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Dear Sir:
It was with great delight that I watched your appearance on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart (Wednesday, September 13). The interview was interesting and full of sometimes-barbed humor, and each of you were in fine form.
However, in speaking about your new book (“Winning Right”), you said a few things which I found deeply disturbing.
There is no question that your party has been extremely savvy and well-disciplined in “marketing” George W. Bush, and your campaign strategies have proven to be successful. I take no issue with that premise.
However, the thrust of your talking points – as well as of your book, it would seem – is fraught with the concept that winning is everything, regardless of whether that victory is detrimental to our country in the long term or not.
As an American citizen, I must take issue with that. You have described Bush, recently and in the past, as an ‘ideal candidate’. And I have no doubt that you and your fellow party members saw that quality as a great advantage, and proceeded accordingly.
However, it would seem obvious that the ‘ideal candidate’ can often prove to be a disastrous president – and the events of the last six years have, unfortunately for all Americans, proven that point.
George W. Bush was not a political neophyte when he was proffered by your party as a nominee in the 2000 elections. His record as governor of Texas was well known to all of you, and it was a record of deficits and debt, environmental disaster, and policies that favored Big Business over average hard-working Americans on a monumental scale.
In short, your party was not buying a pig-in-a-poke. You knew this man’s shortcomings, and yet you chose to sell him to your fellow citizens as something you most assuredly knew he was not: a decisive and intelligent leader who could handle the challenges of running a country.
All spin aside, Mr. Gillespie, the Bush years have been a complete disaster in every area, from the faltering economy, to the distancing of our traditional allies, to a lack of national security and preparedness, to American job losses – the list is endless, as you already know. And neither of us can even pretend to ignore the elephant (you’ll pardon the pun) in the room, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have cost so many lives, and have no hope of even a modicum of success.
As the saying goes, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. And the statistics are there for all to see; the numbers are in, and the facts are more than clear.
I am well aware of the competitiveness of politics. Everyone wants their guy to “win”. But when your guy’s victory spells disaster for millions of Americans (not to mention millions of Iraqis, Afghans, etc.), one has to question the moral rectitude of the “winning is everything” philosophy you have so obviously embraced.
I am a Democrat, but I do not believe that all Republicans are evil. I have no doubt that there are many across the aisle who are moral, well-meaning people who have their country’s best interests at heart.
I have no doubt that any number of your party could have, and would have, been vigilant enough to prevent the attacks of September 11, 2001, would have been too honest to have lied their fellow citizens into an unwinnable war, would have been too moral to have sent our troops into battle without sufficient equipment to safeguard their lives, would have been too astute to ruin our economy, would have been too humane to have condoned torture and secret prisons, would have been too patriotic to divide the citizenry for the sake of political expediency and to promote an agenda so contrary to the Constitution our nation was founded upon.
Unfortunately, sir, you and your party members did not run such a man or woman for president. You ran G.W. Bush instead, someone you knew, before-the-fact, to be not up to the job. Someone you knew, before-the-fact, to be beholding to an ideology completely at odds with democracy itself.
So the next time you or one of your fellow Republicans deigns to question the patriotism of myself, my party, or my fellow citizens who disagree with your president and his political path of mass destruction, I would remind you that it was you, and people like you, who foisted this administration on an unsuspecting nation, completely cognizant of the inevitable outcome.
Winning is a wonderful thing, Mr. Gillespie. But before you and yours chilled the champagne to celebrate your victory, you might have considered the consequences such a victory would mean to the well-being of our nation.
To get behind a product that will cure modern day political ills such as divisiveness, mindless war mongering, poverty, bureaucratic incompetence, and the distancing of our world allies, would have been a laudable cause. But to market a product that you knew to be nothing more than snake oil, a smoke-and-mirrors government that would spread the very diseases it was advertised to cure, is unconscionable.
So enjoy the victory of having “won”, sir – as shallow and hollow as that victory has proven to be. But don’t dare to question the patriotism of others, when you have made it abundantly obvious that while you and your ilk determined to capture the ultimate prize, the health and well-being of your own country was the very last thing on your minds.
There is a difference, sir, between winning and “winning right”, i.e. a win that will secure the highest office in the land for a man of integrity and vision, and not simply a man who can be 'sold' to the gullible consumer whose buyer's remorse will be but an inside joke once the deal is closed.
I am sorry you don’t see the distinction, and your lack of being able to grasp the difference between the two has cost our nation dearly. Sadly, it is a price that will be paid for years to come.
Yours Most Truly,
Nancy Greggs
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