The case against George W. Bush
Policies, domestic and foreign, are bankrupt
Daytone Beach News Journal
Last update: October 17, 2004
Four years ago, George W. Bush asked voters to send him to Washington on his
promise that he would unite this nation by governing from the center with
compassion, integrity and accountability. Fewer than half the Americans who
cast ballots in 2000 were persuaded enough to vote for him. He gained the White
House by the skin of a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision. Afterward, many Americans
concluded that a president with so tenuous a claim on the Oval Office should be
trusted to govern temperately. They gave him a 60 percent approval rating on
his promise.
Eight months later, his embarrassing performance -- indulging his party's
religious fringe, shilling for big corporate cronies, withdrawing from foreign
alliances, cloaking his administration in secrecy -- had so disgusted the
majority of Americans that his approval rating was in freefall at 49 percent.
Rarely has a presidency plummeted so low so fast so early in its first term.
Mention of a second term became a punch line.
Until Sept. 11, 2001. On the day the Twin Towers collapsed, Bush resurrected his
presidency on the rubble of fear. It is to that fear that he returns now,
implying that voters risk graver danger from terrorists if they deny him a
second term.
Fear is the dominant, almost exclusive message of the Bush-Cheney re-election
campaign. It has to be. Without fear to fuel the language of war, this
administration can't maintain the illusion of legitimacy. Its policies,
domestic and foreign, are bankrupt, its promises shards of hubris. Take a look
at the broken pieces.
After 9/11, the United States found itself in an embrace of international good
will. A coalition of willing partners stepped up to pool intelligence and
policing resources to track down terrorists. But the new "war president" had
little patience for tedious police work or diplomacy. Not when he could command
armies.
The military invasion of Afghanistan certainly helped the police actions,
disrupting al-Qaida and overthrowing the Taliban regime that supported it. The
world and most Americans supported Bush in that war. But then he misled them to
Baghdad.
Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. He had no ties to al-Qaida.
He posed no imminent threat to the United States or its allies. The Iraqi
people, not terrorists, are the real "insurgency" resisting the occupying
forces now. The country is a powder keg where a "democratizing" blunder could
ignite civil war and destabilize the entire Middle East.
Bush's swaggering, go-it-alone decisions for war and indecision for peace in
Iraq have insulted our allies and fanned hatred among dispossessed Muslims,
creating a fertile field for terrorist recruiters. Those decisions have cost
almost 1,100 American lives, untold thousands of Iraqi civilian lives and
committed American taxpayers for $200 billion, with no end in sight. Americans
and the world are not safer for it and they have no assurance this president
won't, given half an excuse, send U.S. troops against other regimes in his
infinite war.
Profligate spending for a dubious war and faulty reconstruction do not reveal
the whole sordid story of this president's fiscal excesses. He inherited a
projected $5 trillion surplus from President Clinton but squandered it on huge
tax cuts that favor the rich. He credits the tax cuts with bolstering the
economy through recession.
But why then, given the forecast of a $500 billion deficit and counting, did he
push Congress to make the tax cuts permanent long after he declared the
recession ended? And why weren't those tax cuts directed primarily to the
working middle class, whose consumer spending fuels two-thirds of the economy?
The more believable answer is that Bush is presiding over one of the largest
deliberate transfers of wealth in this nation's history.
With a willing Republican majority in Congress, he is systematically abolishing
taxes on wealth and shifting the cost of government onto America's working
families. He frequently contends that taxing wealth discourages investment and
innovation. A robust private sector is vital to all Americans, but instead of a
balance between business interests and public need, the president steps on the
scales to favor his large corporate donors and rich friends. They get the
breaks in tax cuts, loopholes and rollbacks of business and environmental
regulations; the public gets the dirty air, polluted water and rising health
care bills. Poverty, unemployment, the number of Americans without health care
are through the roof, largely because of this president's policies. Load
working families and small business owners with taxes, let them pay for social
welfare for the nonworking poor if they want -- that's the Bush approach to
downsizing government. And as wealth and power are concentrated in fewer hands,
democracy increasingly is a private auction.
Four years ago, George W. Bush gave his word to voters. He didn't keep it. With
no re-election worries to temper his excesses in a second term, he is asking
too much of Americans to trust that he'd govern with any more compassion,
accountability and integrity than he has. Compassion for the richest Americans?
Accountable to the religious right? Truthful about sending troops to war only
as a last resort?
America can do better than four more years of that.
--
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas -- that says, fool
me once, shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."
http://www.diymedia.net/audio/mp3/tdntb-bushwack2.mp3
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