http://www.progressive.org/nov03/ivin1103.html
The Progressive magazine
November 2003 Issue
Small Favors
Molly Ivins
Call Me a Bush-Hater
Among the more amusing cluckings from the right lately is their
appalled discovery that quite a few Americans actually think
George W. Bush is a terrible President.
Robert Novak is quoted as saying in all his forty-four years of
covering politics, he has never seen anything like the detestation of
Bush. Charles Krauthammer managed to write an entire essay on the
topic of "Bush-haters" in Time magazine as though he had never before
come across a similiar phenomenon.
Oh, I stretch memory way back, so far back, all the way back to--our
last President. Almost lost in the mists of time though it is, I not
only remember eight years of relentless attacks from Clinton-haters, I
also notice they haven't let up yet. Clinton-haters accused the man of
murder, rape, drug-running, sexual harassment, financial chicanery,
and official misconduct. And they accuse his wife of even worse. For
eight long years, this country was a zoo of Clinton-haters. Any idiot
with a big mouth and a conspiracy theory could get a hearing on radio
talk shows and "Christian" broadcasts and nutty Internet sites. People
with transparent motives, people paid by tabloid magazines, people
with known mental problems, ancient Clinton enemies with notoriously
racist pasts--all were given hearings, credence, and air time. Sliming
Clinton was a sure road to fame and fortune on the right, and many an
ambitious young rightwing hit man like David Brock, who has since made
full confession, took that golden opportunity.
And these folks didn't stop with verbal and printed attacks. From the
day Clinton was elected to office, he was the subject of the politics
of personal destruction. They went after him with a multimillion
dollar smear campaign funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, the rightwing
billionaire. They went after him with lawsuits funded by rightwing
legal foundations (Paula Jones), they got special counsels appointed
to investigate every nitpicking nothing that ever happened (Filegate,
Travelgate), and they never let go of that hardy perennial Whitewater.
After all this time and all those millions of dollars wasted, no one
has ever proved that the Clintons did a single thing wrong. Bill
Clinton lied about a pathetic, squalid affair that was none of anyone
else's business anyway, and for that they impeached the man and
dragged this country through more than a year of the most tawdry,
ridiculous, unnecessary pain. The day President Clinton tried to take
out Osama bin Laden with a missile strike, every rightwinger in
America said it was a case of "wag the dog." He was supposedly trying
to divert our attention from the much more breathtakingly important
and serious matter of Monica Lewinsky, and who did he think he was to
make us focus on some piffle like bin Laden?
"The puzzle is where this depth of feeling comes from," mused the
ineffable Mr. Krauthammer. Gosh, what a puzzle that is. How could
anyone not be just crazy about George W. Bush? "Whence the anger?"
asks Krauthammer. "It begins of course with the 'stolen' election of
2000 and the perception of Bush's illegitimacy." I'd say so myself,
yes, I would. I was in Florida during that chilling post-election
fight, and am fully persuaded to this good day that Al Gore actually
won Florida, not to mention getting 550,000 more votes than Bush
overall. But I also remember thinking, as the scene became eerier and
eerier, "Jeez, maybe we should just let them have this one, because
Republican wing-nuts are so crazy, their bitterness would poison
Gore's whole Presidency." The night Gore conceded the race in one of
the most graceful and honorable speeches I have ever heard, I was in a
ballroom full of Republican Party flacks who booed and jeered through
every word of it.
One thing I acknowledge about the right is that they're much better
haters than liberals are. Your basic liberal--milk of human kindness
flowing through every vein, and heart bleeding over everyone from the
milk-shy Hottentot to the glandular obese--is pretty much a strikeout
on the hatred front. Maybe further out on the left you can hit some
good righteous anger, but liberals, and I am one, are generally real
wusses. Guys like Rush Limbaugh figured that out a long time
ago--attack a liberal and the first thing he says is, "You may have a
point there."
To tell the truth, I'm kind of proud of us for holding the grudge this
long. Normally, we'd remind ourselves that we have to be good sports,
it's for the good of the country, we must unite behind the only
President we've got, as Lyndon used to remind us. If there are still
some of us out here sulking, "Yeah, but they stole that election,"
well, good. I don't think we should forget that.
But, onward. So George Dubya becomes President, having run as a
"compassionate conservative," and what do we get? Hell's own
conservative and dick for compassion.
His entire first eight months was tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for
the rich, tax cuts for the rich, and he lied and said the tax cuts
would help average Americans. Again and again, the "average" tax cut
would be $1,000. That means you get $100, and the millionaire gets
$92,000, and that's how they "averaged" it out. Then came 9/11, and we
all rallied. Ready to give blood, get out of our cars and ride
bicycles, whatever. Shop, said the President. And more tax cuts for
the rich.
By now, we're starting to notice Bush's bait-and-switch. Make a deal
with Ted Kennedy to improve education and then fail to put money into
it. Promise $15 billion in new money to combat AIDS in Africa (wow!)
but it turns out to be a cheap con, almost no new money. Bush comes to
praise a job training effort, then cuts the money. Bush says
AmeriCorps is great, then cuts the money. Gee, what could we possibly
have against this guy? We go along with the war in Afghanistan, and we
still don't have bin Laden.
Then suddenly, in the greatest bait-and-switch of all time, Osama bin
doesn't matter at all, and we have to go after Saddam Hussein, who had
nothing to do with 9/11. But he does have horrible weapons of mass
destruction, and our President "without doubt," without question,
knows all about them, even unto the amounts--tons of sarin, pounds of
anthrax. So we take out Saddam Hussein, and there are no weapons of
mass destruction. Furthermore, the Iraqis are not overjoyed to see us.
By now, quite a few people who aren't even liberal are starting to
say, "Wha the hey?" We got no Osama, we got no Saddam, we got no
weapons of mass destruction, the road map to peace in the Middle East
is blown to hell, we're stuck in this country for $87 billion just for
one year and no one knows how long we'll be there. And still poor Mr.
Krauthammer is hard-put to conceive how anyone could conclude that
George W. Bush is a poor excuse for a President.
Chuck, honey, it ain't just the 2.6 million jobs we've lost: People
are losing their pensions, their health insurance, the cost of health
insurance is doubling, tripling in price, the Administration wants to
cut off their overtime, and Bush was so too little, too late with
extending unemployment compensation that one million Americans were
left high and dry. And you wonder why we think he's a lousy President?
Sure, all that is just what's happening in people's lives, but what we
need is the Big Picture. Well, the Big Picture is that after September
11, we had the sympathy of every nation on Earth. They all signed up,
all our old allies volunteered, everybody was with us, and Bush just
booted all of that away. Sneering, jeering, bad manners, hideous
diplomacy, threats, demands, arrogance, bluster.
"In Afghanistan, Bush rode a popular tide; Iraq, however, was a
singular act of Presidential will," says Krauthammer.
You bet your ass it was. We attacked a country that had done nothing
to us, had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and turns out not to have
weapons of mass destruction.
It is not necessary to hate George W. Bush to think he's a bad
President. Grownups can do that, you know. You can decide someone's
policies are a miserable failure without lying awake at night consumed
with hatred.
Poor Bush is in way over his head, and the country is in bad shape
because of his stupid economic policies.
If that makes me a Bush-hater, then sign me up.
_________________________________________________________________
Molly Ivins, a syndicated columnist out of Austin, Texas, writes in
this space every month. She is the co-author of "Bushwhacked: Life in
George W. Bush's America."