Tuesday, August 19, 2003

A Bad Day in Bush’s World Bush’s world is collapsing around him.  His whole life, he has had other people hand things to him, take care of his failures, and give him money and business opportunities.    After failing as a small time oilman, Bush got a sweetheart deal that bailed him out with a substantial payout.  He then got given a share of the Texas Rangers, and his family financial manager then persuaded Texans to build George Bush a new ball park.  Selling his donated share of the Rangers made him a multi-millionaire — all because of his family connections, pliability, and his willingness to use his public influence to win favors for his friends.   Next, Bush got elected governor of Texas.  As governor, he executed more people than any other public official in modern U.S. history, and continued to do favors for his rich friends in the insurance, oil, and other industries.   When GOP operatives were casting around for a pliable candidate who could continue their corporate style of governance, Bush was selected.   Now Bush has been president for more than 2 and ½ years, and some commentators are calling him the worst president in U.S. history.  Under his policies, the country has lost more jobs than in any period since the Great Depression. He has managed to take a budget surplus and a sound economic policy, and turn it into the greatest deficit, with the most speed, in American history.    Today, his conquest of Iraq is in total disarray, as the thinly spread U.S. forces cannot protect the infrastructure, and the guerilla fighters are proving successful at detonating huge car bombs, the latest being the destruction of the UN headquarters, and the killing of the highest ranking UN official in Iraq.   In Afghanistan, warlords fueled by opium are again controlling the countryside, and the Taliban is reconstituting, and increasing attacks on the meager government forces.  Due to Bush’s refusal to accept other country’s views or advice, all Western forces are confined to the capital, while a small U.S. team searches the Afghan countryside in vain for Al Queda and Mullah Omar.   Meanwhile, his axis of evil speech has spooked both North Korea and Iran into a crash program to develop nuclear weapons, at the same time that it has paralyzed a coordinated international response.   In the U.S., his “no child left behind” program is bankrupting school committees across the country, leaving many with the choice of complying with these new unfunded mandates or shutting down services and laying off teachers.   Finally, his wanton approach to government regulation, investment, and oversight has meant that the infrastructure of the U.S. has continued to deteriorate, as exemplified by the blackout on the East coast based on the failure of 50 year old transmission lines.  It turns out that the utilities most likely responsible for the blackout are those who heavily support republicans, who in turn legislate new profits for the friends, ala Enron and the California energy crisis.   All this is not what Bush imagined when he was recruited for the presidency.  So why is Bush’s world upside down?   The reason is that never before in his life did he have to achieve anything on his own, or ever take responsibility for his own actions.  As a result, he missed the experiences that teach most people the difference between empty slogans and fantasies and reality.  We have a President who has basically spent his life in a Potemkin village, and is now overwhelmed when real world experience confounds expectations.   He is in over his head, with no sugar daddy to pull him out.  It’s up to us, the ordinary Americans, to clean up this mess and with it the wing nuts who rant hateful diatribes about government and no regulation, lie, distort facts, as if markets alone can create new societies.   We are going back to the time after the Oklahoma City bombing when all of a sudden all the right wing anti-government militias went silent, as the logical extension of their ranting and raving was carried out.  Back then, anyone who supported a militia was considered a near criminal.  Will the same come to be said for the republican diehards who support Bush?   MWO also covers Bush's failures nicely today.. 10:34:33 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2003 Toby Sackton. Last update: 9/27/2003; 4:51:44 PM.