Small Favors Molly Ivins
Election Year Fever
It's an election year, yeah! Three long years we've been waiting, and now
has come our shining hour. O happy days are here again. The skies above
are clear again. Let the festivities commence.
I was puzzled in 2000 when so few in the press seemed interested in George W.
Bush's record, and now I find there's mass amnesia on the subject again this year. For
example, a number of conservative pundits--including Bill Safire in highest
dudgeon--have opined about Howard Dean's attempt to sequester his gubernatorial
papers. George W. Bush, however, did not unseal his gubernatorial papers, which he
had carted off to his father's Presidential library at Texas A&M. Texas gubernatorial
papers are public by law and normally go to the state archivist. Bush did not change
his mind until the Texas attorney general made him do so last summer. (Hint to those
in search of media bias: Who got more coverage for secreting gubernatorial papers,
Bush or Dean?)
Again, we find on the front page of The New York Times the story of a suspicious
contract given to a Dean aide while Dean was governor. Let's see how much play this
story gets compared to a slew of scandals during Bush's governorship, including the
time he fired the head of a state commission for enforcing the law against a large
contributor who runs funeral homes.
A subject of apparently endless fascination to the press corps is Dean's "anger." What
about Bush's? Bush becomes testy whenever he's so much as asked a challenging
question at a press conference. Of course he cusses, including one memorable
ass-chewing of a woman state senator who had to fall back on the "As a lady, I resent
that" line. On another occasion, Bush walked out on the senate floor to ream out a
Republican senator who'd flaked on him (the issue was vouchers).
On a rather larger issue, we find the media questioning whether any Democrat can
compare with Bush on national security. Uh, has anyone looked at Bush's record on
national security? In case you hadn't noticed, he got us into what seems to be a
hopeless situation in Iraq by lying to us. Our ports aren't protected. Our nuclear plants
aren't protected. Our chemical plants aren't protected. And our first-responder drills
indicate a gross confusion and lack of coordination. Also, Osama bin Laden has come
out of his cave again.
One piece of good news (credit where credit is due) is that John Ashcroft has decided
to recuse himself from the investigation of the Plame affair and to appoint an outside
prosecutor to the case. I am still confounded that there even has to be an investigation.
Why didn't President Bush just demand: "Who the hell is responsible for this?" and
then fire the perp?
What do you have to do to get fired in this outfit?
I'm not sure why this particular episode chaps me so much: Maybe it's because Bush
kept promising to bring back honor and integrity to the White House. Plame, who
worked for the CIA without official cover, and her husband, Joseph Wilson,
ambassador to Iraq during the first Gulf War and recipient of a medal for gutsy
performance from the first President Bush, seem to me to have risked more for this
country than any of the political hitmen sitting in the White House. Nevertheless, Karl
Rove allegedly felt entitled to observe that "Wilson's wife is fair game" because Wilson
publicly crossed the Administration. Why is his wife fair game? Why, for that matter,
is he fair game? I actually heard Robert Novak, who published the original Plame
leak, say defensively, "Ambassador Wilson is having a good time with all this. He's
having a wonderful time."
True, Wilson doesn't seem to shy away from attention. But is that actually considered
a justification for what they did? Have these people no moral sense?
Molly Ivins, co-author of "Bushwhacked," writes in this space every month.
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