Sorry, Mr. Bush. Your
Mandate Just Isn’t Big Enough
He’s rubbing the nose of his dad and his dad’s advisors — not to mention the nation — in the fact of his election, trying to present himself as America’s Godfather, scowling officiously as his bespoke puppets are sworn into the Cabinet, doing that half-assed MC act at his choreographed “Economic Summit”.
But the Fallujah fiasco, the dollar crisis, and the Kerik debacle demonstrate that Bush’s unreliable gut reliably trumps his putatively higher organs. The brain and heart — those supposed repositories of reason, diligence, and foresight that are expected to pitch in and help the president deal with the tedious, omnipresent demands of guiding the fortunes of the world’s greatest superpower — are left pacing disconsolately on the sidelines.
George lacks the focus, passion, and integrity to deal with the day-to-day grind of managing his administration.
When things go bad, he gets bored, disengages, and blames other people.
He displays the characteristic laziness of the work-averse fratboy…
…and the full-bore megalomaniac.
Megalomaniacal leaders have to keep the pot boiling, fomenting existential crises that permit them to rise above the mundane, trump the concerns and logic of so-called expert opinion, and force themselves to the center of the national stage and world attention.
Whether it’s forced collectivization of the kulaks, launching the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, or taking out those pesky Russians via Operation Barbarossa, the ruling nutbar will always find a way to short circuit ordinary people’s yearning for peace, prosperity, and comity.
Don’t get me wrong. George Bush is no Hitler.
Hell, Hitler at least got Poland right.
Bush can’t even conquer Iraq. As we flounder through the occupation, all we’re hoping for is the catastrophe to abate long enough for us to declare victory and bug out.
But the urge — if not the ability — to do great things; to write chapters of history, even if they are incoherent and unreadable — remains.
So I’m not confident that the monotonous revelation of Administration incompetence, dishonesty, and myopia that are so blatant and dismaying to informed observers will doom Bush’s Social Security plans, so it can take its place with Mission to Mars and the other Bush initiatives that faltered because of their innate stupidity and Bush’s own lack of focus.
Social Security is the Big One, this year’s passion play and snowballing fuck-up starring George W. Bush that Bush will use to feed his ego and obscure and supersede the Iraq fuck-up, now entering its end-game with the January 30 elections.
And the real powers of the Bush administration — Dick Cheney et. al. - will let blundering Bush and his incompetent circle of yes-men and yes-women hog the national stage with the intellectual, moral, and political fiasco that is Social Security reform.
Because the furor over Social Security offers the GOP hope of maintaining the initiative even as political, economic, and foreign policy difficulties accumulate, and provides a valuable distraction from the ferocious assault on liberal remnants of our courts, tax system, civil rights, and regulatory apparatus that is the urgent mission of the pirates relying on Bush’s final term gyrations for political cover.
With control of Congress, Bush probably has the clout to ram through whatever Social Security screw-up he selects, regardless of its disadvantages — and that’s part of the plan.
Don’t look for an in-depth policy debate, with the devil in the details. Expect all devil.
Remember the prescription drug benefit, which was knowingly crafted to be a piece of legislation so vile that Ted Kennedy wouldn’t vote for it, so Bush and the Republicans could (barely) pass it by themselves and claim the credit?
To Bush, any politician can get worthy legislation passed. It takes a great leader to take a really crappy bill and shove it down Congress’s throat.
The angry passions he will arouse, the polarizing battle he will provoke, and the agonizing defeat he expects to inflict on liberals and Democrats will drive the perceptual agenda and place Bush exactly where he wants to be, in the white-hot center, all eyes upon him as he taunts his impotent enemies and preens before his fawning supporters.
So what do we do if Bush forges ahead with his Social Security attack, despite (or, my view, because of) expert opposition and popular outcry?
The key question for me is, can Bush frame the issue as one of out of touch knee-jerk liberals trying to impose their socialist agenda on America, and get the active support of the red state morons?
Or can we use the Social Security debate as our own wedge issue instead, and undercut the GOP’s standing with the reds?
This, by the way, is apparently something that Tom Delay is worrying about. If the debate gets out of hand and endangers GOP electoral prospects in 2006, he’ll pull the plug on Social Security “reform”, and let the so-called “urgent crisis” play itself out at some later date.
Certainly, there is the potential for reds to be wedged away from Bush.
I think the reds understand that Bush may be their asshole, but he’s still an asshole.
And letting him fuck up faraway Iraq — which, by the way, has become a living hell and an immediate moral reproach to every American who allows this horror to continue — is one thing.
Using the same imminent threat baloney to pre-emptively fuck up Social Security — whose day of reckoning for about 25% of its benefit stream is 35 years away — is not going to excite the reds…
…unless Bush successfully packages it as part of the vital and urgent crusade to destroy liberals and the Democratic Party.
Reds chose one road — that of active disengagement from the obligations and aspirations of liberal democracy and a progressive federal government.
We represent the road not taken. As such we are a challenge and a reproach to their choice.
I think a day of reckoning is coming for the reds — and America.
One in which a single-minded worship of increased consumption as the yardstick of human progress, and the hope that all problems can be ignored, denied, and evaded by mindless immersion in laissez-faire economics and me-first religion, will be unable to cope with a major challenge to our way of life — and our self-image as the God-blessed Numero Uno chosen to rule over the lesser nations.
I’m not talking about the straw man of “Islamofascism”. But the possibility that America becomes so overstretched fiscally, militarily, and economically that it loses its position of global pre-eminence. The world loses its hunger for U.S. debt, switches to the Euro, and we turn into Argentina-on-the-Potomac, with the demoralizing awareness that the Almighty’s plans for us include inflation, high interest rates, unemployment, recession, and economic bondage to the heathen Chinese.
I think the reds sense that the day is coming. They know deep down that heaven isn’t Toby Keith records, Wal-Mart values, a mountain of credit card debt, and an offshore murder machine that consumes their families and whole nations in its maw.
What keeps them going — what keeps them distracted — is the welcome presence of a weak enemy at hand — the liberals. Somebody they can crowd into a corner and beat with a stick, and blame for the problems they are desperately attempting to avoid. So they can pretend that they are dealing with their anxieties — and ignore the real monster creeping out from under the bed.
So, if Bush can package Social Security reform like he’s trying to package the “Defense of Christmas” campaign — as “thrash the liberal” therapy for jittery reds — we’re losers in the debate, regardless of the outcome.
If Social Security is tarred as a liberal program, liberals will be forced into a high-profile defense that antagonizes the reds. Even if we beat back the threat this time, the foundation is laid for another assault at the next politically advantageous opportunity — and that’s good enough for our George.
Bush doesn’t give a shit about Social Security. He doesn’t care if it’s reformed or not. Neither do his supporters. Wall Street and big business will get enough paydays from the Bush administration even if they don’t have the dubious pleasure of dealing with the administrative and regulatory clusterfuck of tens of millions of minute privatized Social Security accounts.
All Bush cares about is sticking liberals with a cattle prod, making us squeal, and reminding reds that there’s nothing they hate more than a squealing liberal — all for the greater glory of George W. Bush.
For the sake of our political future, our best hope is to have the Social Security outcome — whether it results in defeat, victory, or a miserable compromise — work against George Bush instead of against us.
We have to de-couple “liberalism” from “Social Security”.
And couple “misguided meddling with America’s retirement” with “George W. Bush”.
I expect every liberal and every Democrat to line up inexorably on behalf of Social Security — but quietly.
For the purposes of this debate, I’m not a liberal. I’m no Bush basher. I’m not going to spook reds by Chicken Littling them with my reality-based predictions of social Armageddon.
I’m Mr. Low Key.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Social Security’s funding is secure for at least another generation. If we want to reform stuff, let’s look at issues a little closer to home.
Like the deficit and Medicare.
When George cuts the deficit in half — as he’s promised he’ll do — let’s return to the debate over entitlement programs.
Then, after we fix Medicare (which is about to fall off a genuine cliff and offers enough hard and heroic choices to satisfy any true leader’s hunger for glory and achievement), we can take a swing at Social Security “reform”.
Social Security is not a liberal program. It is America’s program. And it’s too precious to be used as a political football in the struggle between liberals and conservatives.
Should we push our most successful and solvent social program to the front of the line just so that George W. Bush can make some empty, crowd-pleasing gestures and screw it in the name of “fixing” it?
Sorry, George, your mandate just isn’t big enough for that.
Copyright 2004 Peter Lee
Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.
