The Rub
These past few months I’ve heard and read a lot of opinions about the supposed demise of President Bush and his administration. Some suggest that the White House is demoralized, that Mr. Bush has lost his mojo, that his administration is running scared, and the wheels have finally come off the neocon wagon. Personally, I’m not buying any of it.
Granted, when polls now show that 68 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country and only 33 percent of Americans believe Mr. Bush is honest and ethical, it becomes quite clear that the dissatisfaction goes beyond just liberals and Democrats.
Still, when such assumptions are made about how demoralized the White House is or how concerned they must be about public perception, one is making a very large assumption that Mr. Bush and those of his administration actually care. And that’s the rub; they don’t.
During the summer when Cindy Sheehan camped outside of Mr. Bush’s home in Crawford, it would have been compassionate if Mr. Bush had met with this mother of a fallen American solider. Instead, Mr. Bush ignored her, and Karl Rove called her a clown.
As the aftermath of hurricane Katrina unfolded, Mr. Bush remained on vacation, Dick Cheney was reportedly house-shopping back east, and Condoleeza Rice was sighted buying shoes and taking in a Broadway show. When Mr. Bush finally got around to doing something about rebuilding New Orleans, his first action was to eliminate the minimum wage and to lower environmental protections.
After witness testimony showed that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had leaked the identity of a CIA operative, Libby was indicted for obstruction, perjury and two counts of lying. Libby resigned his post as assistant to the President and his position as chief of staff to the Vice President. Despite his involvement in leaking secret information, Karl Rove remains at his position as chief of staff to the President and continues to hold his security clearance. There is the suggestion that since Rove wasn’t indicted, he is therefore exonerated. It’s kind of like the O.J. Simpson theory of innocence.
Recently, as Mr. Bush looked into the camera and proclaimed, ‘We do not torture,’ Mr. Cheney was busy trying to convince senators why we should embrace torture. At the same time it’s reported through yet another leak that there are a string of secret U.S. prisons in Eastern Europe where suspects are held and tortured indefinitely.
There are many other examples to prove the same point. But the bottom line is that the administration doesn’t get demoralized, Mr. Bush never had any mojo to lose, they don’t run scared, and the wheels of the neocon wagon continue to spin. Mr. Bush and this administration have never seen right and wrong as most of us do, and they don’t measure success and failure in the same way as most Americans do. In their eyes, they are doing a heck of a job.
November 13th, 2005 at 9:39 am
Another killer post. And another fundamental observation about the neocons is that they live in a bubble and seldom does anything (that veers from the party line) penetrate it, keeping them unaware or clueless about much of society. And clearly any type of criticism.
November 17th, 2005 at 12:25 pm
Bush is a piece of crap and so is the whole administraion. Our government is corrupt, I mean I dont even think you can have a governtment that is not corrupt. Corruption is the backbone of all Governments and politics. It’s just that there is no answer, no matter how much we bitch and gripe about it it seems like the wheels just keep on turning and always will. How can we change it? When Bush’s term is over the problem won’t even be solved. Bush and his whole damn administration are creating more chaos for us and future generations.