Selling a Flood of Failure

In the face of overwhelming bad news, and despite their total control over Washington, Republican members of Congress are still trying to play the indignity card against their critics, using the talking-point mantra “Partisan Politics” to describe every unflattering or accusatory statement made by a non-conservative. But five years into the Bush experiment, as we approach the mid-term elections, true believers are faced with an almost impossible task.

They must spin the dismal failure of the strong-and-wrong Presidency into a success.

But they might have better luck spinning feces into gold. Here is what they are up against:

Just this week, as Karl Rove emerged from a cloud of suspicion to declare that the war on terror will be the key issue to electoral success for Republicans, reports emerged that the unconquered, reconstituted Taliban have taken over the tribal areas of Pakistan and are operating with impunity, holding open recruiting rallies and running terror training camps, probably at the direction of Al Qaeda. If Bush and Rove are so great at terror, they sure messed things up in Afghanistan, failing to come close to meeting our objectives there, much less catching the bad guys.

And just as White House spokesclown Scott McClellan emphatically denied that President Bush ever met felon lobbyist Jack Abramoff (despite hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign fundraising for Bush and his cronies), at least five photos have surfaced showing Jack and Dubya shaking hands. Ooops. Anyone who believes Bush has no connection to Abramoff probably believes in the Easter Bunny.

Adding insult to misery, a report was apparently given to the White House the day before Katrina hit New Orleans detailing how a Category 3 storm could break the New Orleans levies, displace a million residents, and kill sixty thousand citizens. So days later, when Bush uttered his famous “no one thought the levies would break” line, it turns out that many people did. And at the very least, his staff did, and didn’t tell him. Or else he forgot. Or lied. Just another big, costly Ooops.

And then there’s the little issue of illegal wiretapping. Nobody disputes that terrorists must be watched and stopped. But nobody in the Bush Administration has given a remotely credible explanation for why they can't use the existing system of surveillance authorization, created specifically for this kind of situation. In their usual, Orwellian way, they have begun redefining the issue, calling their actions “terrorist watching” instead of “wiretapping”. But the core legal issues remain, and they are deeply troubling. The Bush Administration wants us to accept that men like Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby and Karl Rove can be trusted not to spy on their opponents or critics. Are we that stupid and gullible? Too bad we can't ask former President Nixon.

Beyond these immediate concerns, Republicans must also explain the long and dismal string of failures, misjudgments and scandals characterizing the Bush Executive Branch. They need to explain why Iraq is not rebuilding, and why so many billions of tax dollars have vanished there with no effect. They need to explain why the Bush attempt to re-form Social Security was an utter failure. They need to explain why our only economic policy is tax breaks (that mostly favor the rich) while we continue to spend ourselves into a massive hole. They need to explain why CEOs are making more money than ever but the paycheck of the average American is eroding. They need to explain why our medical delivery system is the worst in the developed world, yet all legislative efforts have been aimed at sweetheart deals for drug makers and HMOs.

At today’s confirmation vote for radical conservative Judge Alito, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham issued an angry challenge to Democrats, stating that if they make abortion an issue in the upcoming mid-terms, the Republicans will “clean their clocks.” Maybe in South Carolina, though he needs to be careful. Not everyone in America believes that an angel will slay a dragon in the end-days battle for Earth’s dominion (yes, it’s in the Bible--look it up). In other words, not every American is a delusional fundamentalist.

But many Americans are coming to smell something rotten at the core of our Republican-run government. The beating heart of that enterprise, President Bush, implies daily through minions that his opponents are communistic, baby killing, America hating, indecent, traitorous heretics. But the vast and growing mountain of evidence points to a different truth. President Bush will likely go down as one of the worst in our history, a dismal, divisive, inept loser. And the GOP are going to have a tough time selling damaged goods come November. As the bad news continues to flow and the scandals continue to grow, the American people deserve a lot better than Bush and his true believers.