Beating around the Bush
Ah Shrub, ye unelected dipstick, you’re always good for a laugh. Nearly a year and a half of “service” to these United States and you’ve never left columnists like me without the fuel we need to burn you in effigy. How do we love thee? Let me count the ways.
Honestly, you’ve got to be just begging for trouble if even that coward Gore is willing to stand before Americans and criticize you with an astounding popularity rating. But it’s easy to point out Bush’s terrible environmental record. While governor, Texas had 7 percent of the nation’s population and produced 14 percent of its greenhouse emissions. Similarly there’s no lack of commentary on Bush’s blatant censorship of news aided by his propaganda machine. “There ought to be limits to freedom,” he told us in 1999.
But, as always, I’m much more fascinated with the insider’s perspective. I like to see how government talks to itself when it thinks no one is looking. Ever since Bush was introduced before his own screaming fans by a supporter shouting, “You don’t have to be intelligent to be president,” the right wing has been a fascinating and tragic group to study as its beloved figurehead turned out to be significantly less than it’d hoped for. Bush, for all his foibles when exposed in the bright light of day, can be quite articulate when talking about his favorite topics around friends. Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon, reminds us of a statement Bush made opening up a private dinner in New York: “This is an impressive crowd – the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base.”
Back then, nearly all the right wing was laughing alongside Manhattan’s wealthiest at this glib remark. This is all the more reason why I take so much joy out of getting the last laugh on the “elite” now that some of Bush’s mascara is running. It took a lot of work for the Republican party to establish such close ties with the extreme right and the previous generations of the Bush dynasty did most of the work in luring them over into mainstream politics. Both his nephew Prescott and the eldest George Herbert Walker Bush managed to hang onto shares they owned in companies that had their assets seized by the U.S. government in WWII due to Nazi management and investment. The first President Bush, though nowhere near as politically savvy as Shrub, knew well enough to rely on his boy for advice in how to win the religious right over as a strictly Republican lobbying group. And now here we are in 2002, and the “little governor that could” is about to throw it all in the can over Israel.
Mike Allen (The Washington Post) identifies some of the grievances cited by once loyal right-wingers as reasons for their dissent: “[Bush] supporting campaign finance reform after promising to veto it, imposing tariffs on imported steel despite his free-trading rhetoric, expanding federal power in response to the threat of terrorism and choosing moderates over conservatives in a few Republican congressional primaries.” Some have dismissed this behavior as simply a “sophomore slump,” but active conservatives of every stripe are completely thrown by his attitude toward Israel.
It’s not that they are troubled by his hypocrisy in pursuing a unilateral scorched earth policy in Afghanistan, and then slapping Israel on the wrist with his lapdog Colin Powell. Most of their politics are informed by exactly this kind of double standard. No, the reasons are deeper and even more frightening than this valid question. For the religious right, there’s the issue of Israel as the land of the Covenant, a place God meant for Jews to keep, and the mostly unspoken hope that all Jews will be there before too long. For arms dealers, stock speculators and basically all Enron conservatives, it’s an issue of having that important foot in the Middle East door for business. Your typical Realpolitik conservative insists on Israel’s right to pursue genocide against the dispossessed Palestinians out of some sick version of self-defense.
Whatever you think about the Middle East and Bush’s half-hearted moves for peace over there, be it “too little too late” or “let the monkey do what the monkey sees its American allies doing,” Bush seems to have finally managed to alienate just about everyone in the entire world, with the exception of big oil interests and maybe 2/3 of Tony Blair. We on the left never trusted him, of course, and the rest of the world outside our borders soon felt the same way after his administration made it policy to ignore the agreements made by the international community. Now with his uncharacteristic and thoroughly hypocritical appeals for peace to a country that represents entirely United States interests in the most volatile part of the world, Bush finds his circle of believers growing smaller by the day.
Karen Hughes, though claiming “homesickness” for Texas, has given up her position as one of Bush’s key advisers. She’d been with the governor long before the presidential race; now she’s feeling a little faint of heart? It’s not likely we’ll ever find out the real reason for her leaving, and circumstantial evidence, however compelling, is no case for the prosecution, no matter how many detainees Bush puts away on it. It remains to be seen whether these failures will prove as fatal for Shrub as his father’s own much-publicized broken promise about there being “no new taxes.” But the lies he feeds his own grassroots are growing exponentially larger and more frequent.
The conservatives out there that are actually trying to keep up with news and remain active in politics are upset that their chosen one seems to be indulging “political expedience over principles.” Hell, we leftists have been singing that old tune from the beginning and the song’s getting longer than an extended mix of “10,000,000 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Personally, I hold out some hope for peace in the Middle East, so if Bush keeps his nose clean on this point, I won’t give him that much grief for it. To this day, I credit his father for doing the right thing in raising taxes when it had to be done. But it’s my opinion that the man who made Texas the leader in executions, poisoned his own constituents for the sake of big oil and chemical interests and continues to bomb Afghan citizens without ever bringing Osama bin Laden to justice isn’t even remotely interested in the principles of human rights.
What he is thinking about is 2004, and no matter which side you’re on, if you’ve got a principled bone in your body, you should be too. Research your candidates. Look at their records. Start acting like a damn citizen in the greatest democracy the world has ever seen: these United States of America. I could use some help too, so don’t hesitate to call me at 214-768-5314 or e-mail me at [email protected] with questions or comments. Don’t forget your pruning shears when Bush goes up for re-election.
