Bush and this lieutenants have made more false statements than true ones since taking office. One might think that a sorcerer put a spell on the regime such that no member of the executive branch can make a truthful statement containing the word
Iraq.That's caught up to him now.
People like us evil DUers were never willing to give Bush the benefit of any doubt; as far as many of us are concerned, he isn't even really president. However, most people are willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt and, unfortunately, got over the election theft a long time ago. Even the worst corporate/political corruption since the Gilded Age didn't phase the public. The violations of the rights of POWs made many people uncomfortable, but they willfully went into denial about the sinister role regime members, including Bush, played in it.
The Downing Street documents have changed that. The evidence is simply too stark to ignore by anybody except those in the regime. Many with doubts were willing to "support" Bush because he was the commander-in-chief while American troops were in combat. Now there is simply no getting around the fact that he put those troops there unnecessarily and without justification; he knew the case was thin and he and his lieutenants fabricated facts and dissembled intelligence reports in order to gain public support and Congressional authorization for the invasion of what turned out to be a disarmed nation. People can no longer deny that Bush lied to them and squandered precious military resources on a poorly planned misadventure.
In addition to Iraq,
The New York Times reports this morning that Bush's plans for Social Security have been largely rejected by the public; support of Bush's proposals, which were never overwhelming, are dropping into the mid-twenties. Americans realize that Bush is being alarmist about Social Security. Yes, there's a problem, but we have time to come up with a better plan to fix it than one that involves privatization. There is no reason to pass a bad plan when there is still time to come up with a good one. Mr. Bush's plan has less to do with making sure that workers enjoy Social Security benefits in the future when they retire than with making sure his corporate cronies can enjoy them now.
Congressional Democrats, thankfully, are in a feistier mood than than they've been in for a long time. Instead of rolling over and dying for Bush, Senator Boxer rightly challenged the veracity of Bush's nominee for Secretary of State, Senate Democrats will not stop debate on a clearly unqualified nominee to be Ambassador to the UN and the Honorable Mr. Conyers held hearings yesterday about the implications of the Downing Street documents in which a resolution of inquiry, the first step toward impeachment, was openly discussed.
This is happening because Congressional Democrats realize that there is nothing for them in supporting Bush. They did that for four years and lost ground. If Bush is right, why vote against him? If the opposition party isn't opposing his policies, then he must be right. It wasn't opposition; it was a disastrous strategy of collaboration and capitulation. At the grass roots level, Democratic activists were frustrated to see members of a party they believed were to protect them from Bush's infringements on civil liberties vote for the Patriot Act and to give Mr. Bush authority to go to war based on what those of us who look beyond the US corporate MSM knew to be falsehoods. We were tired of DLC CEO Al From lauding "Blair Democrats" for supporting Bush's immoral war and resented his foolish attempts to read the base out the party. Al From hasn't sat down and shut up, but it doesn't matter; no one is listening to him now. The DLC's day is passed.
Howard Dean's elevation to chair of the DNC is a reflection of the party's new willingness to listen to its grass roots rather than its corporate elitist wing. Dean isn't perfect. His attacks on Republicans could be better stated if they were targeted toward specific voters who have favored Republican candidates in recent years; for example, instead of saying "Republicans don't work for a living," he could have said "Republican policies favor the rich at the expense of the poor and Republican candidates do not deserve the support of poor rural Americans that they have enjoyed in the last twenty-five or thirty years; we Democrats can do better by these people and they should vote for us."
Dean's real power is in his ability to raise money directly from the grass roots via the Internet. This has liberated Democrats from the need to raise money the same way the Republicans do from the same type of source: wealthy donors who contribute large sums at one sitting. This money did not come without strings. While it kept the Democrats competitive, it watered down their message. Republican-like fundraising techniques led to Republican-lite positions on issues. A pro-corporate message is ill-suited to the party of working people whose greatest historical triumph is the New Deal.
However, none of this would have happened if Bush really had the mandate he claimed, if he had fought an honest war on terror against Osama and al Qaida rather use the September 11 attack as a smokescreen to invade an oil-rich nation for the benefit of his cronies, resulting in a quagmire, or if his fiscal policies were wiser than just finding how much money in the pockets of working people can be made upwardly mobile while trashing the worker himself.
In addition, Bush is not merely another conservative president, with a disagreeable pro-corporate agenda, as was his father or even Reagan. We've survived that sort of thing before and we would be in better shape now if Bush were no worse than that. Bush is a genuine threat to American democratic institutions. He is a tyrant who holds himself above any law, national or international. He seized power after losing an election; he lied to gain support for an unnecessary war whose best excuse appears to be providing opportunities for the war profiteers who foot the bill for his rise to power; he has winked and nodded at white collar crime and, with the help of allies in Congress, transferred a large budget surplus to his wealthy friends through excessive tax cuts; again with the help of his allies in Congress, he has pushed legislation that undermines the American system of civil liberties, makes policy decisions aimed at keeping his political allies from the private sphere in control of mass broadcast media and uses public funds to produce propaganda supporting his policy initiatives, drowning out any meaningful dissent and public discussion. America no longer resembles the democratic republic envisioned by Jefferson as much as it does a banana republic in which wealth is maldistributed and the government corrupt and repressive.
Bush has created an environment ripe for a populist uprising. That is what he has on his hands. The removal from power of Mr. Bush and his lieutenants and to see that they are punished for their crimes should be the proper goal of this populist movement.
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