The real issue: Bush is incompetent
Richard Reeves United Press Syndicate
Saturday, August 28, 2004
Not up to the job
NEW YORK President George W. Bush is coming to town. You better watch out,
you better not
shout - unless you're a certified delegate inside Madison Square Garden.
With protesters
somewhere out of sight, the Republican National Convention will be a
celebration of the
ideology, values and interests served by this second Bush presidency.
Whether you agree or disagree with the words pouring from the podium over
Americans who
see reflections of themselves in George W. Bush, the real issue of this
election will not
be mentioned. The core issue is this: America's president is incompetent.
He is not a good
president.
Let me count the ways:
1. He has divided the country; we Americans are all part of a vicious
little hissing
match. We were united and humbled on Sept. 12, 2001. We are divided and
humiliated now,
telling lies about each other.
2. He has divided the world. “We are all Americans now” headlined Le Monde
on that Sept.
12. Now there are days when it seems as if they are all anti-Americans.
3. He is leaving no child or grandchild without debt. He has taken the
government from
surplus into deficit in the name of national security and increased
private investment. We
can pay the debt in two ways: with more government revenues (taxation) or
by borrowing -
against the sweat and income of new generations. The president has chosen
to borrow.
4. He campaigns as a champion of smaller government but is greatly
increasing the size and
role of government. Ideological conservatism, it turns out, costs just as
much, or more,
than ideological liberalism. Conservative and liberal politicians are both
for increasing
the reach and power of government. The difference between them is which
parts and
functions of the state are to be empowered and financed. The choice is
between military
measures and order, or more redistribution of income. Money is power.
5. He is diminishing the military of which he is so proud now as commander
in chief. The
invasion and occupation of Iraq have obviously not worked out the way he
imagined - naked
torture was not the goal. But the far greater problem for the future is
that America's
proud commander has revealed the hollowness behind unilateral superpower.
From the top
down, we have not been able to win Iraq, much less the world. And going
into Iraq has
compromised or crippled the war on terror he declared himself.
6. He is diminishing scientific progress, the great engine of the 20th
century. Only the
truly ignorant can believe that the proper role of government is to hinder
medical
research and environmental study in the name of God.
7. He is diminishing the Constitution of the United States. Cheesy tricks
like amending
the great text of freedom to attack homosexuality can be dismissed as
wedge politics. But
it is worse to preach against an activist judiciary while appointing more
activist judges
who happen to hold different beliefs, particularly the idea that civil
liberties are the
enemies of patriotism, security and freedom itself.
8. He has surrounded himself with other incompetents. The secretary of
state is presiding
over the rape of diplomacy and its alliances. The secretary of defense has
sent our young
men and women into situations that were never meant or trained to handle,
and now they are
being ordered into battle by an appointed sheik in a far land. The
national security
adviser does not seem to know that her job description includes
coordinating defense and
diplomacy. And then there was our $340,000 a month local hire, Ahmad
Chalabi, sitting in
the gallery of our House .
9. He has been unable or unwilling to deal with declining employment and
the rising
medical costs of becoming an older nation.
10. He is, as if by design, destroying the credibility of America as a
force for peace in
the world - an honest broker - particularly in the Middle East.
The list is longer, miscalculation after miscalculation. President Bush
has not been able
to function effectively at this pay grade. He may mean well, but this has
been a difficult
time, and he is in over his head. We and our kids will pay the price for
his blundering,
blunderbuss adventure in Washington. He has been tested in a difficult
time - and,
unhappily for all of us and the world, he has not been up to the job.
United Press Syndicate
Copyright © 2004 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
|
