I recall how Reagan did the same thing. They could accomplish any single objective they wanted, but they could not walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. Whenever things got complex, they had problems.
The PR work is, however, outstanding.
Clinton set out to persuade, suggesting two sides to the issue. The Repugs never do that. The come on as if there are two sides, but they are good and evil.
On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 08:50:22AM -0800, Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
> ``...with Rice, Powell, Cheney, it looks like this is a pretty
> high-powered presidency intellectually and politically...'' Carrol
>
> -----------
>
> Ahnnnnht! Big buzzer on that one. Rice is a self-preening stink tank
> hackette who would still be doing power point presentations on the
> Soviet threat if she wasn't sort of black. She has all the
> intellectual cache of a suburban brat who got lucky with her
> politically connected graduate faculty adviser.
>
> (That was guessing. I just read a quick bio. Her influence was
> Madeleine Albright's father, Josef Korbel who taught pol sci at Univ
> of Denver... She might have been born and raised in Birmingham, but I
> will bet it was the up scale end of the black community where ever
> that was.)
>
> Powell is one of those gray organization men the post-WWII Pentagon
> produced to manage the cold war and optimize the limited options in
> Vietnam. That all sure worked out well.
>
> And Cheney? Cheney is just a local chamber of commerce sleaze, full
> of gosh and golly, where's the deal, and can I interest you in our
> extended warranty...
>
> Sure they look good compared to blunt-instrument Ashcroft or that
> rodney dangerfield of energy and environment, Spencer Abraham.
>
> But good god Carrol where are your standards?
>
> And no, idiot boy's meandering day log, is not a policy.
>
> More seriously, I disagree that ``...seeing it (bush's activities) as
> a policy, the current policy of the u.s. capitalist class, and seeing
> it as being carried out competently and powerfully, defines more
> accurately our task....''
>
> Bush and company are utterly incompetent and us capital along with its
> far flung empire are floundering in large part because of that
> incompetence. The longer these hacks stay in power, the deeper and
> more profoundly destabilized the us capitalist class will become. The
> reason is intimately related to their complete lack of understanding
> what government is supposed to do. US capital is entirely dependent on
> government for its empowerment, its foundational definitions and
> design, its systems of organization, its methods, domains and channels
> of power and influence, its life blood, and the totality of almost all
> its activities. The idea that all that is some artifact of the
> mythic `free market' is just bullshit.
>
> The way I view it, government administers capital and the `economy' in
> order to administer the social mass. When government fails its
> administrative tasks, the whole upper tier of the socio-economic
> system starts to dissemble and run amok, starting with its capitalist
> elite. This percolates down and is manifested as all the economic and
> social ills that take up news space---were all socio-economic ills are
> dutifully reported as the consequence of the moral depravity of
> ordinary people.
>
> Anyway, I enjoy attacking their personalities, their bodily essences,
> their roots, their branches, their leaves, their flowers, their little
> spore children and just wish I was better at it. Speaking of children
> what are those two slut daughters Dippie and Sniffie up to lately?
>
> Chuck Grimes
>
>
>
>
>
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu