Issue #37
February 28, 2005
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Commentary It’s now Mr. Bush’s war, and Mr. Bush’s economy. Having regained control of Congress, and having had his Iraq resolution passed by the Senate, and with the authorization for the Department of Homeland Security in his pocket, Mr. Bush has no further excuses to offer if he can't fulfill his promises to the American people.
He is already behind on his commitments. He promised us prosperity floated on a tide of tax relief; unless you are wealthy there isn't much prosperity, and not even much tax relief. He promised us the heads of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar; we have captured neither of them. He promised us a clean honest government, free of Bill Clinton's moral peccaillos. We got a government so rife with economic corruption and favoritism that they avoid the light of day with an intensity previously reserved for vampires.
Now is he promising us security by taking out Iraq, while generating enormous amounts of anti-American feeling among allies and foes alike. The conversion of Afghanistan into a democratic state has failed. The national government is national in name only, the country having relapsed into warlordism, and funds for health care and reconstruction of the ruined infrastructure have accomplished nothing but the purchase of armaments in an already over-armed country. This does not bode well for success in Iraq, where the problem of what comes after Saddam Hussein is thornier and more important than the problem of how to get rid of him.
From the standpoint of Bush Administration staffing, The skills of our first MBA President in picking key personnel have been utterly lacking. The only truly competent member of the Administration has been Colin Powell, who has been spinning gold out of straw since he took office. The corporate executives filling most of the other key positions have turned out to be as incompetent and delusory in the performance of their goverment duties as hindsight has proven them to be in their past incarnations as corporate moguls.
Mr. Bush has turned out to be even more clueless than we feared when he took office. His habit of saying the popular thing while doing the things that his cronies want and the public doesn’t, coupled with his narrow view of history and America’s place in it, provide little hope for wise leadership in a time of peril. And the Democrats are providing no alternative.
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