[Mb-civic] A Failed Presidency The Nation | Editorial

[Michael Butler]

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    A Failed Presidency
    The Nation | Editorial

     Monday 13 September 2004 Issue

     As Republicans gather in New York City, the Bush campaign will undergo
a drastic makeover, camouflaging gutter tactics with a veneer of moderation
calculated to help the President win another four-year term. But the hard
truth of this campaign is that George W. Bush, while attempting to impose an
extremist right-wing agenda on this country and the world, has compiled a
record of staggering failure.

     The debacle in Iraq has already claimed close to 1,000 American and
10,000 Iraqi lives. Far from making America safer or the Middle East more
democratic, it has turned out to be what this magazine warned it would be: a
reckless abuse of power that has damaged US security, destabilized the
region and undercut America's position in the world. The high cost of the
war is evident not just in the number of deaths but also in burgeoning
federal budget deficits (the war has cost more than $200 billion) and in the
record gasoline prices Americans now pay. It is also evident in the reported
swelling of the ranks of Al Qaeda-inspired groups and in the rising hatred
of America reflected in public opinion polls which show that even among
traditional allies like Jordan and Egypt, as much as 95 percent of the
population view the United States with disfavor. Meanwhile, the war has
diverted resources from urgent international problems ranging from the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the widening AIDS pandemic.

     And there's no end in sight. The US occupation grinds on with both Bush
and his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, ignoring the only intelligent
alternative: a phased US withdrawal. Iraqi opposition to the occupation
remains fierce-expressed even by Iraqi soccer players at the Olympics-while
the country's appointed leaders display authoritarian tendencies that
undermine the democracy Bush and his aides claim is being built.

     If the war were Bush's only failure, it would be enough to require his
departure. But it is not. By withdrawing the United States from
international treaties and conventions, mishandling crises in the Middle
East and North Korea and diverting resources from the pursuit of al Qaeda,
Bush has left America more isolated and less secure. And the detention camps
made infamous by the crimes of Abu Ghraib have stripped America of the pride
we once had in our country and the role it played, however imperfectly, as a
champion of human rights, economic opportunity and the rule of law.

     At home, Bush's failures are equally manifest. He has amassed the worst
jobs record of any President since the Great Depression, the worst budget
deficits ever and the most precipitous decline in America's fiscal
position-from $5 trillion in projected surplus to $4 trillion in projected
deficit. Bush's Administration responds to a corporate crime wave with calls
for more regulation, embraces the flight of jobs abroad as good for the
economy, and exacerbates, with top-end tax cuts, the greatest inequality
since the Gilded Age.

     This Administration has also undermined the rights and policies that
social movements labored for a century to achieve. Bush has nominated to the
federal bench ideologues with a history of antiunion and antichoice
decisions. He signed into law the blatantly unconstitutional "partial-birth"
abortion ban, and then watched as his Attorney General sought access to
women's private medical records to defend the ban in court. He imposed the
policy known as the global gag rule, which forbids foreign groups receiving
US aid from even mentioning abortion, and vastly expanded a misinformation
campaign about the dangers of sex that has been shown to encourage risky
behavior among young people. And to secure his place forever in the hearts
of cultural conservatives, he endorsed the gay-baiting federal marriage
amendment, framing it as a response to the activism of liberal judges rather
than what it was: an attempt to deny civil rights to millions of Americans
and to enshrine that discrimination in the Constitution. Civil liberties,
too, have suffered, as the "war on terror" has been used to justify acts
ranging from detention without trial to snooping into citizens' library
records.

     The list of failures goes on. The Bush years have seen a steady
increase in the number of Americans without healthcare while drug company
profits have soared. Bush's prescription drug bill prohibits Medicare from
negotiating a better price for seniors and bars importing cheaper drugs-with
the result, according to Consumer's Union, that most older Americans will
end up paying more for drugs.

     Bush's vaunted No Child Left Behind education law actually leaves most
children behind. Not only has the law earned the ire of educators; Bush's
failure to provide promised funding for his "reforms" has prompted rebuke
even from Republican state legislatures from Utah to Virginia. Bush also
broke his promise to increase the amount of money eligible students could
receive in college scholarship grants, even as soaring tuition puts college
out of the reach of ever more families. His post-election budget calls for
yet more cuts to education funding.

     The Bush Administration has also failed to protect the environment,
giving us new laws written by polluters, oil lobbyists and Enron executives.
And it has politicized and distorted basic scientific and medical research.

     But this President does not admit error. When asked at a press
conference whether he had ever made a mistake in office, he couldn't think
of one.

     If Bush wins in November, given this record of misfeasance, American
democracy is in much greater trouble than even the most alienated citizens
imagine. A President so out of step with the needs of the American people
can only rule by sowing division and fear. Americans have one recourse: to
ignore the costume ball in New York City and fire the worst President in
modern history on November 2.

  

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