3/15/04
I'd like to share with you a tidbit of my "best-case scenario" prediction made almost a year ago today on this blog, right when the Iraq war had started, and Bush's approval rating was at 79%. It goes like this:
...we do a thorough sweep of Iraq and come up with absolutely no weapons of mass destruction; Bush and his team are humiliated on the world stage. Americans begin to think he's a liar. To distract us from this, he tries to enact some draconian conservative agenda (reversing Roe vs. Wade, etc.) to shore up his religious base, but miscalculates dreadfully. Then, one of any roiling scandals (Cheney's Halliburton, Perle's defense contractors, etc.) blows open, and a yet-to-be-named Democrat smokes him in a debate so thoroughly that even hard-core Republicans jump ship. Bush gets shellacked in 2004 and we all wake up from a terrible dream.
Now, I've made occasionally off-base predictions, but this one stands out as a pretty good one, especially considering how despondent we were (and by "we," I mean "sensitive, progressive Americans who abhor killing.") Indeed, we found no WMDs, and Bush was humiliated on the world stage, even if he doesn't know it yet. I'd like to think that the recent Spanish elections - basically a giant, country-wide FUCK YOU to Bush - might give him a hint, but I doubt he'll take it.
As for the "draconian conservative agenda," it wasn't abortion (yet), it was an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning gay marriage, and I think this will indeed bear out to be a dreadful miscalculation, regardless of polls. Americans may not be won over en masse to the idea of gay marriage, but they don't see this as a viable campaign issue, and it makes Bush look like a fucking wacko.
And the "roiling scandals"? As the Jane's Addiction album title says, "nothing's shocking," and the Repubs may well be scandal-proof. But there is enough bullshit going on with Halliburton and an as-yet-to-be-broken story to give conservatives nightmares come late summer.
The debates? John Kerry has asked Bush for monthly tete-a-tetes, and if W knows what's good for him, he'll fake a slipped disk like Duke University's Koach K did. Kerry will eat him alive, because it won't be enough for Bush to "survive deeply low expectations" (which is how he got past Al Gore in their debates).
I have not let myself get excited about the upcoming presidential election because I still feel like Americans are a profoundly stupid bunch of people when they get together, and I have zero faith in them doing the right thing. But one piece of information has given me a glimmer of hope, as weird as it sounds: the Martha Stewart verdict.
That jury wasn't convicting Martha, they were lashing out at institutions that LIE. The Era of Lying began with Clinton, but people were willing to put up with it because they were making money. It's hard to remember how much antipathy there was toward Clinton by 2000, even from liberals (mostly because we're so desperate for someone like him now), but the lying extended to the smearing of Al Gore, who was painted as an "exaggerator" by Bush and the right-leaning media (which, in itself, was a lie).
The lying continued with Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Adelphia and everyone else. The lying reached a fever pitch with Bush's mention of Niger and uranium. By the end of 2003, pundits were calling it The Year of the Lie.
Now, lying is not something that can be sustained long-term. Pretty soon, people need something to hang their hat on, they need to know something is true. This Martha Stewart verdict was a way to say that people have fucking had enough of lying.
This bodes well for the Democrats, as long as they can continue to work Bush's "credibility gap," which is the nicest way of saying "he's a goddamn liar" I've ever heard. Kerry, unfortunately, has the reputation of being a flip-flopper, but a lack of conviction is way better than being a liar.
Do Americans think Bush is a liar? Sadly, not yet. They think he is perhaps "poorly handled," or "gets bad information from his team" or even that he's too simple a man to contemplate lying. When the American people really find out what this man is capable of, the mask will drop and shatter, and they will see him for what he is. If the Democrats start working on this, we will all wake up from the nightmare, like I promised a year ago.
Posted by irw at March 15, 2004 11:40 PMa roadside sign in Missouri:
No one died because Clinton Died
correction: no one died because clinton lied
You said "Americans are a profoundly stupid bunch of people when they get together".
Sounds like Garrity's Law of Inverse Congregational Intelligence:
"The intellect of individuals in a group decreases exponentially as the number of individuals in the group increases."
http://actsofvolition.com/archives/2002/december/garrityslawof
Now is the time for leadership and we will see once again that we do not have a leader in Washington. Europe needs us right now, but they don't trust our judgement. We should have Powell in every capital in Europe right now asking them how we can help them with this now global problem. What are the odds of that happening?
So Ian.. as to your clairvoyance... what will i be eating for dinner on Friday night? I want to start getting hungry now!!! k
Among the "roiling scandals," I'm still hoping for the people to accept that Bush went AWOL from the National Guard.
Among the potential "roiling scandals," I'm still hoping for the people to accept that Bush went AWOL from the National Guard.
Bush lie # 341.7: Bush lowered tax for Americans.
True, marginal rates are lower and that makes great headlines BUUUT; Due to a thang called Alternative Minimum Tax aka (AMT) the end result is a wash for most tax payers.
What they gained by having their tax rate lowered is negated when they hit AMT.AMT is a decades old tax created to make sure the top 1%, the truly RICH, paid at least some tax. (Back in the 70’s, due to some elephant sized loop holes, some multi millionaires were not paying taxes at all). So in its original incarnation AMT made good sense.
The problem is that income threshold has never been adjusted for inflation and now 40% of US citizen are now subject to AMT. Certainly not its original intent.
Therefore, even though our tax rate is lower, most of us are paying the same amount in taxes.
Block! Finally showing the common sense that made him a hit with the ladies at Townhouse Apts.!
Welcome back to the light, my brother.
Why do I feel you would have cited a particular text in reference for this lying theme were you not employed in your current project?
Yes, I think Bush has lied about the war, but not in the way that you think, and not for the reasons that you think. I disagree that there has been war profiteering on the part of Cheney or Bush. Perle, maybe, but I don't think very highly of him at all.
Kerry is not a good bet. He was pushed through by the Democrats because the Democrats suddenly believed that he was more 'electable' than Dean. That may be true, but barring any hugely improbable scenario, I think it will be a Bush landslide in November.
The dirt on Bush is out there. The Gore campaign already launched the October surprise - the drunk driving arrest. We have not yet begun to dig into Kerry's activities. Kerry has made a big deal of his service in Vietnam, but he have not heard so much about his activities immediately after. Nor during. If even part of what Admiral Zumwalt supposedly said is true, there will be trouble.
There is also the more relevant question of political track record. I believe I'm correct in saying that Kerry is a three-term senator. What has he accomplished during that time? He has voted for several Bush items - notable the No Child Left Behind Act and the authorization for the Iraq war. He's now saying that Bush lied to him about these things. But what kind of message does that send - "Vote for me, I'm gullible!"
I am not jumping for joy at this prospect. I disagree with Bush on the gay marriage stunt - on constitutional grounds and my opinion that gays should be allowed to marry. I disagree his position on cloning and stem cell research, his profligate spending, and his blurring of the of state/religion line.
I am not impressed that CIA director Tenet was not fired after Sept. 11. I am not impressed that Gen. Tommy Franks was not fired after the Afghan campaign. He was too timid. He made more mistakes in Iraq in '03.
I am not impressed that US troops were unprepared for the counter-insurgency mission in Iraq. That was a predicable, and, I believe, *predicted* aspect of the Iraq campaign. Bush delayed that show for a year so there would be more preparation time. Why didn't the Army take advantage of it. I am not impressed that the Army hasn't added two more mechanized infantry divisions.
As for as Spain goes, it represents a strategic defeat for everyone fighting against al Qaeda. Regardless of your feelings about the Iraq invasion, Iraq is certainly infested with al Qaeda now. (I would argue that's not a bug, it's a feature.) Spain's withdrawl of her men will represent a disengagement with al Qaeda.
Furthermore, and more disturbingly, I do not beleive that the incoming PM will fight terrorists who set up shop in Spain. The PP was projected to win until the bombing. The socialists were apparently elected when the Spanish elecorate decided that Anzar and his PP were provoking terrorists.
If there is another large bombing is Spain, will the new socialist government survive? I don't think so, so I predict that Zapatero will not go after al Qaeda on Spanish soil, whatever he says publicly.
Regarding Bush's crediblity on the war - I've been doing a fair amount of research into al Qaeda terrorism in general. What I've found is interesting and disturbing. I've come to beleive that for the past decade or so the US government has had a policy of denying or, when that's impossible, minimizing terrorist attack. When you dig very deep, you come up with some pretty weird and fantastic things.
I don't buy into the strange theories that the US gov't or the Israeli gov't were the *real* perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. But I know see how some people might think that. Close examination of the 9/11 attacks reveals odd items. It's easy to misinterpret specific events when stripped of wider context. And the US government had been hiding context throughout the 1990s.
Sorry to waste your bandwidth, Mr. W. I've been keeping a lot of this bottled up and I figured I needed a place to say it where no one knows who I am.
Waste away, Mr. Stanley. Your comments are always among the best.
Thanks. And I didn't tell you-know-who so you won't be getting ten-page letters in your email every fortnight.
Um, who might you-know-who be? Hints?
Mom. Mary Anne.
Oh wow. Now it makes sense. Maybe you can email me off-blog?