Editors of The Nation: Prez on the Precipice

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Nation
Issue of October 10, 2005
Posted Thursday September 22

Prez on the Precipice
Editorial

Two-term presidencies rarely end on the twentieth day of January in the odd year following a national election. Rather, history tells us, they tend to flame out months--sometimes years--before the Oval Office officially changes hands. After a response to Hurricane Katrina that reinforced Americans' doubts about George W. Bush's competence and his caring, and with continuing turns for the worse in Iraq, the President has blundered toward the precipice of a prematurely finished presidency. But as history also tells us, presidencies don't plunge into political free-fall on their own. The opposition party must stoke public resentment and offer convincing alternatives to the Commander in Chief's failed vision.

Bush boosted his sagging approval ratings a bit by tarting up his Gulf Coast reconstruction plans in Franklin Roosevelt drag. But he's facing a revolt within his own party over what some see as an attempt to spend his way out of the doghouse. The danger for Democrats is that the debate over rebuilding New Orleans and the rest of the stricken region could play out as an intramural fight between a "compassionate" President and his fiscally conservative compatriots. That would leave Democrats where they were after the 9/11 terrorist attacks--as hapless allies with a President they are unwilling, or unsure of how, to challenge.

This is no time for such timidity. If Democrats want to get the better of Bush at last, and if they want to advance an agenda that could revitalize their party and their country, they must not get stuck between the Administration and its right flank. They must be blunt about the fact that while it has a big price tag, Bush's response to the Gulf Coast crisis is inadequate and irresponsible. The first step is fighting the President's decision to waive prevailing-wage laws on the Gulf Coast--a giveaway to contractors that denies displaced workers a chance to earn enough to piece their lives back together. Democrats should reject the President's attempts to ease environmental regulations in a region already ecologically devastated. They should back a proposal by Senator Russ Feingold and Representative John Conyers to delay the implementation of bankruptcy "reforms" that will make it tougher for Gulf Coast residents to get back on their feet. And they should launch a frontal assault on the tax policies of an Administration that has starved the government's capacity to provide basic protections and services.

Read more.

[tomreedtoon]

1. WARNING: This post has been CENSORED by The Nation!

(Sorry, but whatever you did made an unreadable post. Don't know what happened, but it looked like The Nation hacked the site and made most of your post unreadable. It's readable now.)

[Martin Eden]

2. Too Timid

What the editors of The Nation are advocating here is all well and good:

fighting the President's decision to waive prevailing-wage laws on the Gulf Coast

reject the President's attempts to ease environmental regulations in a region already ecologically devastated

back a proposal by Senator Russ Feingold and Representative John Conyers to delay the implementation of bankruptcy "reforms" that will make it tougher for Gulf Coast residents to get back on their feet

launch a frontal assault on the tax policies of an Administration that has starved the government's capacity to provide basic protections and services

lay out a full-scale reconstruction plan of their own--a "people's reconstruction" that advances a democratically accountable, economically viable, socially just and environmentally sustainable plan for regional rebuilding

In my opinion, before we undertake a "people's reconstruction" we need to focus on the MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE: ensuring that the next hurricane doesn't wipe out the $200 billion likely to be spent rebuilding a city in a low-rimmed bathtub. I haven't been spending a lot of time watching CNN and MSNBC lately, but I read the paper every day and neither the Democrats nor the national dialogue seem to be focusing on what is necessary to make New Orleans a viable site in a future with rising sea levels and more powerful hurricanes spawned by global warming.

The Nation is talking about some issues related to Katrina that the Democrats can use to their advantage -- and these are legitimate issues that effect people's lives -- but if the Democratic Party really wants to reclaim leadership of this country, then they're going to have to do what truly responsible leaders do: make the tough decisions and demand the necessary course of action.

The editorial also suggests the Dems should also "demand accountability. Not just accountability for the occupation of Iraq and the campaign of calculated deceit that led us to war but for reckless tax cuts, environmental degradation and other domestic disasters this President has ushered in."

Again, this is all well and good, but not nearly enough and FAR TOO TIMID. Demanding accountability seems like little more than complaining and partisan sniping, unless delivered with the force of truth and undeniable facts. http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19648">Molly Ivins' column Government by temper tantrun should give the Dems a clue:

You could, for example, put any number of people at the Department of Labor who are wholly unsympathetic to the labor movement -- Bush has installed shoals of them already. But there is a certain arch, flippant malice to making Edwin Foulke assistant secretary in charge of the health and safety of workers.

Republican appointees who oppose the agencies to which they are assigned are a dime a dozen, but Foulke is a partner from the most notorious union-busting law firm in the country. What he does for a living is destroy the only organizations that care about workers' health and safety.

Here's another PP pick: put a timber industry lobbyist in as head of the Forest Service. How about a mining industry lobbyist who believes public lands are unconstitutional in charge of the public lands? Nice shot. A utility lobbyist who represented the worst air polluters in the country as head of the clean air division at the EPA? A laff riot. As head of the Superfund, a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfund regulations? Cute, cute, cute. A Monsanto lobbyist as No. 2 at the EPA. A lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute at the Council on Environmental Quality. And so on. And so forth.

Does the public know that the foxes have been put in charge of the chicken coup? These appointments border on criminal conflict of interest, and NOW is the perfect time to make a major case of it!. The incompetence and disaster of putting "You're doing a great job" Brownie in charge of FEMA is still fresh in the public's mind. The Democrats need to relentlessly expose the political hacks installed throughout our government, and keep pounding these facts into the national consciousness.

The Democrats MUST step forward, expose the Bush administration for what it undeniably is, and clearly state what needs to be done to get this country back on the right track.

It's put up or shut up time. Can the Democrat Party provide the true leadership so desperately needed?

[indepat]

3. Starving the government's capacity to provide basic protections and

services is by design, is the sole and essence of the Repuke's creed.