Post Editorial - 10-7-04
Came across this in yesterday's St. Louis post dispatch, which was sprawled across the kitchen table this morning when my dad was reading parts of it. I thought this was interesting and worth posting, even though at a few points I went "ouch". Heh.
PRESIDENTIAL ACCOUNTABILITY: There are many reasons to vote for Bush. But why would you?
By Eric Mink
We measure re-election potential on the incumbent's record. The president fails that test.
Voting for president in 2000 - assuming you were allowed to - was hard work, as President George W. Bush likes to say.
Al Gore, vice president at the time, had spent eight years eclipsed by the outsized charisma and appetites of President Bill Clinton, while Bush had been dabbling with elective office as governor of Texas. Neither had a track record that was particularly helpful in judging what kind of president he might be.
It's a lot simpler with an incumbent running for reelection: You examine what the guy in office has done. If you want more of the same, you vote for him. If not, you vote for the challenger.
Looking back at the past 3 3/4 years, I understand some things:
People who think it's a good idea to start turning Medicare over to drug manufacturers, insurance companies and for-profit health-industry conglomerates and open up Social Security for plundering by the
brokerage-investment industry should favor Bush. People who believe that loosening regulations on polluters keeps our air and water clean should favor Bush. People who think the best way to help Americans who are hungry, homeless, sick and impoverished is to bleed aid programs dry and rebate taxes to the super-rich should favor Bush.
People who believe America can remain the world leader in science by subjecting scientists and their research to religious and political litmus tests should favor Bush. People who think that negligent corporations should be free to hurt consumers with defective products and that
the injured should be denied their day in court should favor Bush. People who are convinced that government works better when career public servants take orders from political hacks and special-interest lackeys should favor Bush.
And people who believe that government should mind its own business, except when it comes to their neighbors' reproductive choices and sexual orientation, should favor Bush.
Many things, however, I do not understand, and at the top of that long list is this:
Why would anyone who is concerned about the safety of his family, the security of our country and the fight against Islamist terrorism favor Bush? His administration's record on these issues has been a litany of
incompetence and failure.
Speaking in Des Moines last month, Vice President Dick Cheney warned that electing the wrong person in November could increase the danger that "we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind-set. . . ." Bush owns nine
months of that mind-set.
It's not fair to blame Bush for those attacks, although six of the 10 "missed opportunities" to stop them identified by the 9/11 commission occurred on his watch. But it is fair to hold him responsible for the
rigidity of his White House bureaucracy and the lackadaisical attitude toward al-Qaida, both of which made America more vulnerable before Sept. 11, 2001.
The U.S. military won a stellar victory in Afghanistan in 2001, but Bush failed to follow through on the pursuit of Osama bin Laden and, much more important, failed to fulfill commitments to secure and rebuild
the country. As a result, tribal warlords again control much of the country, Taliban and al-Qaida elements continue to terrorize areas near the Pakistani border, the country is a cesspool of opium production, and the elections scheduled for Saturday are already tainted.
American forces delivered another victory in the spring of 2003 in Iraq, only to see their triumph dissolve into the wanton violence and chaos of today because of repeated administration mistakes.
Bush has blamed faulty prewar intelligence for his mistaken belief that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction required that it be disarmed. But even at the time, branches of the intelligence community were
raising doubts about some information and the reliability of some sources. Bush failed to recognize the gravity and implications of these concerns and started the war anyway.
Bush failed to adopt detailed plans drawn up by the State Department for securing and managing the occupation of Iraq. He also failed to heed the warnings of seasoned commanders that more troops would be needed to maintain the peace. These failures, compounded by the hasty disbanding of the Iraqi army, have allowed competing factions of Iraqi insurgents to band together and mount the coordinated, lethal guerrilla war that ravages U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians alike.
Bush's failure to abide by the terms of the Geneva Conventions created confused conditions that contributed to the abuse, torture and deaths of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush's defiance of the Constitution in handling prisoners at Guantanamo, Cuba, led to a stern rebuke by the U.S. Supreme Court. As a result, Arab governments are even more reluctant to provide the cooperation we need to fight terrorism effectively. Meanwhile, incidents of terrorism worldwide have increased since Bush took office.
Here at home, Bush has failed to provide the resources necessary to equip first responders, secure hazardous chemical plants and many
nuclear installations or inspect more than a paltry percentage of shipping containers entering U.S. ports. And we're still looking for the anthrax killer.
Bush doesn't like the idea of accountability. None of his cadre of principal advisers - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, to name just two - has been fired, despite their repeated, flagrant errors.
In a 2002 interview with The Washington Post's Bob Woodward (thanks to syndicated columnist Richard Reeves for recently citing it), Bush described the dynamic in Oval Office meetings: "I'm the commander," he said. "I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
Fine. That's what elections are for.
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