If you’re reading this, the hounds I heard scraping at the gate ten days ago haven’t broken through. Our nation still survives, despite desperate attempts otherwise.
We’re now one tenth of the way towards a completed first 100 days, which means only another 1451 days to go until we have a different president, thank the good lord looking over us all. George W. Bush, despite his inane supporter’s claims that he’ll do something, anything, of value for this country, has already managed to oversee a steep decline in our economy, an inauguration with more protestors than any since Vietnam was more than a struggling Asian nation and the nomination of a labor secretary who didn’t employ legal employees.
It isn’t going to be fun for most of us, unless you go to Amherst
College – then your dad’s sure to get a 40 percent tax cut making sure that you can keep more of your money because gosh durnit, we’re to be trusted with our money, perhaps one of the most ridiculous political assertions of the past few years. But I don’t expect better from Republicans convinced that labor unions are bad for our nation and that Iraq is still of any concern to us as a people.
Perhaps the only real lesson we can take from all of this (other than the clever new title for Bush’s music: Hail to the Thief) is the ability of losers to end up winning.
How?
Look at John Ashcroft, a candidate for Senate who couldn’t beat his deceased opposition, yet still gets a nomination for Attorney General. Unbelievable. While losing to animated zombies happens on a regular basis in South Carolina when Strom Thurmond wins, losing to the literal, out-and-out dead is a quite different story.
Ashcroft better have more than a little life in him if he wants to keep up his winning ways; 200 hundred different groups opposing him doesn’t bode particularly well for the man from Missouri.
Dan Coats from Indiana was considered for a job, as was Slade Gorton of Washington and now Jim Talent from Missouri. All lost their campaigns. Spencer Abraham got a nomination after losing in Michigan and opposing the existence of the office he has been nominated for, Secretary of Energy.
The infamously inane Chavez (who also opposed such anti-labor policies as, oh, the minimum wage) lost her only campaign in Maryland in 1986, but Bush teaches by example, and why have one example of a loser nominated when he could have three?
Other losers that might end up winning? State’s rights, as Bush inexplicably came out in favor of strong state’s rights, yet clearly opposed them when it came to his election. How strangely bizarre and fantastical, if weren’t such a good reason of cynicism and bitterness. To use the
Supreme Court to overrule a state court interpreting state law before turning around and declaring the need for strong states is ludicrous at best, horrifically ignorant of what just happened at worst.
Of course, he need look no further than the mirror for one of the bigger losers to come out of politics recently – there’ll be a day soon when one of the Florida newspapers announces that a recount would have given the election to Gore, meaning that while Bush got beaten fairly soundly in the election of the people (by more than 500,000 votes) he also should have lost in the vote that really counts, the Electoral vote, which he only won by a growing-ever-shadier four votes. 450 pages of people who swear they weren’t even allowed to vote isn’t good news for a President that a significant portion of Americans say they don’t trust. Why is that a bad thing?
Because we all knew not to trust Clinton, we got used it, we accepted it. Bush claimed we’d have every reason not to look at him in the same light as we did with Clinton and he’s right – Clinton’s election to office never really required the prevention of people from voting.
Nevermind personal bitterness and fear for the future, back to my list of big losers who might just end up winning. In writing this late at night I was fairly sure there’d be no bigger loser who ended up winning than
Bush, but the Democrats are going to come quite close. Why? Because despite losing the Presidency in 2000, by 2001, they might have the campaign finance reform that only staunch conservatives have prevented from becoming reality, by 2002, they should have majority controls of the House and Senate, especially after they witness the damage that Republicans will cause over the next two painful years, and by 2004, they should have soundly defeated Bush in an election.
At some point, the American public will look at Bush with their usual, critical eye and see, not a man from Texas who seeks to ‘unify’ to avoid all of the usual stuffy politics, but rather a politician with alliances like every other rat. When they do, they’ll realize that they haven’t picked a very good one and he’ll be swept out of office.
The Republicans may have won big in 2000, but just barely, and not really at all. Bush scored the upset victory, but he’ll leave his party upset at the end of his four-year reign, a fool who will go down in history as the worst Bush to run this country, a difficult task as his only competition is his inept father.
And maybe that’s why the hounds didn’t tear down the gates – they wanted to see that competition on ineptitude, to see if the younger could pull out the big victory. All indicators point towards a win.
