Sure, the curtain has been ripped down and the Great and Mighty Resolute Leader of Oz has been revealed as a vacillating little weasel. Sure, tens of thousands of people are dead because of his breathtaking, all-encompassing incompetence. So what else is new? Couldn’t we have run that headline any day in the last two years?
From the day Bush entered office; many of us were stunned by what we saw as a combination of obvious lies and blinding lack of common sense. Now that everyone can see it, the temptation is to deliver a few swift kicks to tender parts of his anatomy. Maybe more than a few. I can understand how you might want to smack him around a little. Maybe slap him until he stops that freakish, idiotic little half-chuckle at the end of every single sentence. Okay, I can understand the temptation to strip him naked, soak him five days in a mix of petrochemicals and raw sewage, and leave him floating along Canal Street with a Purina Rat Chow sign strung around his neck.
But don’t give into temptation. Forget him.
The Dead Man
Why forget Bush? Because Bush is history, figuratively and literally. He’s yesterday’s enemy.
Not only can the man never be elected again, he’s about to go down in history as the worst president ever. James Buchanan aficionados, who’ve squirmed over little things like how their man sat on his thumb while the nation tumbled toward Civil War, can finally breathe a sign of relief. Compared to Bush, Buchanan comes up smelling like a rose.
Don’t worry about Bush, because there’s not enough left to worry about. When you’ve got reliable Republican lap dogs like Joe Scarborough chewing his legs off. When you’ve got Newt Gingrich attacking him, well… He’s done. I would say “stick a fork in him” but this is one roast that no one wants to share. Just slide him straight into the garbage, thanks.
Oh sure, for recreational purposes, it might be fun to remind people that they should never be fooled again by someone who has a smirk for all occasions. That maybe, just maybe, they shouldn’t vote for leader of the free world based on the “who would I rather gnaw on pickled pig’s feet and slurp Lone Star with” factor.
For purely fun reasons — and for the reason that, like the main character of yet another Dawn of the Dead remake, he will continue to lurch from his political grave over the next few years, making nonsense noises and biting at the flesh of the nation – kicking Bush is not necessarily a bad thing. If you want to toss a few anchors onto his sinking boat, there’s a plentiful supply. Choose from nice, shiny new models like Bush playing air guitar while New Orleans sinks. Or Bush shooting a round of 18 while the Gulf Coast crumbles. Or Bush’s fake levee farce. Or his showboating while the rescue choppers set grounded at a time when 8-10 people an hour were dying (and that according to Bill Frist). Bush did so many stupid things this week alone, that it’s hard to know where to start.
The temptation to put a Big Bertha Titanium Special Edition next to his skull and say “now watch this drive, Mr. President” is very strong.
Aww, heck, go ahead. But don’t get distracted. Bush is not important.
The Great Uniter
After September 11th, the nation was united as it has not been since World War II. Seen that sentence before? Thing is, it’s true. For a good stretch there, Americans had their sleeves up, ready to engage in shared sacrifice. Bush squandered the political unity of that moment, a moment in which he might have done anything, with the foolishness of Iraq. The only sacrifice asked of most of us, was slaughtering our common sense at the altar of trickled on economics.
Now we have another of those extremely rare moments of perfect national clarity. Only this time the theme of the day is they screwed up big time. Four years in which they’ve done nothing but talk about being prepared for an emergency. Four years in which they’ve spent huge amounts of money, reshaped the government, eroded rights, suspended laws, broken treaties, and expended blood like it was free, and what do we have to show for it? Rats eating old women in the street, that’s what we have.
When it comes to being prepared as a nation, we are worse off now than we were before September 11th, and everyone, everyone, can see it.
In this new moment, in which we are united by a collective disgust for the current state, comes another of those opportunities to change things. If we seize it, this moment can really be (to steal one of the most overused phrases of the last four years) a turning point. Not only can we recover from the disasters of this week, but also the disasters that have been coming our way since 1994.
The Party of Competence
Reread those last four words again. Again. Okay, that’s what we’re selling in 2006. That’s the ticket in 2008. That’s the Democratic theme song, the party pledge, the one permanent litmus test. We will be competent.
We will be sensible, not ideologues. We will work hard, and not complain about “hard work”. We will put the people first, lobbyists last, and put real thought into everything we do. We will recognize that we are in government to do the people’s work, and we will do it well.
Those sentences are not only a good idea to get Democrats elected, they’re a good idea. Period.
Seven Steps to 2006Uniter
- We will end the war. I’m not talking about the war in Iraq. I’m talking about the biggest, best-funded war that the Republicans have been waging for more than a decade: the war on reason. We will be the party that supports facts, not fantasy. We will deal with the truth as we find it, not as we want it to be. We will not only call for education, but respect the fruits of education. We will not attack those who are learned as elite, we will celebrate them, turn to them, use them to solve our nation’s problems. We will put scientists into roles where they can advance science and protect the environment and the nation’s future.
- We will be the pro-education party. By that, we don’t mean the “pro-whatever makes the NEA happy” party, and neither will we be the “screw the NEA at every opportunity party.” Sometimes the teaching unions have great ideas, sometimes they’re defenders of the status quo, even where that status quo is inimical to actually cramming facts into the heads of kids. That’s okay. Their job is to support their union members. The government’s job is to educate the public. We should recognize that on some occasions those two things will be at odds. As with everything else, we will move forward with those ideas we know to work: small class sizes, good teacher to student ratios, sound administrative practices. When we see that some other nation is beating us in some area of education, we will not gnash our teeth. Instead, we will look at how they beat us. And then we’ll do it better.
- We will be the party of real economics. We will not forget the past and reinvent economics on every third Tuesday. We will not pretend that there once existed some perfect free market utopia, or pretend that government control would solve everything. We will not try to foist theories that have failed again and again, just because they line the pockets of those willing to toss some change our way. We will protect the interests of American corporations, but we will not put the interests of any corporation, even the largest, above the rights of a single American citizen.
- We will celebrate religion as a vital part of the social fabric of this nation. We will zealously defend the barriers that protect both state, and church, from the damage that occurs when to two become intertwined. We will rejoice in the family, the individual, and the community — and we will recognize that all three have both rights and responsibilities.
- We will put in place an energy policy that looks to the future, not the past, and which actually helps to free our nation from the chains of blood and oil that keep us from acting with justice. We will make steps both reasonable and radical to change the way energy is made and used in America, because no other issue is so connected to everything else we do.
- We will not treat the world like a giant ant farm on which we are free to conduct experiments like sadistic five year olds with magnifying lenses. We’ll conduct foreign policy to the best interest of the nation by acting the way we’ve always pretended we act: with honor, dignity, consistency, and respect for human rights.
- We will grateful for the trust of the people, and never forget that we have to earn that trust anew every single day.
One last thing: We will be the party that puts someone with disaster experience in charge of federal disaster planning, instead of giving the office to some discredited horse lawyer whose sole qualification was being a loyal toady. Yeah.
How about it folks? Let’s bring back the idea that knowledge is a good thing, not something to be scorned. Let’s bring back the idea that cracking a book that doesn’t feature a political jab on the front is worthwhile.
Let’s forget about Bush, and go make some history of our own.
