As Republicans gather in New York City, the Bush campaign will undergo
a drastic makeover, camouflaging gutter tactics with a veneer of
moderation calculated to help the President win another four-year term.
But the hard truth of this campaign is that George W. Bush, while
attempting to impose an extremist right-wing agenda on this country and
the world, has compiled a record of staggering failure.
The debacle in Iraq has already claimed close to 1,000 American and
12,000 Iraqi lives. Far from making America safer or the Middle East more
democratic, it has turned out to be what this magazine warned it would be:
a reckless abuse of power that has damaged US security, destabilized the
region and undercut America's position in the world. The high cost of the
war is evident not just in the number of deaths but also in burgeoning
federal budget deficits (the war has cost more than $125 billion) and in
the record gasoline prices Americans now pay. It is also evident in the
reported swelling of the ranks of Al Qaeda-inspired groups and in the
rising hatred of America reflected in public opinion polls showing that
even among traditional allies like Jordan and Egypt, as much as 95 percent
of the population view the United States with disfavor. Meanwhile, the war
has diverted resources from urgent international problems ranging from the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the widening AIDS pandemic.
And there's no end in sight. The US occupation grinds on with both Bush
and his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, ignoring the only intelligent
alternative: a phased US withdrawal. Iraqi opposition to the occupation
remains fierce--expressed even by Iraqi soccer players at the
Olympics--while the country's appointed leaders display authoritarian
tendencies that undermine the democracy Bush and his aides claim is being
built.
If the war were Bush's only failure, it would be enough to require his
departure. But it is not. By withdrawing the United States from
international treaties and conventions, mishandling crises in the Middle
East and North Korea and diverting resources from the pursuit of Al Qaeda,
Bush has left America more isolated and less secure. And the detention
camps made infamous by the crimes of Abu Ghraib have stripped America of
the pride we once had in our country and the role it played, however
imperfectly, as a champion of human rights, economic opportunity and the
rule of law.
At home, Bush's failures are equally manifest. He has amassed the worst
jobs record of any President since the Great Depression, the worst budget
deficits ever and the most precipitous decline in America's fiscal
position--from $5 trillion in projected surplus to $4 trillion in
projected deficit. Bush's Administration responds to a corporate crime
wave with calls for less regulation, embraces the flight of jobs abroad as
good for the economy and exacerbates, with top-end tax cuts, the greatest
inequality since the Gilded Age.
This Administration has also undermined the rights and policies that
social movements labored for a century to achieve. Bush has nominated to
the federal bench ideologues with a history of antiunion and antichoice
decisions. He signed into law the blatantly unconstitutional "partial
birth" abortion ban and then watched as his Attorney General sought access
to women's private medical records to defend the ban in court. He imposed
the policy known as the global gag rule, which forbids foreign groups
receiving US aid from even mentioning abortion, and vastly expanded a
misinformation campaign about the dangers of sex that has been shown to
encourage risky behavior among young people. And to secure his place
forever in the hearts of cultural conservatives, he endorsed the
gay-baiting federal marriage amendment, framing it as a response to the
activism of liberal judges rather than what it was: an attempt to deny
civil rights to millions of Americans and to enshrine that discrimination
in the Constitution. Civil liberties, too, have suffered, as the "war on
terror" has been used to justify acts ranging from detention without trial
to snooping into citizens' library records.
The list of failures goes on. The Bush years have seen a steady
increase in the number of Americans without healthcare while drug company
profits have soared. Bush's prescription drug bill prohibits Medicare from
negotiating a better price for seniors and bars importing cheaper
drugs--with the result that older Americans will end up paying more for
prescription drugs. Bush's vaunted No Child Left Behind education law
actually leaves most children behind. Not only has the law earned the ire
of educators; Bush's failure to provide promised funding for his "reforms"
has prompted rebuke even from Republican state legislatures from Utah to
Virginia. Bush also broke his promise to increase the amount of money
eligible students could receive in college scholarship grants, even as
soaring tuition puts college out of reach for ever more families. His
postelection budget calls for yet more cuts to education funding. The Bush
Administration has also failed to protect the environment, giving us new
laws written by polluters, oil lobbyists and Enron executives. And it has
politicized and distorted basic scientific and medical research.
But this President does not admit error. When asked at a press
conference whether he had ever made a mistake in office, he couldn't think
of one.
If Bush wins in November, given this record of misfeasance, American
democracy is in much greater trouble than even the most alienated citizens
imagine. A President so out of step with the needs of Americans can only
rule by sowing division and fear. Americans have one recourse: to ignore
the costume ball in New York City and fire the worst President in modern
history on November 2.
