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Bush story

by Mark Gisleson

Our sojourning President got off a lot easier than I had hope during his Australian visit. Here are some highlights from the Reuters report:

The U.S. president was on a whirlwind visit to Australia to reward conservative Prime Minister John Howard, whom he dubbed "a man of steel" for sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, despite public protests.

His 20-hour visit triggered a massive security operation in the usually sleepy capital with armed air force jets escorting Bush into Canberra late Wednesday night and patrolling the city's skies until he flew out on Thursday evening.

Authorities took the unprecedented step of barring the public from the parliament where Bush spoke on Thursday, backing a special security role for Australia in the Asia-Pacific region that has raised concerns among Asian neighbors.

REGIONAL SHERIFF

"Security in the Asia-Pacific region will always depend on the willingness of nations to take responsibility for their neighborhood, as Australia is doing," Bush told parliament....

"We are not a sheriff," shouted Greens leader Bob Brown who ignored an order to leave the house.

The heckling did not rattle Bush, who is on his first trip to Australia. The last US president to visit Australia was Bill Clinton in 1996 -- who was also heckled by Brown....

The 18-year-old son of Mamdouh Habib, one of two Australians held at a US military prison in Cuba for two years without charge after the Afghan invasion, was dragged out, arms pinned behind his back, after yelling: "Hey Bush, what about my Dad?"

* *

Michelle Goldberg writes about Wesley Clark at Salon [paid subscription req., or watch the commercial], and picks up on the wishful thinking regarding Republicans for Clark.

On Oct. 14, Harold Bloom, the venerable Yale humanities professor, cultural conservative and defender of the Western canon, published a remarkable encomium to Clark in the Wall Street Journal's ordinarily right-wing editorial page with the portentous title "Cometh the Hour." In it, he references Edward Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," and writes, "It is not at all clear whether we are already in decline: bread is still available for most and circuses for all. Still, there are troubling omens, economic and diplomatic, and a hint or two from Gibbon may be of considerable use ... We need, at just this time, a military personage as president, one who is more in the mode of Dwight Eisenhower than of Ulysses Grant. In Wesley Clark, we have a four-star general and former NATO commander who is a diplomatic unifier, an authentic hero, wise and compassionate. That Gen. Clark saved tens of thousands of Muslim lives in Bosnia and Kosovo is irrefutable, despite current deprecations by worried supporters of the president."

....Nicomodos Sy Herrera, a 31-year-old Republican lawyer in a well-tailored suit, seemed almost surprised to find himself at a Democratic event. A pro-life hawk who'd been "a big Bush supporter" in 2000, he'd grown alarmed by Bush's inability to "balance the hard and soft power of the US" Now, he was considering changing his party affiliation in order to vote for Clark in the primary. "Bush was seduced too much by the hard right's insistence that it had to go alone," he says. "He made that bed, he has to sleep in it." Still, while he says he doesn't think Bush could win him back, he also says Clark is the only Democrat he would support.

"Those are exactly the kind of people you want," [Ruy] Teixeira says of these Clark fans. "The people who hate Bush 24/7, those voters are not the Democrats' problem. The Democrats' problem are the people who say, 'Goddamn it, he did a pretty good job after 9/11, but he's really doing a lousy job now.' That's the sweet spot. Those are the voters you're going to need to get in droves."

Clark's ability to appeal to these voters is, in turn, attracting pragmatic Democrats who are looking for a winner, not a hero. "The kind of people I tend to talk to by and large tend to have been skeptical of the Dean candidacy while respecting its energy," says Teixeira. "They're worried to death about whether Dean can actually beat Bush. These people are very interested in Clark. We need the guy who's best able to beat Bush. I think he's probably the guy."

[more]

Is the notion of "Republicans for Clark" far fetched? Google pulls up 466 responses, including www.RepublicansforClark.com. There are Young Republicans for Clark, Independents for Clark, Environmentalists for Clark, Kansas Republicans for Clark, Hispanics for Clark, Students for Clark, Women for Clark, etc.

Obviously, a candidate who appeals to such a broad center-right coalition is not going to be appealing to many liberals. So why am I still leaning Clark? As I've said before, thirty years of poisonous disinformation from the hard right (cum neo-Trotskyite neoconservatives) has made this country all but ungovernable from the left. We're going to need a grace period to clean up the mess, and some time to re-educate our young on the meaning of democracy, as opposed to demagoguery.

Clark might be the person to do that.

We'll see soon enough.

* *

One link led to another, and found myself reading Keith Burgess-Jackson's "The Natural History of Bush-Hating" yesterday. Burgess-Jackson is a prof at the U-TX Arlington, and purports to be a Ralph Nader voter. He picks up on Paul Krugman's track record of trashing Bush's economic record, and makes the oft-heard rightwing claim that Krugman hates Bush.

I think that claim is dead wrong, and that it would be impossible for Krugman to be consistent and find favor with any Bush economic policies. Wrong is wrong.

I wrote Burgess-Jackson to suggest that if Bush's policies are consistent, and if they are wrong, then Krugman's opposition does not necessarily imply dislike or hatred of Bush, just disagreement. I suggested that if he were right, he should be able to name a Bush economic policy that has worked, and been well received.

Burgess-Jackson dodged the request, giving a bizarre list of Fox News style quotes regarding Bush. I'd love to pass them on, but I don't have permission so we won't go there. I dogged him for an example nonetheless, but finally gave up when he wrote, "I'm not giving the answers you want, that's all."

Yeah, that's one way of putting it. My bottom line is that he refused to offer one example of a Bush economic policy that makes sense. I don't question Burgess-Jackson's Nader vote, but I do feel compelled to point out that this Nader voter has never encountered another Nader supporter who was so compliant to RNC talking points. Or who viewed Bush as having legitimately won Florida, but that quote's off limits as well.

Read his article for yourself. I think Professor Burgess-Jackson's logic is a bit circular, and strangely in lockstep with established Republican disinformation.

Posted by Steve Perry at October 23, 2003 11:50 AM

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