Bush's first term scores last
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By WALTER WILLIAMS
GUEST COLUMNIST
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Friday, October 1, 2004
Based on my assessment of George W. Bush's presidency in columns over the past five days, I have concluded that his first term should rate near the bottom among all the presidents since 1789:
President Bush's economic record -- the worst in the postwar years -- has put the broad middle class in serious economic jeopardy.
His administration's gross incompetence in Iraq has left the United States bogged down in a Vietnam-like quagmire while increasing world terrorism.
By favoring big-money interests, Bush has entrenched plutocratic governance and diminished democracy.
Bush retains a far better image than his record warrants by repeatedly duping the public through the suppression of contradictory information and the employment of deceptive statements and lies. Douglas Jehl in the Sept. 16 New York Times wrote:
"A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment for Iraq, government officials said. The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms."
Once the government's own estimate was uncovered after being suppressed for nearly two months, Bush on the campaign trail ignored his own government's pessimistic evaluation of Iraq and said: "This country is headed toward democracy. Freedom is on the march."
The administration has not simply put a better spin on bad news; it has constructed a lie out of whole cloth. Bush and his minions hammer it into believability by repetition and a relentless defense of the claim.
The propaganda works so well because it plays to the public's two big fears. First is the threat of a terrorist attack that the administration stokes with the horrible images of Sept. 11. Second is the danger of their comfortable myths being shattered. Just like Ronald Reagan, the Bush administration has employed the politics of unreality with great success.
The optimistic Reagan restored confidence during the 1981-82 recession by depicting an America he believed in wholeheartedly, but in fact no longer existed -- an America without limits.
Bush propagandists operated more cynically, based on their confidence that Americans will embrace an optimistic unreality rather than a myth -- challenging truth, no matter how hard the evidence. When critics point to the actual reality, Bush spinners tarnish them with the sin of pessimism.
If the politics of unreality prevails and the American people cling to the administration's deception and lies, Bush will be re-elected. What can be expected in Bush's second term?
One part of the answer is more of the same because true believers are undeterred by reality. Worse, winning a second term can be read as a mandate to press on even more vigorously toward the Bush objectives.
The Bush propagandists will continue to paint Iraq as a success, as it moves toward a quagmire worse than Vietnam. While in the United States, plutocracy likely will become more entrenched and democracy becomes more myth than reality.
Bush's tax policies threaten the economic security of more and more of the broad middle class. A Sept.14 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report indicates that the average tax reductions in 2004 from the earlier Bush tax legislation were $123,592 for millionaires; $34,992, for the top 1 percent of the population; and $647 for the middle 20 percent of the population.
It also pointed out that, measured as a share of the total economy, federal tax revenues this year drop to their 1959 level and individual income tax revenues, to their 1943 level. The CBPP report concluded that "we cannot run today's government on these revenue levels" because most of the current social and environment programs did not exist in 1959.
I confess to pessimism. Bush's tax policies have put ordinary citizens at great economic risk. I fear that the American government will not maintain democracy and will fail the great bulk of its citizens in their quest for a secure middle-class status at work and in retirement.
The overriding need is a full dose of hard facts about the real problems of a nation with severe limits now and in the future. Then, the electorate must accept this uncomfortable reality and the politicians act on it.
My closing admonition is: Demand the facts and vote in your family's real interests. If you ignore the clear dangers by opting for a glowing unreality, welcome aboard for a calamitous second term. Finally, just be clear that Cassandras are not always wrong. And Bush's Trojan horse is at the gate.
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Walter Williams is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington's Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs and is the author of "Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy."
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