The Bush administration’s handling of the Katrina crisis has been inspiring. It has inspired red-staters, at long last, to shake their heads in disbelief at their superstar’s staggering cluelessness. It has inspired conservative pols to run for cover while pointing their fingers at the clueless one. It has inspired usually supportive newspaper editorial boards to grow uniformly critical. With the natural exception of Fox, the cable networks finally have been inspired to unleash reporters to question America’s leadership. Even talking heads like former right-wing loyalist Joe Scarborough can no longer look into the camera’s eye and pretend that the cretinous thugs at the top and far to the right have done anything right.
In short, the Bushies have once again demonstrated just how good they really are at running things.
So naturally we on the left once again launch into optimistic speculation that this time - this time - boy, did they ever blow it. They’re ruined. The truth is out. Everyone now knows what we knew from the beginning: George W. Bush is Marie Antoinette with a press agent.
But pardon me if I remain skeptical. How many times have we written the political obituary of this pestilent gang?
Right from the start we thought the public would immediately turn on the gang leader when the latter immediately turned his back on his 2000 campaign promises. Those environmental controls he supported, for instance? Never mind. The election was done stolen and over. Different-tune time; an egregious bait and switch that the left just knew would come and just knew would disaffect the public when it did. Yet what transpired? A huge national yawn. That’s what.
Soon there were all the widely reported predictions as to what would happen to the budget deficit - none of it good - when W. slashed taxes and increased spending. It all came to pass. National reaction? Bigger yawn.
The surest signpost of the administration’s demise was, of course, the Iraq fiasco - a blunder so monumental that words like fiasco and blunder fail to describe its gravity. Then came the political coup de grace - a little thing called the Downing Street Memo, culpability in writing. Remember that? The public doesn’t. Never really cared. A crime far worse than Watergate and at least as bad as extramarital oral sex - and the scandal went nowhere. Thousands dead because of lies - and no political price paid.
Need I go on? Draw up your own Bush-blunder laundry list, then recall how each and every time we on the left thought: That should do it. That should convince the public of this administration’s clownish incompetence. That should speed an end to the madness. And the outcome? A dip in W.’s numbers, only to rebound and stabilize.
Now we have witnessed yet another monumental blunder - one in which, again, untold innocent lives have been, and remain to be, lost, because of the Bush administration’s colossally backward, prowar, antisocial ideology. And this one so huge even most of the typically timid MSM now read like a Paul Krugman piece, such as that of last Friday: “the response you’d expect from an advanced country never happened … a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government’s response … our current leaders just aren’t serious about some of the essential functions of government … they like waging war, but they don’t like providing security….”
But to repeat, I remain skeptical as to lasting damage. The national disgraces perpetrated by this administration don’t disgrace the perp for long.
Still, there’s that one variable this time around - press coverage, both print and electronic, has been almost universally hostile (meaning objective), for a change. Perhaps the MSM will stay reawakened to its watchdog duties and realize that whatever loss of “access” it sustains is more than compensated by some self-respect.
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