- George W. Bush is different, very different. Other presidents
have misled, deceived, even lied. When Ike was asked his worst mistake,
he candidly said, "The lie we told [about the U-2]." LBJ and
the Gulf of Tonkin were examples of both deception and self-deception.
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- The problem today is not simply that "Bush is a
liar." While only he knows whether he's intentionally saying untrue
things, it is a provable fact that he says untrue things, again and again,
on issues large and small, day in and day out. The problem is not "16
words" in last year's State of the Union but 160,000 words on stem
cells, global warming, the "death tax," the Iraq-9/11 connection
and the Saddam-al Qaeda connection, the rise of deficits, cuts to Americorps,
the air in downtown Manhattan after 9/11. On and on. It is beyond controversy
that W "has such a high regard for the truth," as Lincoln said
of a rival, "that he uses it sparingly."
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- Why this penchant for falsehoods?
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- First, George W. Bush begins any policy consideration
with three fundamental questions: What does the religious right want? What
does big business want? What do the neo-conservatives want? If he has stood
up to any of these core supporters in the past three years, examples don't
come readily to mind. Convinced by political advisor Karl Rove that the
way to a second term is to "activate the base," his policy process
is more catechismic than empiric ñ instead of facts leading to conclusions,
conclusions lead to "facts."
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- Second, he is openly uninterested in learning and reading
ñ the Bushes "aren't serious, studious readers" he has
said, also admitting that he now reads headlines, not articles. The point
is not that he's stupid, only that he knew less about policy and the world
as a presidential candidate than the average graduate student in government.
Lacking Eisenhower's worldliness or JFK's intellect, however, Bush is prone
to grab onto a politically useful intellectual framework like a life preserver
and then not let go ñ whether it's Myron Magnet's sour interpretation
of the 60s in "The Dream and the Nightmare" or Paul Wolfowitz's
Pollyannaish analysis of the likely consequences of an American invasion
of Iraq.
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- The result: the most radical, messianic and misleading
presidency of modern times. Frankly, no one else comes close. It has gotten
to the point that President Bush appears to believe that he can do almost
anything if he says the opposite: hence "no child left behind,"
"clean skies law," "healthy forests," and "love
the poor" are mantras repeated in the hope that he can bend reality
to his will. Arthur Miller calls it "the power of audacity."
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- Bush himself in the past has aptly called the first Tuesday
in November "Reality Day" because talk ends when there's a real
result. So what happens on presidential "reality days" when the
results are the opposite of his wishful assertions ñ when we find
neither WMD nor cheering crowds in Iraq, when a surplus of $5 trillion
becomes a deficit of $4 trillion, when there are so few stem cell lines
for scientific research that scientists leave for London, when the ice
caps melt due to global warming, when a Supreme Court of largely Republican
appointees rules that affirmative action is not "quotas" but
desirable ñ and when the populations of even our allies regard us
as a "bungling bully" (in the phrase of the Financial Times).
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- When Presidents Reagan and Bush 41 were shown how their
pie-in-the-sky economics were producing ruinous deficits, they enacted
tax hikes to begin to correct the economy. Not Bush 43. Hearing only applause
as he shuttles between his financial base to military bases ñ W
retreats into messianic incompetence. "We don't second guess out of
the White House," he announces, confusing stubbornness for strength;
and he tells the G-8 leaders in 2001, "Look, I know what I believe
and what I believe is right."
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- Whenever President Bush is now confronted with an unacceptable
reality, he either changes the subject ñ is steroid use really more
important than the environment? ñ or expresses confidence in his
certainty. "I'm absolutely confident that..." he'll say, as if
the issue is his determination rather than his conclusion. One is reminded
of Igor in Young Frankenstein, who when asked about the foot-high hump
on his back blithely answers, "What hump?"
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- This is not just a credibility gap but a reality gap.
An empirically challenged and uninformed leader in denial and governing
on a (right) wing and a prayer, however, is a big problem. What if Bush
were president during the missiles of October ñ would he have been
able to avoid a nuclear war? That he squandered a quarter trillion dollars
and 4,000 American casualties attacking Iraq because al Qaeda in Afghanistan
attacked us is not encouraging.
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- Just when they're needed, the usual mechanisms to bring
a president to his senses are badly malfunctioning. A Congress of the same
party now almost never holds adversarial hearings or holds him accountable,
unlike how the Republican Congress treated Clinton. And with noteworthy
exceptions, most of the media essentially gave him a pass on his eyebrow-raising
military and business histories. The early and continuing storyline was
that he was a charming guy who made up funny names for reporters and was
no pompous prevaricator like his 2000 opponent. It was strange that, until
the Niger-uranium fabrication, the media wrote far more about the spectacular
deceptions of Jayson Blair than the more consequential deceptions of George
W. Bush.
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- Of course, adding to his immunity is the understandable
impulse to rally around a president during a crisis ñ a crisis the
president regularly stokes as in his recent "State of Baghdad address"
to the Congress. Or as commentator E.J. Dionne put it, W's slogan might
as well be "the only thing we have to fear is the loss of fear itself."
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- So it comes down to November 2. If the public rewards
W with a second term ñ and with no re-election contest to impose
any possible moderating influence ñ then W's far-right impulses
will be vindicated and corroborated. On that "reality day," which
will prevail ñ Bush's certainty or our reality?
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- - Mark Green, president of the New Democracy Project,
is the author, with Eric Alterman, of The Book On Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads
America (Viking 2004).
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- © 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved
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- http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17907
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