JJV left a few cherries on the tree when he wrote this. Rapid-fire Union Debate Club polemics are not my forte, but off the top of my head I would counter the image of GWB marching from triumph to triumph with, in no particular order:
Gigantic tax giveaways to the rich; the politicization or intended politicization of the entire federal government; the abandonment of the Democratic-voting areas of the Gulf Coast struck by Katrina (you think they wouldn't have rebuilt Miami like that - damn, never could snap my fingers); the military/moral/financial/political/diplomatic/whatever-else-I-left-out disaster that is Iraq (whose body count, by the way, is NOT static); the trashing of civil liberties and the Constitutional separation of powers; the consistent display of and aggressive pride in governing through fear, ignorance and dogma. That will do for now.
Also, the president I was thinking of was Warren Harding, although Buchanan is a close second.
1 comment:
Low tax rates are a feature not a bug of good economic stewardship. And of course letting people (however well-off) keep their own money is not a "give away" as we English speakers understand it. We elect Presidents to run agencies. I am Jacksonian as far as who should run government is concerned. The CIA was not "politicized" enough. If it offends you that Republican Presidents seek Republicans to govern the agencies in a manner congenial to Republicans tough. That's what Democrats or anybody in power does.
Mississipi and Alabama are not Democrat states and somehow they do not feel abandoned, but then again they did not have Democratic governors and mayors.
No civil liberties have been trashed. If they had been we'd know the names of poor sods crushed under the knout of Bush. Disagreeing with Larry Tribe's version of the Constituion does not constitute "trashing." "Fear, ignorance and dogma" would be a good name for a rock band.
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