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As November Approaches
 President
Bush has brought character back to the
White House. And how. He is so inner-directed that he doesn’t care
what the polls say.
Good thing, too.  The
latest Washington Post–ABC News poll says 60 per cent of
respondents give him a negative rating, while 38 per cent think he’s
doing a darn good job. That’s real character. Always let your
conscience be your guide.
With November coming, not all
Republicans are quite so carried away by the imperatives of conscience. The
ones in Congress, facing the off-year elections, would like to get more
than just the Jiminy Cricket vote.
The good news for Bush, such as it
is, is that so far only 33 per cent actually want him impeached — a
number even smaller than his base. Take heart, ye Republicans! Here is a
winning theme for this fall: “Let’s not impeach President
Bush!”
Bush has protected his base with a
vengeance. Now his base is about all he has left — the patriots who still
insist he was right to attack Iraq and, in some cases, would be glad to see
him nuke Iran and even Mecca. One such patriot recently wrote to me (in
terms I hope his mother didn’t teach him) accusing me of ignoring the
documents “proving” that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with
Osama “Bin Laudin.”
It’s always gratifying to
hear from a Bush supporter who realizes that Saddam and Osama
aren’t the same person, but I doubt that this year’s elections
will be decided by these documents. Bush and his base are doing their utmost
to deliver the broad middle, who reelected Bush and the GOP in 2004, to the
Democrats in 2006 and 2008. And maybe beyond.
Anything can happen in politics,
but I wouldn’t be surprised if Bush becomes the new Herbert Hoover
— another conscientious Republican president whose name became a
lasting synonym for disaster. Hoover didn’t actually cause the Great
Depression, but he might as well have. His memory ensured Democratic
hegemony for more than half a century, until Ronald Reagan exorcised it
(largely by playing a sunny FDR to Jimmy Carter’s inept Hoover).
![[Breaker quote for
As November Approaches: Bush's base]](2006breakers/060411.gif) Bush asked to be judged by his conduct of the War on Terror, and
he is getting his wish. If he has made an unholy mess of that war, and wants
to keep doing it in Iran, the public (minus 38 per cent) has lost faith in his
competence, and this applies to other matters too, such as immigration
reform. Even Republicans are asking what kind of
“conservative” would spend money and expand Federal powers
and programs to the tune of trillions of dollars as he has.
If his party isn’t ruined,
it’s not his fault. The most diabolical Democrat — and the
Democrats are nothing if not diabolical — couldn’t have dreamed
up an opponent so destructive to their foes. Bill Clinton held his own, but he
didn’t weaken the Republicans permanently. It has taken Bush to
achieve the reversal of the Republican Revolution.
Not that he did it alone. He had the
eager assistance of his conservative courtiers in the media — the ones
who always rail against “the media,” thinking this doesn’t
include themselves. They shouldn’t be so modest. They have served
their country well, albeit inadvertently, by cheering Bush on as, drunk with
power, he did everything he could to discredit the GOP.
So apart from the tremendous
material damage this administration has done, Bush’s little helpers
have made conservative mean, to the average voter, reckless
lunacy.
But even Bush has felt
constrained to dismiss, as “wild speculation,” Seymour
Hersh’s report in The New Yorker that he is preparing
for an attack on Iran, and that even a nuclear attack isn’t “off
the table.” Maybe Bush is telling the truth, but he should be asking
himself why people find the story so plausible.
Seymour Hersh is a truly great
and courageous reporter, who has broken important stories from My Lai to
Abu Ghraib. Hersh isn’t known for making up his facts. Bush is. Hersh
has made his name exposing things men in power try to hide in the cupboard.
A generation after he exposed the My Lai massacre, men in power still try to
deny or discredit his discoveries.
One thing is clear enough: Hersh
doesn’t get his scoops from the White House.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2006 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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