Wrong-Way-Bush Down One-Way Streets

Back now from an extended stay in Europe, I’ve been catching up with the latest follies from Washington. I’m also reading polls showing that the Bush administration’s incompetence and greed is finally becoming obvious to the majority of Americans, hitherto distracted by either their struggle for survival (poor and lower middle class) or the abundance of toys and gadgets available to them (the upper middles and wealthy).

What the polls are showing, besides GWB’s worst job approval numbers, is a solid two-thirds of the nation believing "the country is heading in the wrong direction." About a year too late for this realization, but, again, we’re a highly distracted people, and this White House crew is eminently skilled at manipulation techniques.

The mass media, long a semi-obsequious pawn to the White House, seemed to find its voice of outrage in the aftermath of Katrina, and is now actually doing stories about cronyism and corruption – things they should have been spotlighting all along. In addition to the Katrina/FEMA fallout, three of the most powerful Republicans – Bill Frist, Tom Delay and Karl Rove, are in some measure of hot water, and the mainstream media, if nothing else, knows how to respond to blood in that water.

The traditional arguments between Democrats, Republicans, and independents, between liberals, conservatives and moderates, have been centered on ideological questions. Is the decision-making and courses of action of an administration too liberal or conservative, or too co-opted by middle-of-the-road compromises? Is the president’s policy on this or that veering to the right or left when confronted with the various forks in the road?

But what’s become different under the Bushies (and why there is a burgeoning revolt from independents and some Republicans) is that it’s not the wrong fork that they’ve been taking but, in instance after instance, an entirely wrong direction, often diametrically opposed to what objective observers see as best for the nation.

An incomplete list would include the following important policy mistakes:

Informed by the outgoing Clinton administration that their number one foreign policy problem was Islamic terrorism, they ignored this completely, not holding their first top-level meeting on the subject until early September of 2001.

Confronted with a fiscal situation where the country faced large deficits, an expensive war and a huge entitlements shortfall during the next 20 years, the administration proposed and passed four tax cuts, many corporate tax breaks and bloated giveaways like the seniors' drug bill and the energy bill.

Regarding Social Security's coming insolvency crisis, the president made it his mission to enact a private accounts system which would make the solvency situation worse.

At a time when global warming is increasingly evident yet still manageable, the fossil fuel boys of the Bush administration have belittled the studies that most of the world's scientists recognize as credible, made it easier for polluters to befoul the air and water, scoffed at conservation proposals and gave large tax breaks to people who bought Hummers, meanwhile doing nothing to curb dangerous emissions.

Opposed by most of the world, they invaded Iraq under false pretenses and horribly mishandled every aspect of the war effort, then granted bloated no-bid contracts to Halliburton and other cozy-crony companies.

Given the responsibility, the public trust, of putting competent people in positions of authority, the Bushies have instead blatantly installed many incompetent cronies into important positions of power.

During these wrong-way excursions down various one-way streets and avenues, people on the sidewalks and other cars have been yelling and honking at them to turn back, but their arrogant response has always been to instead speed up and then accuse those who made objections of being the wrong-headed ones -- the "liberal elite" or "biased academics," or "activist judges" or "America-hating foreigners."

The result of all this massively bad policy, I predict, is that the Democrats will regain the House, Senate and presidency by 2008. One can only hope that we will then see a return to competent governance, dictated more by the public good than private greed.