parkinson's patients, diabetics, you know--people with biological diseases that could be cured by physical means. Scientifically, and not by a faith-based wa---
Oh but wait. Per David Kuo--and hell, by John J DiIulio (the fellow who in Esquire magazine coined "Mayberry Machiavellis") the whole faith-based thing was a meatless bone thrown to the religious right. Lip service was given to the non-funding of stem cell research, but, uh, very little funding went to any other research to help people--er, see also, skimping on funding to Africa, and not much foreign aid to tsunami-affected area--see also--sent his dad and the former actually-last-elected POTUS to region.
This preaching president sent his preaching Attorney General out to announce, several months after the fact,that they caught the dreadful Jose Padilla, and violated the Sam Hill out of his constitutional rights--there's a great start to the official war on terror. The president went on to approve of Guantanomo and Abu Ghraib. (The attorney general in question, John Ashcroft? Not entirely sure he would have approved of both--no matter, Bush found approval with Alberto Gonzalez. Nice. Also. Harriet Myers, would-be SCOTUS, once thought George the bestest governor ever--so you know he has all kinds of authority.)And he loved him some Don Rumsfeld--last seen asking himself easy questions he alone knew the answers to, an ego that eclipsed that of MacArthur, and made Patton look dovish. Oh and where oh where, would W. be, without his partner in crime, Cheney?
A better place, more competently influenced, perhaps, since Cheney, Libby,Addington, Wolfowitz, and a cast of dozens of others, led us to where we are now in Iraq--W, didn't do it all by himself. And add to that, Colin Powell.
The Democratic party has the House and Senate, subpoena power, and all that goes with it--the power to demand these unnecessarily classified documents (like Cheney's energy papers) and even maybe take a new look at things unclassified (like well, Plame, or whatever Iraq Intell bigmouth Libby was popping off about). We will know what we have long suspected--these guys have been playing a game, and that game has not been "let's run the most powerful country in the free world." The game has been--let's just play at being in power, and benefit ourselves (Halliburton, numerous contractors, etc)
If Bush catches hell now, he is reaping the whirlwind of the opposite of the "bully pulpit". When he had command of it, he could even try to tell us social security funds should go into the very mercurial stock market, although very few followed our noble leader that far. We could call this corrolary the "bullied pulpit"--where our leader proposes--and we dispose. Or depose. With subpoenas, even. And perhaps--we even impeach. For the president swears to uphold the Constitution--"to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend." The Constitution itself, with the NSA wiretapping matter, has been questioned--this all goes to the very issue of whether Bush has done his job. I say it can be indeed questioned what job he has done--to the Constitution--to us all.
(Ahem--I like the term, "Bullied pulpit" so much, I knew it did not start with me, and so I searched where it came from. I found an article by Sebastian Mallabry, written in early 2000, and this political scene is plain--Clinton, with a GOP-dominated House. Mallabry posited that a "weak" president made for bad foreign policy. I maintain, from witnessing the last six years, that a "strong president", with congressional support, can make even more truly lousy foreign policy. I also believe, as an aside, that our forefathers probably wanted a weak president, so that the people had more say in our treaties, policies, etc. JMHO.)
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