Bushism R.I.P. 9/11/2001 – 9/02/05
I wrote last week that the Bush era was over, that he was the ultimate lame duck. Crippled and drowned, ultimately, by the Katrina fiasco. This is an incontrovertible fact.
I'm now happy to be joined in this conclusion by the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne who similarly declares that the age of Bush has come to an end. Born in the ashes of September 11th , 2001 and then suddenly extinguished on September 2nd, 2005.
Says Dionne: "The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them -- and the country."
Curious has been the reaction to this notion over the last week. My personal conversations and my email reflect a liberal mindset reluctant to grasp that fact.
I've had to contain my laughter as one correspondent after another continues to natter on about the clever Karl Rove, the unscrupulous Fox News, the evil Rush Limbaugh, and the cynical White House and how surely, certainly, absolutely and eventually they will conspire and succeed in turning this bumper crop of lemons into a sweet river of political lemonade.
But Bush is, indeed, over. A clear and sizeable majority of Americans now have a definitively negative view of him, his administration and his policies. His domestic agenda is dead in the waters of Louisiana. And his foreign policy is hopelessly swamped in Iraq.
Why can't liberals now simply accept these facts? The last five years have seen liberals adamantly, sometimes with excessive shrillness, insist that this president was the worst in history. That the American people had been fooled or lulled or stampeded or hoodwinked into supporting him and that in their own best interests they should desert him.
Well, now they have. That moment is here.
I'm getting tired of saying it. And you are probably getting weary of reading it. But this is the pivotal period. When Bush was riding at 60% popularity one could make the argument, at least, that oppositional politics had to be primarily a matter of tearing down the administration.
But when the president's popularity is submerged at 38%, it's time to say, "Mission Accomplished." And time to tell the nation what you're going to do instead. What is your oppositional offer? We are all waiting to hear.
If Bush pulls off the miracle of resurrecting his fortunes it will be only because his opposition failed to make a convincing counter-offer. As I said, we are waiting to hear.
Open invitation for Southern California locals: On Thursday, Sept. 15 at 6:30 p.m. I'll be dialoguing with John Powers, author of Sore Winners: American Idols, Patriotic Shoppers and Other Strange Species in George Bush's America. It all happens at the Silent Movie Theater, 611 N. Fairfax Ave. in Los Angeles. Admission is free but please RSVP to sstreet@laweekly.com
September 13th, 2005 at 6:58 pm
I’d like to believe you, but I seriously doubt that this gang is going to go gently into the night.
Perhaps another “enormous opportunity” will present itself in the very near future?
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000611.html
September 13th, 2005 at 7:45 pm
Just because a president of one party is seen as bad doesn’t mean that many voters won’t see the other party as worse. This has been a persistent problem in the recent past
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/11711
and when the Katrina fallout is mostly swept up, the syndrome could return.
38% approval is quite low, but that’s not what every poll is saying. Others are showing 40-41%. (Some go higher, but those numbers seem off.) Historically, an incumbent president has to sink below 45% approval to be certain of being denied a second term. And Bush isn’t running for a second term — his job now is to keep GOP representation in Congress high, and pave the way for some still-possible GOP successor in the White House. (And, of course, to further swing the Supreme Court rightward.) Even a lame duck can be put into harness, ludicrous as it may seem.
Some senior Dem, I believe it was Tip O’Neill, once said that in any normal democracy, the Democrats would be five parties, not one. (With the Dixiecrat South now more or less gone over to the GOP, courtesy of Nixon’s Southern Strategy, you could say they are down to a four-way split.) The GOP isn’t saddled with major vision-thing divisions — it’s more like two normal-democracy parties. It’s that inherently simplifying aspect of conservatism — there’s a lot less scope for vision when it’s confined to the rear-view mirrors. Progressives are likely to suffer from greater factionalism, endemically. To look forward is to perceive more forks in the road, and to argue about which is best.
When Gore lost by a hair in 2000, Bill Clinton’s diagnosis was pithy, and almost certainly correct: “He went too far left on cultural issues.” Somebody earlier said we’ve got to get a Dem presidential candidate who isn’t a “conservative wanna-be” like Gore or Kerry or Hillary Clinton. Frankly, I find that a bizarre perception — and part of the problem.
There is a genuine split in this country–maybe not as deep or as wide as some say, but still a split. Remember when the key strategic concern for the more pragmatic democratic voters looking at Kerry wasn’t his “vision”, but his “electability”? When it was about having a progressive who was still close enough to the center to garner independent votes? There’s a fundamental insecurity manifest in any political tendency when it says, “This is a good candidate because … there’s a possibility that not too many people will vote *against* him.” That’s a problem that will not go away just because a particular Republican president has earned the displeasure of many voters.
Clinton unseated the incumbent Bush Sr. because the economy went sour, then stayed in because he held the center AND the economy did well (or appeared to, anyway) for a long period. Vision matters quite a bit less than circumstances, when it comes to capturing public office. And ideology matters quite a bit less than compromise, in holding onto power — Clinton was a great vote-counter, and squeaked bills through Congress a number of times on very thin margins. Economic growth was the wind at his back through it all. What the wind giveth, the wind taketh away. Nobody understood that better than he did.
September 13th, 2005 at 8:19 pm
Marc…the Dionne piece is excellent – well-reasoned and, to me, heartening to see statedly so boldly on the pages of WaPo…he’s one of the few Beltway pundits I have much respect for. I’d considered pasting it up on the previous thread as soon as I read it, but you’ve given it much better play.
One caveat…be careful about using phrases like “incontravertible fact” when talking about anything as slippery as political fortunes.
September 13th, 2005 at 8:22 pm
Reg.. it’s incontrovertible that Bush is finished. Doesnt mean the Republicans are over nor does it mean that Democrats are ascendant.
Abbas.. I dont understand what u mean about going gently into the night. Surely you are not suggesting a military coup, are you?
It’s not about going or leaving in any case. It’s about being replaced. Where is the replacement team? Last time I saw them was today gassing like pompous hot air balloons in the Roberts hearings.
September 13th, 2005 at 9:07 pm
Marc…I’m tempted to continue to take issue with your sense of certainty on this one. But it would mostly be in the same spirit a musician who’d spent years on the road with abusive bandleader Buddy Rich repeatedly dialed up his widow – or so the story goes – and asked to speak to Rich after he’d passed away, just to hear the words “Buddy’s dead!” again and again.
September 13th, 2005 at 10:01 pm
reg, that story was really, really funny – thanks.
September 13th, 2005 at 10:20 pm
I’ll agree that Bushism is dead when the president, Cheney and Rumsfeld, Powell and the others who conspired to deliberately deceive the nation into slaughtering 10s of thousands of innocent Iraqis are in custody awaiting a war crimes trial.
Anything less than that is dinner theater.
Surely, much or most of the GOP’s kingmaker’s are drooling at the prospect of tossing the feeble-minded Bush AND HIS FAILURES overboard and running in 2008 with someone who can form full thoughts and express them in real English-like sentences, or at least someone who can read a script with a portion of the fake sincerity of a Ronald Reagan.
Remember, Kerry had his wife’s money. The next Democrat won’t have that and can expect to get even less than Kerry did from the busted unions, trial lawyers and the unemployed. But the GOP will have an even bigger corporate war chest with which to pay “MSM” columnists, produce fake video journalism for CNN and their ilk, and execute push polling and Swift Boat propaganda extravaganzas.
Indeed, the tip of the Bushism iceberg has melted down to the surface, but the economic, media and cultural substructure is as yet unscathed.
The Democrats need to think long-term and start standing for something–ideally a firm, clear, principled stand against this war and the people who lied to start it.
September 13th, 2005 at 11:03 pm
Bunkerbuster, slamdunking: “Anything less than that is dinner theater.”
That’s a pretty high bar to set, in a world where truly genocidal dictators are often offered clemency and comfortable exile as part of diplomatic moves to ease them from power. By your standard, we could get Hillary in ’08, a troop pullout in ’09, universal medical coverage in ’10, Kyoto ratification in ’11, and Hillary RE-elected in ’12, and you’d STILL say that Bushism was not dead, just because Bush wasn’t under house arrest in Crawford, awaiting shipment to Brussels. (Personally, for any such prisoner transfer, I think they should use that mask Anthony Hopkins wore in his latest reprise of the Hannibal Lecter role. But maybe that’s just me.)
C’mon, be realistic. If we can’t even get Henry Kissinger in manacles for his part in bombing the countryside of Cambodia into the Late Paleolithic, you’re never gonna see Cheney or Rumsfeld up on war crimes charges, especially not for comparatively modest transgressions. Powell? I dreamily imagine he is sincere when he says he was hoodwinked into presenting the Iraq-WMD case at the U.N. He still won’t blame Tenet for those “massive intelligence failures” (despite having used more sober reports from his own analysts to filter the CIA crap out), which basically lets everyone else in the cabinet off the hook. But why should he burn those bridges? After all, he’s probably still a good GOP draft pick, once the party is forced to see they don’t have much else on offer that’s not tainted. Who else can they line up? Will people vote for Jeb while still hating Dubya? I think not.
September 13th, 2005 at 11:04 pm
RIP my Ass!
There is plenty of time to make lemonade out of Katrina before she fades from our memory. I see billions being spent and Bush will be there with golden shovel in hand taking advantage of a golden opportunity to rebuild much of the New Orleans.
As the first 30-50,000 troops come home from Iraq as hero’s by X-mas, Bush will be there awarding metals and thanking them for their bravery and courage.
Bush might even nominate a black, female (ala – Janice Rogers Brown) to the Supreme Court just for sport to see the Democrats howl..
Even RR’s approval ratings dipped below 40%, and conservatives put him on an alter.
Dream-On Mark
September 13th, 2005 at 11:16 pm
Michael Turner writes: “By your standard, we could get Hillary in ’08, a troop pullout in ’09, universal medical coverage in ’10, Kyoto ratification in ’11, and Hillary RE-elected in ’12, and you’d STILL say that Bushism was not dead, just because Bush wasn’t under house arrest in Crawford, awaiting shipment to Brussels.”
If no one in the White House is made to take real responsibility for what has happened in Iraq, why would any president, especially one as opportunistic as Hillary Clinton, hesitate to do more of the same?
Look what happend after Vietnam. Sure, there were a few years of hesitance, but as soon as Jimmy Carter glimpsed a vision of the end of his political carreer at the hands of red baiters, he plunged the country straight back into militarism. Reagan picked up the theme and popular culture went right along with it, Rambo and all…
What is “Bushism” after all, but Reaganism badly acted?
September 13th, 2005 at 11:18 pm
Can’t you just imagine the attack ad? Scenes of destruction and stranded survivors, buses and rescue ships standing idle, Bush congratulating Brownie, and the tag line is “You’re going to let these guys at Social Security?”
Another effect of the end of Bushism is that it takes a whole generation of hard right advisors with it. Who in this administration past or present isn’t discredited? Colin Powell? And we have the Valerie Plame and maybe Tom DeLay trials yet to come. Like they said at the start, this is the Republican dream team, and the dream is over.
September 13th, 2005 at 11:25 pm
Marc,
Bush would indeed be over were it not for the fact that his opponents are the Democrats. Speaking as a Republican, somehow I have a feeling that the Democrats will come through once again, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and putting a Republican in the White House in 2008.
September 13th, 2005 at 11:46 pm
Arnold Schwarzenegger is done as well. Don’t forget about that.
2 fucking clowns. Gone.
September 14th, 2005 at 1:17 am
Lest we forget, in 2000 the Democrats’ victory was snatched by a politically motivated Supreme Court.
September 14th, 2005 at 3:21 am
“If no one in the White House is made to take real responsibility for what has happened in Iraq, why would any president, especially one as opportunistic as Hillary Clinton, hesitate to do more of the same?”
Um … how about, “Because she’s not STUPID”? Do you seriously think a President Hillary would have gone into Iraq in the same circumstances?
“Look what happend after Vietnam. Sure, there were a few years of hesitance, but as soon as Jimmy Carter glimpsed a vision of the end of his political carreer at the hands of red baiters, he plunged the country straight back into militarism.”
Did I fall asleep in the 70s and miss a whole war in which American draftees were send abroad? Or are you just talking about Zbigniew Brzezinski? There’s a difference between being a defense hawk and being a military adventurist. If there’s no difference to you, you’re seriously colorblind across more than half the political spectrum. Leaving you, I guess, little more than an ability to distinguish light from darkness.
September 14th, 2005 at 5:27 am
Michael Turner writes: “Do you seriously think a President Hillary would have gone into Iraq in the same circumstances?”
The fact is, she voted for the invasion. Worse, she hasn’t changed her position in favor of the war. I’d love nothing more than to be shown wrong on the point that, as of today, her position on Iraq is distinguishable from George W. Bush’s only in that Bush has been forced to be more articulate–if that can be imagined, in rationalizing it.
This, among other things, is what really stinks to me about Marc Cooper’s attacks on left wingnuts against the war. How much better that he deploy his wit, wisdom and journalism skills against the invertebrate Democrats like Hillary who are getting a free ride for supporting this disastrous war?
September 14th, 2005 at 5:44 am
Nobody voted for the invasion. What Congress voted on was a resolution approving the use of force if Iraq didn’t cooperate and reveal WMD efforts that, it turned out, were negligible, delusional, and in some cases simply fabrications and exaggerations produced under White House pressure for the answer that Rummy, Cheney and others were shopping for.
Supporting a continued presence in Iraq in SOME FORM is, in any case, not equivalent to “voting” for the invasion. You can’t just walk away from an internecine mess someone else made, if walking away threatens an even bigger, deadlier mess. You can say that the consequences won’t be that dire, but how do you KNOW? You can say that it’s not anybody’s responsibility but Bush’s, but is that going to get you anywhere, any time soon?
I think if we follow your logic to its … well, to its *logical* conclusion (never mind the false premises), every member of Congress who voted on that resolution is also a war criminal. Well, OK, then, let’s get really retroactive: not only is Kissinger a war criminal for his role in bombing Cambodia, but William Fulbright was a war criminal because he helped LBJ push the Tonkin Gulf Resolution through Congress. Never mind who lied to whom. It’s what they decided that counts. Guilty! Guilty as sin! Off with their heads! And if they are dead already, exhume their remains, grind them up, and feed them to the goldfish of the truly righteous.
September 14th, 2005 at 6:24 am
Oh, and while I’m on this point: any American voter who helped put Bush in office for a second term should also be brought up on charges as a war criminal. After all, they participated in the decision, right? They ratified his policies, right? So I think, using bunkerbuster’s logic, we might be able to nail 50 or 60 *million* American war criminals, easily.
Oh boy. I gotta stop rubbing my hands together with glee, and get down to some calculations now.
Lessee, if even 1% of them have died since that election … wow, the goldfish of the truly righteous will be feasting for decades! And think of the great jobs program in exhumations; we could probably knock a full percentage point off the unemployment rate.
But wait, that’s small potatoes. The real bonus: all that cheap prison labor we’ll have. America will overtake China as the #1 exporter of consumer goods, and all our economic troubles will be solved.
It doesn’t stop there, either. Think of it: paying a cook, a gardener, a maid only a few dollars a day, because they are on special war-criminal prison furlough programs. What fun to smirk at the LEDs blinking on their tracking anklets!
And even if their sentences are only a few years in many cases, the truly righteous will be politically safe, because, being ex-cons, these war criminals can be denied the right to vote for the rest of their lives. Perhaps we should deny their children that right as well. Just to be on the safe side.
I’m sold. I take back all the terrible things I just said to bunkerbuster. Sign me up for bunkerbuster’s New America. Now.
September 14th, 2005 at 6:45 am
The Democrats do have a detailed plan for the Katrina aftermath with repercusions for the entire country. Sen Reid and Rep Pelosi presented it about a week ago and you can see it at ATRUOS and KOS, I imagine it was in the papers but I missed it. Probably buried within. That’s the problem – coverage. And as I said before the House Rules will prevent these measures from coming up if the GOP says no so it will be up to the Senate.
I mention this because the next argument will be that the Dems can’t take advatage since they are equally unpopular. Not so. The latest polls on the generic “Would you vote for Rep – Dem for Congress?” gives the Dems a 50 – 38 edge. TYhere is a long time till Nov 2006 but I’d rather hold Rahn Emmanuel’s hand wouldn’t you?
I think it is the end of the era of blaming government for everything. People understand that there are things that only government can do and Katrina underscores it. It is not the demise of Bush so much as the demise of the whole GOP mantra. It ran out of gas – tax cuts carry you only so far.
September 14th, 2005 at 7:21 am
Apparently MT thinks it is also a war crime to murder logic.
September 14th, 2005 at 7:55 am
I agree 100% that the wheels have come off the Bush wagon. But let’s get this straight. It’s not true just because E.J. Dionne agrees with you. Dionne is the epitome of the effete, wishy-washy liberal too timid to really lace into Bush the way Boy George deserves. He’s the groundhog who sticks his head out of his burrow on June 2 to declare the end of winter.
September 14th, 2005 at 8:30 am
richard lo cicero writes: “The latest polls on the generic “Would you vote for Rep – Dem for Congress?” gives the Dems a 50 – 38 edge.”
Um, that ratio sounds suspiciously like the hotly-debated statistical outlier poll on Bush disapproval/approval rates. Could you cite something, Richard?
I couldn’t find a recent generic party preference poll, despite searching for a few minutes. However, I did find this at Zogby ….
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1020
… where it’s noted that Dubya, at his current approval rating, would lose to every recent president except Carter. However, if you expand the field to include more realitic opponent choices, “…in one of the few bright spots for the President, he would still beat Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, by a narrow, one-point margin.”
Ooh, John. That’s gotta hurt.
September 14th, 2005 at 8:36 am
For “realitic”, read “realistic.” Sorry. (Or maybe I meant to type “reality-based”. Yes, come to think of it, I did.)
September 14th, 2005 at 9:24 am
Actually Michael, Bush Jr. loses to Jimmy Carter in that Zogby poll by a whopping 8 points – 42%-50%. Check the stats…
Oooh, George (AND John). That’s gotta hurt.
September 14th, 2005 at 10:33 am
I can just see the Jeb Bush 2008 bumper sticker: “I’m not my brother, okay?”
September 14th, 2005 at 10:42 am
Michael Turner writes: “Do you seriously think a President Hillary would have gone into Iraq in the same circumstances?”
–Mike, I’d say it’s very possible. There is no way of being sure about that, but it’s fair to say it was very possible. Especially in the aftermath of 911, there woulda been a heap of heap of pressure on the Dems to prove that they had a military policy to ‘deal’ with 911 and if they didn’t go after Iraq they woulda been under constant attack for being afraid to go after the ‘enemy’ with all the ‘wmds’ and ‘ties’ to ‘terrorism’.
And Bunkerbuster is correct, her votes on the war indicate she had no great objections to warmaking in Iraq even though there was plenty of easily available evidence to her and her fellow Dem warmakers that Sodom did not possess so-called “wmds’, etc., Hitchens’ delusions notwithstanding.
And of course, what is the Dem solution to the quagmire now? More war!
September 14th, 2005 at 11:09 am
Predicting “the end of the Bush era” is as risky a proposition as Francis Fukuyama’s prediction of “the end of history”. It’s the kind of bold pronouncement that tends to make you look silly when reality swings by and mugs you.
Aside from that general principle, even if Bush’s national approval rating goes through the floor, there are people on the right who have a vested interest in keeping the Bush flame alive. Like Reagan, he’s a necessary part of their mythology: the little Republican president who could (and did). As with Reagan, they can never admit that he made a mistake, because he was their man and represented everything they believe in (stupid and evil though that turned out to be in practice). And just as they still pretend that the war in Vietnam was lost because of ‘betrayal’ by the American Left, so any negative results of Bush’s blunderings will be blamed on ‘liberals’. “If we’d just had the political will to stay on in Iraq/bomb Iran/pass another round of tax cuts/appoint Pat Robertson to the the Supreme Court, none of this would have happened …”
So we’re likely to have to deal with the Cult of Bush for some time longer. And even if Bush himself has to be shuffled off the political scene to prevent further embarassement, the neo-con programme – call it the Cheney Doctrine – isn’t going to go away. Getting rid of Bush is a minor battle; it’s not even close to winning the war.
September 14th, 2005 at 11:17 am
“Especially in the aftermath of 911, there woulda been a heap of heap of pressure on the Dems to prove that they had a military policy to ‘deal’ with 911″
The way to do that would have been to seriously go after bin Laden in Afghanistan and actually capture the bastard. As we learned in the New York Times magazine article that’s still online, the Bushies sent 3 dozen special forces guys into Tora Bora, relied on some of the least reliable and most easily bribed surrogate warlords in the world to do the job for us, lied about knowing his location when their bound-to-fail mission did indeed fail, and (probably IMHO) engaged in this deliberate fumble in order to keep their diversion to the Iraq invasion credible. I don’t think there’s a shred of evidence that a Clinton cabinet (B or H) or a Gore cabinet – even up to and including Kenneth Pollack, the guy who wrote the book on taking down Saddam – would have done Bush’s Iraq war. There might have been intense pressure against Saddam, but even if a Democratic President had engaged in the exact same scenario through January of 2003, unlikely as even that seems, once UN inspectors were back in they wouldn’t have been withdrawn forcefully on behest of the U.S. in favor of an unprovoked, near-unilateral invasion. You’re over-reaching on the basis of pure ideology.
September 14th, 2005 at 11:21 am
“the cult of Bush”
Sounds about right. I think it’s telling that modern conservatism has even devolved from the myth of Reagan to the cult of Bush. From “Lights, Action, Camera!” to “Pass the Kool-Aid!”
September 14th, 2005 at 11:56 am
Tyrner,
Perot did more damage to Bush 1 than Clinton’s charm.
September 14th, 2005 at 11:57 am
Turner,
Perot did more damage to Bush 1 than Clinton’s charm.
September 14th, 2005 at 11:58 am
The way to do that would have been to seriously go after bin Laden in Afghanistan and actually capture the bastard.
–you mean actually provide the need infrastructural aid and investment to turn Afghanistan into a viable independent nation-state? That would seem to run counter to the commitment to neo-liberal privatization regimes with its attendant low low level of external aid as precondition no. 1 from the US to poor nations. Are you sure the Dems woulda had it in them to violate a core priniciple of their political platform? I kinda doubt it, the record doesn’t show that at least.
“I don’t think there’s a shred of evidence that a Clinton cabinet (B or H) or a Gore cabinet – even up to and including Kenneth Pollack, the guy who wrote the book on taking down Saddam – would have done Bush’s Iraq war. ”
I”m not sure of that at all. Look at how Pollack worked to sell the war to CNN viewers before Bush’s invasion, despite the astounding amount of accessible evidence that the WMD scare was 100x more fraudulent than the Gulf of Tonkin ‘evidence’. And keep in mind Reg, we’re talking about a post-911 Democratic Party. They might have invaded even earlier than Bush if the pressure were great enough. War has nothing to do with reason, it has everything to do with opportunity and perception of gain. A Democratic Party under attack for causing 911 would be far less able to withstand the calls for war war and more war!
September 14th, 2005 at 1:06 pm
Bushism isn’t dead. They said the same thing about conservatism in 1964 and look what happened. They said the same thing about fundamentalism in 1925 and look what happened.
Fighting this country’s sick tendency to return to the values of Salem, Massachusetts 1692, is a constant struggle that will never end.
September 14th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
If Bush is finished is beside the point because *any* Republican nominee in 2008, and possibly beyond, has well over 200 Electoral Votes to win the Presidency. A couple of more states and that’s the name of that tune. I think of Bush as a medium through which flows the conservative agenda, just another of the moving parts. To be sure he’s becoming the squeaky wheel of late but all that needs is a little grease and he’ll be fine.
September 14th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
Indeed, there is a logical flaw in calling for the prosecution of the Bush team as war criminals. But it is only the logical flaw in the whole concept of a war crime. It takes a nation to make a war, so, ultimately, there is arbitrary line that must be drawn between who will be held responsible and who will not.
Michael Turner makes a fine straw man of this, suggesting that it’s irrational to blame Hillary Clinton for supporting the war, since that would, by extension, make her a war criminal and then, by extension, everyone who voted for her. Reductio ad absurdum.
And, please, let’s do set aside Hillary’s support for the resolution that led to this war. Let’s focus, instead on what she’s saying now. And that’s where I’d love for Michael Turner or someone else to tell me how Hillary’s position differs from Bush’s. Both she and the First Man manque could have long ago set aside concern by making clear their opposition to it. Their silence speaks much more loudly.
September 14th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
I just poped my head in for a moment here, and what do I see? People saying that a change of administration is going to solve all the problems (essentially). I could have said “I see dumb people” like Bart Simpson, but I refrained! lol
This is a systemic issue, the entire system, as it stands, sucks. Until this broken system is dealt with, you can change administrations as often as some change underwear, it will be pointless. Hey, perhaps you can get a president who smiles more – that’s worth something isn’t it? Gimme a break! A song plays over and over again in my head, a Who tune: “here comes the new boss, same as the old boss!” yeah…
September 14th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
The Clinton’s haven’t been silent. They’ve taken the same position that Howard Dean has since the invasion – whether or not it was a good idea, we can’t just pull out. This has been, at least until very recently, the default position of most anti-war people outside of the ANSWER/UPJC circles. So by your sleight of hand, there’s no distinction between Dean and Bush. I wish Hillary had been vocal in opposition to the resolution and I haven’t agreed with her much on the war, but conflating the position of the liberals in the Democratic Party who, for a variety of reasons – some honest, some misguided and some purely opportunistic – voted for the Iraq resolution as indistinguishable from the foreign policy agenda, priorities and competence of the Bushniks is simplistic and ungrounded in very real distinctions to the point of being useless and counterproductive both politically and analytically.
September 14th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
Why don’t you start with a system that is actually responsible to the people for a change? To add a positive note. Maybe you could junk the electoral college, do you think that might help? We could slam the door on corporate lobbys – is that a definite possiblity? Hell, if we even stuck to constitutional instruction we could do better – but that’s over the top, right? Just pick another administration, with business as usual and what will you get? A U-turn (eventually) back on the same road to destruction.
September 14th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
Marc, I think what you’re seeing as reluctance to accept the demise of Bush is really a concern that while Bush the politician may be in serious trouble, the politics of Bush are still going strong. Way too busy for a serious post but I think that may be part of what’s going on.
September 14th, 2005 at 2:53 pm
“The Clinton’s haven’t been silent.”
–indeed, they’ve been rather vocal in their support of the US goals in Iraq of privatization, military bombardment of Iraq short of direct invasion, continued occupation and externally imposed regime change.
“They’ve taken the same position that Howard Dean has since the invasion – whether or not it was a good idea, we can’t just pull out. This has been, at least until very recently, the default position of most anti-war people outside of the ANSWER/UPJC circles.”
The ANSWER/UPJC is pretty much the movement I’m afraid. Cindy Sheehan represents the mainstream of the antiwar movement than Howard Dean now. The fear of calling for pullout will probably become less and less great within the Dem Party after the US deaths reach 2k and even more so after 3k. The numbers of Iraqis dead as a result of the ongoing US occupation will of course not figure into such calls unfortunately.
The argument I’d make is not that Hillary and Bush are 1-1, merely differing on how to make an unnecessary war, not on whether or not unnecessary war as Clinton fought it against Iraq during the 1990′s or as Bush carried it out with the direct invasion in 2003 and current occupation are necessary or desirable, forget moral. As far as I can tell the Dems at this point have very little to offer the antiwar movement and will only move toward calls for pullouts when forms of dissent against the occupation become more visible and threatening to the status quo [I await Marc or Josh to interpret that as meaning 'Steve says it's time for the antiwar movement to bomb innocent civilians!]…
September 14th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Go see today’s strip on Bush. How many times has he been pronounced dead in the past?
http://newsbusters.org/taxonomy/term/257
Also, Dick Morris sees Bush recovering.
OVER
September 14th, 2005 at 3:38 pm
reg is right. To say that Hillary’s politics are “indistinguishable from the foreign policy agenda, priorities and competence of the Bushniks is simplistic and ungrounded.”
That’s why I didn’t say that. I said Hillary’s position on the war is indistinguishable from Bush’s. What I mean by that is that she supports the specifics of the current Bush policy in Iraq and has no vision and has shown no leadership on how, when and why to end U.S. participation in this disastrous war. Sure, absolutely, Hillary and Bill are far more competent, honest and realistic than Bush, but they have both shown themselves to be far too vulnerable to the Rove’s neo-con version of red-baiting.
September 14th, 2005 at 3:53 pm
I should repeat that there is a distinction between W’s Iraq policy and Hillary’s. W has had to articulate a rationalization, however psychedelic, for his, whereas Hillary has not.
It is beyond emetic that Ms. Clinton’s Web site does not even refer to the war among the 10 key issues, from “job creation” to “women’s rights” that America faces.
Her position paper on national security is putrid with apologies for fanatical zionism and wildly unbalanced criticism of Palestinian leaders. Her policy on Iraq? All she’ll say is that she supports extending health care benefits to reservists. Thanks, Hillary, have a cookie.
Apologies for posting comments that perhaps take the discussion so far from “the death of Bushism” But if this foul regime is going to die, something’s going to have to kill it. I think it’s safe to say that Clintonism stands zero chance of being the murder weapon.
September 14th, 2005 at 4:35 pm
I think that the “inevitability” of Hillary is widely overstated. I know its not a scientific poll but KOS’s straw poll has shown Wesley Clark as the favored candidate with Russ Feingold coming up since his call for a timetable to withdraw. These respondents represent a lot of the party activists and I don’t think they can be ignored. In any case Clark looks like the anti-Hillary.
Polls are tricky things but one thing they are telling us is that in only nine states does Bush have a favorable plus rating. So I would not be too sure that the GOP starts out with 200 electoral votes. Bill Clinton “picked” that lock in 1992 and it was damn close in 2004. And we actually won in 2000. See John Nicholls, Tobin, and the Press Consortium.
As for Dick Morris. Didn’t he predict a Hillary loss in 2000? Doesn’t he see Pierro giving her trouble this year? I really don’t think he is a reliable source. Oh, and when TIME and NEWSWEEK are suggesting that you are a incompetant who hates getting bad news and surrounds yourself with yes men. . . Well for GWB the worm is turning. The great and the Good no longer trust this idiot to run things.
September 14th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
One other thing. Those stories in TIME are sourced with unnamed WH Staffers. What does that tell you when the famed Bush-Rove discipline breaks down? I’d say that Dionne is right and Republicans are going to start looking for what comes next and if 2006 turns out as bad as feared . . . well the prospect of a hanging you know.
September 14th, 2005 at 5:08 pm
Marc — I think you are desperately unwilling to face the lessons of 9/11 and Katrina:
National Security matters.
Public Safety matters.
Bush, unlike Nagin and Blanco has taken responsibility for his (undeniable) failures in disaster response; he is also arguably correct in saying that positives need to be understood as well as negatives in order to respond to the next terrorist attack which sadly WILL HAPPEN.
Fallout from Katrina in particular is that Dems simply cannot be trusted with Public Safety. That’s a huge negative. Particularly since neither the Dems nor Media has control of what happens next; that’s up to the lawyers who will be doubtless pursuing Nagin and Blanco over the buses, National Guard, keeping out Red Cross/Salvation Army as well as the inevitable corruption etc. It’s the litigator full employment act. Dems are likely to emerge as a Party pictured as both corrupt and weak/inept through the mother of all class-action lawsuits (and expose a rift between the trial lawyers and Dem politicians).
Michael Turner is correct in his analysis economically, but the one thing that makes today different from 1992 is that the Dems rather than the Reps are conducting the culture war against average Americans, and we are smack down in the middle of a long, dirty, nasty struggle with jihadists instead of the end of the Cold War. Mayor Tony’s frankly idiotic dismissal of the terrorist threat despite Al Qaeda’s proven track record of carrying out terror threats in a horrific matter should disturb every Angeleno (and echoes the dismissive posture of New Orleans and Louisiana prior to Katrina). I am frankly surprised we have not had our own Beslan here in LA. Magnify this around the country and we get a complete denial of the problem in the first place.
Dems will NEVER get the nod unless they take responsibility and ownership of public safety domestically (that means Mayor Tony and folks like him have to crack down on crime like Rudy) and tough national security measures internationally.
Think of it as an RFP put out by a major client: the American people want their physical security taken care of FIRST. No matter how good your company’s proposals are in other areas, compared to the competition, if you do not respond to THAT need you will not get picked. Right now the Reps, and potential candidates such as Rudy, are miles ahead of any Dem and also institutionally in meeting those needs.
Telling yourself fairy tales about what your customer really wants instead of responding to what he’s made clear is his first priority is a way to not get the job. Agreed that Bush is a lame duck, as Clinton was, in his term. This has little effect however on the core failure of Dems to offer something compelling in public safety and national security.
I cite the delusional attempts to “arrest President Bush/Cheney/Powell for War Crimes” and the like as Exhibit A of the Democratic Party’s continued 1968 fantasy and political immaturity. Dems are not serious about Winning Marc, I think you are spot on with the analysis of “activism-ism” designed to make people feel good.
Addendum: The Party and Candidate who in ’08 answers this question:
“Bin Laden is in Pakistan. What do you propose to do?”
With a realistic plan for America victorious and bin Laden DEAD wins. The other simply ceases to exist as much more than the Greens or Whigs. All evidence suggests a coming dead end for the Democratic Party, despite opportunity after opportunity because they cannot answer that question. Very frustrating.
September 14th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
YO Marc,
There gonna be some food at the shindig? Or should I eat before I get there?
September 14th, 2005 at 5:23 pm
My feeling is that Bush senses that he has lost all the “political capital” he perceived that he had earned in the 2004 election. Personally, I couldn’t see exactly how he interpreted his narrow victory as a “mandate” for his ideas, but apparently he did.
But the guy and his team have 3 full years left in office, and a heckuva lot can happen in that time that would offer him, the Republican Party and the right opportunity for redemption in the eyes of the electorate and middle America.
Did anyone see Bush addressing the UN…was it the Security Council.? One of his worst performances, in that he read the entire speech about the spectre of terrorism–a subject that usually gets his blood moving–head down, off a sheet of paper, in total monotone. My own attention wasn’t held, and I can’t tell you what he said, but I’m guessing he was against it…whether we’re talking terrorism or the UN. Of course this didn’t stop Woof Blitzkrieg from chiming right in and declaring this a momentous occasion–the President of the US addressing the UN all the way over in, uh, Manhattan.
So it would seem right now that Bush feels beaten, perhaps it is post-Brownie-partum depression. Whether the political weather is really warming up for progressives is another question. Either way, it’s time for leaders to lead in order to mitigate the damage the Bushies can do by electing some good people in 2006, and I think the Dean people will recruit very decent candidates, and as so many have been urging, to create a party that stands FOR a vision of America in the world.
September 14th, 2005 at 6:00 pm
Well, gee
The first response to Marc’s post I say something about these guys not going gently into the night and the possibility of another “enormous opportunity” just around the corner and along comes good ole’ Rockford going “God, please, please, please” and keeping his fingers crossed that SoCal will experience its own Beslan.
This after welcoming Katrina, because it knocked Cindy Sheehan out of the headlines.
Marc, here’s what I was getting at. There’s millions of Rockfords out there eagerly awaiting their Reichstag fire — the moment when all of their bloodthirsty fantasies can be put into action.
This administration speaks to them on a level that few politicians have ever been able to. All of a sudden their deepest fears and most fervent wishes are no longer confined to the fringes but are actually part of the political mainstream.
You think either party in this relationship is willing to let go? Just walk away and graciously accept defeat?
If Rockford’s rants aren’t enough, then read this to get a glimpse of the mentality that is at work here — that is now very much a part of the mainstream.
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7154
In fact, I fully agree with the following sentiments:
http://www.lusiphur.org/harangutan/archives/00000075.htm
“Those of you who were at Interaction with me probably heard Patrick Nielsen-Hayden refer more than once to his initially lingering, but increasingly solid suspicion that about 20% (or was it more?) of [Americans] were ready and waiting, at a moment’s notice, to embrace fully-fledged fascism. You know, the kind that finally abandons all pretence of complying with the Constitution and the requirements of a civilised society, and takes to booting in doors in the dead of night and openly kicking the shit out of those who disagree with them. Or worse.”
What do you think the oft-repeated neocon refrain “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” means?
September 14th, 2005 at 6:14 pm
Jrock is correct that Dems like me are not “serious” about winning. We are serious about truth, freedom and democratic values. When those ideals conflict so directly with “winning” then, indeed, I say let’s lose.
The corporatist and pro-military bias of the media, the GOP’s overwhelming funding advantage and the culture-war noise machine will assure Republican victories in 2006 and 2008.
The Democrat’s only hope is to grow a spine and think long-term. If they can’t do that, any interim victory based on the gross failure of this or that Republican would be short-lived anyway.
If Jrock has any ideas about how the Dems can be “serious” about winning, I bet it boils down to nothing more that “by becoming more like Republicans.”
That is one possibility: a one-party state, where factions called Democrats and Republicans argue over economic spoils and details like whether to outlaw all abortions, or just those that don’t threaten the life of the mother and whether to slaughter more Arabs with cruise missiles or tactical nukes.
But how do Democrats slay Bushism by adopting its core tenets? The “triangulation” strategy worked for Bill Clinton only because the cold war had finally collapsed on its own contradictions. It won’t work now that the GOP is waist-deep in the blood and feces of another “permanent war.”
September 14th, 2005 at 7:11 pm
Libertarians have long thought the US WAS a one-party Demopublican / Republicrat state — with both parties wanting BIG gov’t.
You Dem whiners are so silly; Marc’s “Bush era was over” — AFTER the President of Iraq comes to the US to say thanks to Bush.
AFTER the economy keeps perking along at only 5.2% unemployment, or less — and more growth than other G-7 countries.
AFTER another day of hearings for the nearly inevitable confirmation of Bush’s Judge Roberts.
Bush stole the Dem thunder internationally — Democratize the Middle East. A long expensive set of slow-motion steps — but the prior post-67 ‘non-democratize’ status quo was expensive and no-motion. Iraq and Lebanon will both prolly be functioning democracies. Bush gets ALL the US credit.
Dems hate Bush tax cuts … but don’t howl so loud about super-sized pork budgets. Carefully feeding the corporations to whom the GOP is so beholden — but the same business folk who are successful at keeping the unemployment rate down.
After Roberts and the next selection, the Court will be ready to overturn Roe; though having 3 Bush Justices is better for a 6-3 decision.
Dems drive out pro-life Catholics.
Dems drive out pro-war liberals.
Dems drive out pro-growth, anti-tax small business folk.
But all the fastest-talking potty-mouth insulters are happy to be Bush-bashers.
“time to tell the nation what you’re going to do instead. What is your oppositional offer?” — the dirty little Dem secret? They don’t agree on what to do differently; just not be Bush doing it.
September 14th, 2005 at 8:41 pm
Let us not forget, The Republican Party is still the party of Dale Gribble.
http://www.wvah.com/programs/kingofthehill/DaleGribble.shtml
And that type of self-delusion and paranoia is hard to calm.
September 14th, 2005 at 8:48 pm
“Dems drive out pro-life Catholics.”
Like Harry Reid, the senate’s highest ranking Democrat? (And who’s the highest ranking pro-choice Republican? Arnold??)
“Dems drive out pro-war liberals.”
Like Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman, a former and likely future presidencial candidate? On this score, the Republican “mavericks” do deserve relative credit, with leaders like Hagel and others at last speaking out against the war. It’s a shame so few Democrats are out in front of them on that.
Pappa Libertine is essentially correct, though: Dems like me would drive these people out if we could and, more important, believe their presence at the head of the party ensures continued GOP dominance.
We want a party that reflects our values and advocates policies we support. That’s what the GOP has and that’s the key to their success, particularly in the new era of perma-war. An array of polls show few, if any, of the GOP’s key policies have solid majority support and most reflect minority positions. The trouble for Democrats is that people don’t vote solely based on issues and in far too many cases the GOP candidates end up winning simply because the Democratic party looks like it can’t make up its mind about the most important issues, like the war.
Hillary, Reid, Lieberman and so many others are prime examples of people who have listened and acted to the pundits telling them to be more like Republicans. To be sure, it has allowed them to have individual success, but it is destroying the party.
September 14th, 2005 at 8:56 pm
bunkerbuster writes: “Indeed, there is a logical flaw in calling for the prosecution of the Bush team as war criminals. But it is only the logical flaw in the whole concept of a war crime. It takes a nation to make a war, so, ultimately, there is arbitrary line that must be drawn between who will be held responsible and who will not.”
You’re being seriously dense, bunkerbuster. The idea that there’s a “logical flaw” in the concept of war crime because the definition of responsibility is “arbitrary” … well, I guess that means that Cindy Sheehan, being an American, might be considered just as much a war criminal as a CIA interrogator who tortures an Iraqi POW to death. Hey, we’re just drawing an arbitrary line in different places, right?
For someone who sounded so hot to get BushCo in the dock for war crimes, you suddenly seem to have gone rather cold on the very existence of war crimes as a legitimate legal category. Make up your mind.
September 14th, 2005 at 9:59 pm
I suppose arbitrary was the wrong word. The historical precedent has extended war crimes prosecution to top civilian and military leaders of nation’s involved in war crimes.
That would mean, in this case, that the prosecutions would be faced by Bush and his war-related cabinet members.
MT was the one who implied that the distinction between war criminal and “accessory” was arbitrary by claiming that my logic called for prosecuting Hillary as surely as Bush, just because her position on the war was the same as his.
This is just silly. If MT wants to debate the culpability of Bush & Co. for war crimes, I’d be happy to. But to play jr. high semantic games is a little too boring even for me.
September 14th, 2005 at 10:17 pm
It warms my heart to see the argument of reduction to the rediculous applied by some here – it is a valid form of argument on arid technical points, but not when lives are being lost. All it does in the context of this argument is absolve those in leadership who bear direct responsibility – it does a poor job. We have the problem of selective accusation, we like to accuse those not in our party and wish to excuse those we have supported – a sort of selfish way of avoiding the admission of a mistake on our part.
The problem we have today is no mechanism to hold those responsible who are directly involved in criminal activity. On the whole, whether you are talking about Dems or Repubs you have a failure to recognize an ailing and compromised system, rampant corruption – your answers to any problem is to put your equally corrupt people in office.
You dance around the high crimes entry in the constitution, ensuring ongoing criminal activity. No one takes the time nor the effort to hold their representatives feet to the fire. I have to admit one truth – I think you sense that you are not and will not be listened to, that subconscious worm that naws is correct. Until we all grow some collective balls, stop thinking about our own well being to a default, nothing will change.
At this point I am convinced, that nothing short of the destruction of the upper middle and middle class proper will produce any action. I am willing to wait for that to happen, it is swiftly approaching – so when we have lost it all, maybe something effective will be done. Until that time we can all sound off into a void with these equally ineffective measures.
September 15th, 2005 at 12:44 am
Ever consider running for a political office Virgil?
We live in a democracy. It may be far from perfect, but it is way ahead of every other form of government that’s been tried or is trying, most having already ended up on the ash-heap of failure.
September 15th, 2005 at 1:08 am
Jim Russell,
Not if you talk to Bush. He thinks a dictatorship would be better. Provided he was the dictator.
He was joking, of course. Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha.
September 15th, 2005 at 7:37 am
Blow Jobs are evil and of the devil.
War waged on lies and darkies are divine and of God.
September 15th, 2005 at 9:00 am
“This is just silly. If MT wants to debate the culpability of Bush & Co. for war crimes, I’d be happy to. But to play jr. high semantic games is a little too boring even for me.”
It went over the line when you started classing everyone in Congress who voted for the resolution, and everyone in Congress who currently supports some kind of stabilizing troop presence, as equally guilty of what Bush & Co. perpetrated themselves. You’re now retreating to a safer position, limiting discussion to Bush & Co, not because you don’t want to debate “sophomoric semantics”, but because you don’t really know what a war crime is. But even if you limit the debate to that crowd, you’re eventually going to have to figure it out. Why not start now? If for no other reason than giving you position some legal leg to stand on? Or is it just too boring to do what it takes to know what the hell you’re talking about?
September 15th, 2005 at 9:18 am
Virgil Johnson writes: “It warms my heart to see the argument of reduction to the rediculous applied by some here – it is a valid form of argument on arid technical points, but not when lives are being lost.”
Any valid argument that helps make sense of a confusing situation in which lives are being lost can help save more lives from being lost. A definition of “war crime” that would form a legal basis for bringing down those most responsible for unnecessary deaths is a lot more useful than just flinging the term around as mere invective (which at some point becomes counterproductive — people stop listening, and those who are no longer listened to because of their extreme language than repair to a position like Virgil’s — sitting around and waiting for some absurd eventuality like “the destruction of the middle class and the upper middle class”.)
War crimes are based on “arid technical points” only to the extent that any legalism is going to be arid. Otherwise, they are as wet — with blood — as any legal issue can get. When you throw too much formalism (what bunkerbuster calls “sophomoric semantics”) out the window, you get mere victor’s justice. That “justice” might take the form of the Far East Asian War Crimes Tribunal — punishing some who were innocent, letting other guilty parties get away with murder). When all formalism is thrown over the side, you can get the supposed “auto-genocide” in Cambodia (better seen as an especially vicious form of “victor’s justice” in what amounted to class warfare) or the supposed “genocide” in Rwanda (not too different in important respects from the Cambodia case, since “Hutu” and “Tutsi” represented little more than class distinctions that evolved under Belgian colonialism, as opposed to Cambodian colonialism in Cambodia’s case.) A fuzzy, sentimentalized sense of “war crimes” sometimes leads only to more … war crimes.
September 15th, 2005 at 10:24 am
“Political capital†if there is such a thing, is rather amorphous. Winning an election – even a hotly contested one – gives you the authority to propose new programs. Some of those may be controversial, but the public likes seeing their leaders trying to accomplish something real and you will be supported if you’re trying to build something new. Tearing down an existing structure, however, takes oodles of “political capital.†The Bush people didn’t grasp that when it came to Social Security. The Govenator still doesn’t grasp that political fact. In many ways, it’s an obvious point, but I think lots of elected officials have decided that if they frame something as a new positive program the people will treat it as such. I don’t think that’s entirely true. Luckily, we’re all a little smarter than that.
September 19th, 2005 at 9:58 am
Michael Turner-
Do you honestly suggest that Bush voters are culpable in our military actions, mean that we can also hold Bush non-voters culpable for supporting terrorist activities that directly target civilians?
I mean if you want pick sides of whom you do and do not support, I’d like to know with whom you would sign up to fight on behalf.
I served and fought for six years in Marine Corps and I am proud of the fact I stood up for my convictions no matter how wrong you or anyone believes they are. What do your convictions dictate you to do?
Sit and bitch?
September 21st, 2005 at 12:43 am
I would have to completely disagree with Michael Turner starting way at the top. The Dionne piece was absolutely ridiculous. Far from well-reasoned, it starts off with the absurd assertion that Bush created this “divided, angry and dysfunctional public square,” as if such a state of affairs did not already exist during the previous 7 years.
Does this columnist recall the 2000 election debacle? The chants of “Bush was selected, not elected”. How about the 1998 Monica-Clinton Impeachment process, or even way back to the 1994 “Republican Revolution”?
Say what you want about the criminality of the Bush administration, the evil nature of it’s political ideology or any other sinister catch-phrase that’s been pulled off of a blog somewhere; just don’t attempt to argue that Bush is the REASON behind political polarization in America. It would seem to me that he is more a symptom, and that the American public itself is more to blame than anyone else.
And to claim that the Bush era ended on Sept 2nd?? What kind of randomness is that? I thought it ended when Bush prematurely proclaimed “mission complete” on that air craft carrier back in 2003. And again when the Abu Ghraib scandal blew up in 2004 . . . and then when the 9-11 report came out . . . the list goes on and on. It looks to me that this is just another in a very, very long line of anti-Bush/short-on-profundity Op-Eds.
Finally, to predict Mr. Bush’s irrelevance is just plain silly. Love him or hate him, he is not, and will never be, irrelevant. His #1 position atop the Left’s effigy ash heap is a testament to this fact. Such a term would more refer to the columnist himself, one who can only grab a headline in the national media by repeating en-vogue political sound bites. Will America remember Mr. Dionne or his views 50 years from now? Most likely not. Will it remember Mr. Bush, either as a villain, a hero, as both or as neither? I believe it will. Irrelevant? Not quite.
September 14th, 2005 at 11:13 pm
How would liberals rebuild Louisiana?
Josh Marshall makes a good point when he says that, when it comes to the Bush administration, you can’t separate intention from the ostensible policy, because even if you agree with the ostensible policy, the corrupt intention will corrupt the policy. He’
February 27th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
[...] These guys are surely getting their come-uppance. Even Francis Fukuyama and Bill Kristol and Bill Buckley are publicly trashing them. I wrote back in September that the Age of Bush had washed away with Katrina. A lot of people resisted that notion, a lot of people on the left. They had become so accustomed to bemoaning the encroaching Republican darkness — that purely denuciatory mode so completely relieved them of any pro-active responsibilities, they simply didn’t want to accept that Bush had already crashed. [...]
September 16th, 2010 at 7:03 am
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