Kerry Needs to Get Much Tougher with Bush
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by John R. MacArthur
Published on Tuesday, October 5, 2004 by the Providence Journal (Rhode Island)
NEW YORK -- IF WE LIVED in a halfway sane country, George W. Bush would be headed for a landslide defeat. But we don't, and John Kerry's politely critical performance in Thursday's debate wasn't enough to forestall the demise of his incompetent and weak-kneed campaign. Yes, quickie polls showed he "won" the debate, but an ABC survey of viewers found their candidate preference almost unchanged, with Bush still leading 51 to 47 percent.
Which demands the question: Given Kerry's refusal to state the obvious -- that the emperor has no clothes -- what would it take to bring swing-state America to its senses: to turn Nov. 2 into a referendum on the Bush disaster, instead of an idiot's poll about who looks "tougher on terrorists"?
So far, all we know is what hasn't worked. The inventory of President Bush's lies, hypocrisy and fantasies grows larger with every fresh Iraqi corpse and U.S. body bag -- yet Kerry gets little or no bounce. Official reports pile up on the falsity of a Saddam Hussein - al-Qaida connection, as well as the nonexistence of an Iraqi A-bomb program, but Bush carries the day: At least half the people seem to think that the war against "terrorism" begins and ends in Baghdad.
The 9/11 Commission suggests that Bush ignored the warnings of the CIA and Richard Clarke about a likely attack by agents of Osama bin Laden, yet millions of so-called security moms say they feel safer with a good-time Charlie, the former drunk from Greenwich, Kennebunkport and Houston.
Bush's rich-kid avoidance of Vietnam hasn't moved the electorate, either. That Bush's congressman dad got him a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard, there can be no doubt -- at those levels of money and political influence, you hardly need to ask for the favor.
I actually don't begrudge the Bush family their draft-dodging tricks, since I would have done just about anything to keep my son, if I had had one, away from the Vietnam nightmare; I suspect that most folks feel the same way. (What could be worse than to die for Lyndon Johnson's or Richard Nixon's political vanity, expect perhaps to die for George W. Bush's?)
Nevertheless, Kerry, spawned by the same elite as Bush, rejected the class injustice of Vietnam (and the advice of his father) and nearly got himself killed in the name of service to country. Whatever his possible political motives, shouldn't Kerry's combat record count for something among working-class veterans -- people who know how blatantly the Vietnam-era Selective Service System favored the rich and college-educated? Haven't they considered the fate of lesser mortals rejected by the Texas Guard who did go to Vietnam?
Apparently not. Polls show a majority of veterans supporting Bush over Kerry.
Abstract matters of principle are non-starters, as well. The president's pious references to liberating Iraq, God's blessing of free elections, freedom of speech, and other human rights are perhaps his most blatant lies -- the ones most susceptible to ridicule. Saddam Hussein was a favorite American client: embraced by Bush's father, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld until he got too greedy in Kuwait.
Today, the "sovereign" government of Iraq is an American proxy that serves at the pleasure of the U.S. pro-consul, John Negroponte, and the U.S. Army.
More pertinently, the scheduled "elections" in Iraq will confer about as much legitimacy on the new Iraqi "republic" as Colin Powell's mendacious presentation at the United Nations conferred on Saddam's imaginary military arsenal. (Or, for that matter, as much legitimacy as the 2000 Florida election -- stolen by First Brother Jeb, through the clever disenfranchisement of black voters -- conferred on the Bush presidency.)
Already, the administration is busy lowering expectations for a truly democratic vote in January.
Similarly, freedom of the press has become a dubious proposition in Iraq. Such was Bush's commitment to the unfettered marketplace of ideas that his former viceroy, Paul Bremer, shut Muqtada al-Sadr's newspaper and Prime Minister Negroponte-Allawi has closed al-Jazeera's Iraq bureau. But violated principles (Abu Ghraib notwithstanding) don't upset American voters when the only people affected are foreigners -- so Kerry gains nothing from Bush's creation of sham democracy in Iraq.
So what might shift the political equation back in Kerry's favor, since Kerry can't seem to do it himself?
I think that the fundamental corruption (and political vulnerability) of the Bush family involves money: how they and their friends acquire it. Largely unsuccessful businessmen in their own right, Bush father and son at least know how to use businessmen who are successful. Halliburton has learned to its corporate chagrin that the easy money promised by its former CEO, Dick Cheney, is anything but easy. Despite Pentagon largess in Iraq, the Halliburton subsidiary KBR has, ironically, lost money during the past three years, and may be sold or spun off.
Halliburton is where Bush greed and Bush political hypocrisy meet felicitously for the Kerry campaign. Remember the "axis of evil" -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea? In August, French TV 5 aired a documentary exposé of corrupt Islamic religious "foundations" that really operate as for-profit cartels.
Nothing shocking there, but in their reporting, the producers stumbled across a Halliburton installation of storage tanks on the Iranian island of Kish, a "free-trade zone" in the Persian Gulf.
I asked Wendy Hall, of Halliburton public relations, how such a venture squared with the U.S. embargo on Iran. She tersely replied by e-mail that "Halliburton's business in Iran is clearly permissible under U.S. law."
The Treasury Department says this is true in a hair-splitting legal sense -- the Iran operation apparently functions behind a Cayman Islands-based front called Halliburton Products and Services Ltd., which has neither employees nor building. But this surely spits on the spirit of the embargo. And it gives the lie to Bush's assertion that his war against "evil" is uncompromising.
Americans will tolerate much hypocrisy. But they're less forgiving when the hypocrisy involves money. John Kerry needs to change his vocabulary: to go beyond saying that Bush has "misled" the country or "mismanaged" Iraq.
Bush is cheating America and cheating on America. That's more akin to treason than mere lying.
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John R. MacArthur, a monthly contributor, is publisher of Harper's Magazine.
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