Kaiser, my friend,
It will not come as any surprise to you (or JP or anyone else who has seen some of my off-topic rants) that I want a bumper sticker that says "No more in '04."
Something the Time article alluded to, but did not explore sufficiently, IMO, is the divergence between GWB's behavior in office and his claim during his campaign for election that he was a uniter, not a divider,a claim he thought was warranted by his bipartisanship as governor of Texas. There are a couple of things here. First, few people outside of Texas realize that the governorship of Texas is not an especially powerful office: it in no way compares with California or NJ. (Molly Ivins is especially good on this point.) Second, GWB's alleged bipartisanship didn't survive his move from Austin to Washington and Washington-on-the-Brazos. Third, Republican politicians have been greedy and on the snatch for the past three years. It started in Florida with K. Harris and those chads and the disputed election; continued with Rehnquist's Supreme Court throwing the election to Bush; went even further in California with the gubernatorial recall; and the greed and manipulation of the Texas Republicans who, with the connivance of Rove and DeLay, pulled that redistricting gambit. I should qualify my remarks in one sense, however. It is the Republican right that is so greedy, and its greed extends to the moderates among its numbers. (Santorum typifies this greed, not Arlen Specter.)
The circumstances of GWB's ascent to power called, I would assert, for irenic behavior and policies, for reaching across political lines of demarcation. I agree with the Colorado teacher who said GWB was not her president. There was one point, right after 9/11, when I thought Bush spoke for us all. But he has drifted farther and farther to the right as time went on. His foreign policy has been dominated by the Project for a New American Century crowd (which in the mid-90s probably say Jeb Bush, not George, as their crown prince).(Today's NYT has an dubious op-ed piece by William Safire reiterating the claim of a link between Iraq and Al Queda, relying on Douglas Feith, one of the doctrinaire PNAC ideologues in the Pentagon. And even if Feith's claim that Atta met some Iraqi officials in Prague were true, it doesn't amount to much.)
I am a Texan by birth, and there is still a great deal that I like about my native state. But there are certain types of Texans that I don't like, starting with the schoolyard bullies of my childhood. And I do know the type. I had an uncle who was as unsuccessful in the oil business as was GWB, and through him I got to know slightly some people like Bunker Hunt. Right after I was married my wife and I went dancing at the Hotel Adolphus in Dallas with my aunt and uncle and the Hunts. GWB would have fit right in.
I don't like his in-your-face religiosity, which smacks very much indeed of the sin of pride--which is far worse in the dictates of Christianity than sexual lust. The sound of his voice grates on me like fingernails on a blackboard. He never learned the difference between a voiced and an unvoiced letter "s." I don't like the way he drags his wife around, nor the Stepford Wife look in her eyes.
And here's a prediction or two. The coming campaign is going to be very nasty; Bush's behavior in South Carolina, his wooing of the Bob Jones University crowd, and his shocking attacks on McCain are a preview. The divisiveness will deepen; Bush, Rove, and their myrmidons will seize on the culture war issues like abortion, gay marriage, and so on to solidify their hold on the Limbaugh/Falwell cretins. (Incidentally, "cullture war" is a very resonant term; in Germany in the 30s it was called "Kulturkampf.") If Bush and his crew get another four years in office, I hate to think about the kind of country my grandkids will inherit.
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"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument." William Gibbs McAdoo. US Vice-President under Woodrow Wilson.
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