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September, 2004
A Failed Presidency
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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.
Published in The Nation, Sept. 13, 2004 | Editorial
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