There’s
nothing harder in public life than admitting you’re
wrong. By the way, admitting you’re wrong can be even
tougher in private life. If you don’t believe me, just
ask Bill Clinton or Charlie Sheen. But when you go out on
the limb in public, it’s out there where everyone can
see it, or in my case, hear it. [McIntyre is a talk
radio host in Los Angeles. - ed.]
So, I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In
historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the
history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that
he’s the worst President, period.
In 2000, I was a McCain guy. I wasn’t sure about the Texas Governor. He
had name recognition and a lot of money behind him, but other than that? What?
Still, I was sick of all the Clinton shenanigans and the thought of President
Gore was… unthinkable. So, GWB became my guy.
Doug |
For the
first few months he was just flubbing along like most new
Presidents, no great shakes, but no disasters either.
He cut taxes and I like tax cuts.
Then September 11th happened. September 11th changed everything
for me, like it did for so many of you. After September 11th,
all the intramural idiocy of American politics stopped being
funny. We had been attacked by a vicious and determined enemy
and it was time for all of us to row in the same direction.
And we did for the blink of an eye. I believed the President
when he said we were going to hunt down Bin Laden and all
those responsible for the 9-11 murders. I believed President
Bush when he said we would go after the terrorists and the
nations that harbored them.
I supported the President when he sent our troops into Afghanistan,
after all, that’s where the Taliban was, that’s
where al-Qaida trained the killers, that’s where Bin
Laden was.
And I cheered when we quickly toppled the Taliban government,
but winced when we let Bin Laden escape from Tora-Bora.
Then, the talk turned to Iraq and I winced again.
I thought the connection to 9-11 was sketchy at best. But
Colin Powell impressed me at the UN, and Tony Blair was in,
and after all, he was a Clinton guy, not a Bush guy, so I
thought the case had to be strong. I was worried though,
because I had read the Wolfowitz paper, “The Project
for the New American Century.” It’s been around
since ‘92, and it raised alarm bells because it was
based on a theory, “Democratizing the Middle East” and
I prefer pragmatism over theory. I was worried because Iraq
was being justified on a radical new basis, “pre-emptive
war.” Any time we do something without historical precedent
I get nervous.
But the President shifted the argument to WMDs and the urgent
threat of Iraq getting atomic weapons. The debate turned
to Saddam passing nukes on to terror groups. After 9-11,
the risk was too great. As the President said, “The
next smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud.” At least
that’s what I thought at the time.
I grew up in New York and watched them build the World Trade
Center. I worked with a guy, Frank O’Brien, who put
the elevators in both towers. I lost a very close friend
on September 11th. 103 floor, tower one, Cantor Fitzgerald.
Tim Coughlin was his name. If we had to take out Iraq to
make sure something like that, or worse, never happened again,
so be it. I knew the consequences. We have a soldier in our
house. None of this was theoretical in my house.
But in the months and years since shock and awe I have been
shocked repeatedly by a consistent litany of excuses, alibis,
double-talk, inaccuracies, bogus predictions, and flat out
lies. I have watched as the President and his administration
changed the goals, redefined the reasons for going into Iraq,
and fumbled the good will of the world and the focus necessary
to catch the real killers of September 11th.
I have watched the President say the commanders on the ground
will make the battlefield decisions, and the war won’t
be run from Washington. Yet, politics has consistently determined
what the troops can and can’t do on the ground and
any commander who did not go along with the administration
was sacked, and in some cases, maligned.
I watched and tried to justify the looting in Iraq after
the fall of Saddam. I watched and tried to justify the dismantling
of the entire Iraqi army. I tired to explain the complexities
of building a functional new Iraqi army. I urged patience
when no WMDs were found. Then the Vice President told us
we were in the “waning days of the insurgency.” And
I started wincing again. The President says we have to stay
the course but what if it’s the wrong course?
It was the wrong course. All of it was wrong. We are not
on the road to victory. We’re about to slink home with
our tail between our legs, leaving civil war in Iraq and
a nuclear armed Iran in our wake. Bali was bombed. Madrid
was bombed. London was bombed. And Bin Laden is still making
tapes. It’s unspeakable. The liberal media didn’t
create this reality, bad policy did.
Most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get
a reasonably accurate take on a President’s place in
history. So, maybe 50 years from now Iraq will be a peaceful
member of the brotherhood of nations and George W. Bush will
be celebrated as a visionary genius.
But we don’t live fifty years in the future. We live
now. We have to make public policy decisions now. We have
to live with the consequences of the votes we cast and the
leaders we chose now.
After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I’ve
reached the conclusion he’s either grossly incompetent,
or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with
their own private view of how the world works. Or both.
Presidential failures. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Jimmy
Carter, Warren Harding-— the competition is fierce
for the worst of the worst. Still, the damage this President
has done is enormous. It will take decades to undo, and that’s
assuming we do everything right from now on. His mistakes
have global implications, while the other failed Presidents
mostly authored domestic embarrassments.
And speaking of domestic embarrassments, let’s talk
for a minute about President Bush’s domestic record.
Yes, he cut taxes. But tax cuts combined with reckless spending
and borrowing is criminal mismanagement of the public’s
money. We’re drunk at the mall with our great grandchildren’s
credit cards. Whatever happened to the party of fiscal responsibility?
Bush created a giant new entitlement, the prescription drug
plan. He lied to his own party to get it passed. He lied
to the country about its true cost. It was written by and
for the pharmaceutical industry. It helps nobody except the
multinationals that lobbied for it. So much for smaller government.
In fact, virtually every tentacle of government has grown
exponentially under Bush. Unless, of course, it was an agency
to look after the public interest, or environmental protection,
and/or worker’s rights.
I’ve talked so often about the border issue, I won’t
bore you with a rehash. It’s enough to say this President
has been a catastrophe for the wages of working people; he’s
debased the work ethic itself. “Jobs Americans won’t
do!” He doesn’t believe in the sovereign borders
of the country he’s sworn to protect and defend. And
his devotion to cheap labor for his corporate benefactors,
along with his worship of multinational trade deals, makes
an utter mockery of homeland security in a post 9-11 world.
The President’s January 7th, 2004 speech on immigration,
his first trial balloon on his guest worker scheme, was a
deal breaker for me. I couldn’t and didn’t vote
for him in 2004. And I’m glad I didn’t.
Katrina, Harriet Myers, The Dubai Port Deal, skyrocketing
gas prices, shrinking wages for working people, staggering
debt, astronomical foreign debt, outsourcing, open borders,
contempt for the opinion of the American people, the war
on science, media manipulation, faith based initives, a cavalier
attitude toward fundamental freedoms-- this President has
run the most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in
my lifetime, perhaps, in any American’s lifetime.
You can make a case that Abraham Lincoln did what he had
to do, the public be damned. If you roll the dice on your
gut and you’re right, history remembers you well. But,
when your gut led you from one business failure to another,
when your gut told you to trade Sammy Sosa to the Cubs, and
you use the same gut to send our sons and daughters to fight
and die in a distraction from the real war on terror, then
history will and should be unapologetic in its condemnation.
None of this, by the way, should be interpreted as an endorsement
of the opposition party. The Democrats are equally bankrupt.
This is the second crime of our age. Again, historically
speaking, its times like these when America needs a vibrant
opposition to check the power of a run-amuck majority party.
It requires it. It doesn’t work without one. Like the
high and low tides keep the oceans alive, a healthy, positive
opposition offers a path back to the center where all healthy
societies live.
Tragically, the Democrats have allowed crackpots, leftists
and demagogic cowards to snipe from the sidelines while taking
no responsibility for anything. In fairness, I don’t
believe a Democrat president would have gone into Iraq. Unfortunately,
I don’t know if President Gore would have gone into
Afghanistan. And that’s one of the many problems with
the Democrats.
The two party system has always been clumsy and imperfect,
but it has only collapsed once, in the 1850s, and the result
was civil war.
I believe, as I have said countless times, the two party
system is on the brink of a second collapsed. It’s
currently running on spin, anger, revenge, and pots and pots
and pots of money.
We’re being governed by paper-mache patriots; brightly
painted red, white and blue, but hollow to the core. Both
parties have mastered the cynical arts of media manipulation
and fund raising. They’ve learned the lessons of Watergate
and burn the tapes. They have learned to divide the nation
for their own gain. They have demonstrated the willingness
to exploit any tragedy for personal advantage. The contempt
they have for the American people is without parallel.
This is painful to say, and I’m sure for many of you,
painful to read. But it’s impossible to heal the country
until we’re willing to acknowledge the truth no matter
how painful. We have to wean ourselves off sugar coated partisan
lies.
With a belated tip of the cap to Ralph Nader, the system
is broken, so broken, it’s almost inevitable it pukes
up the Al Gores and George W. Bushes. Where are the Trumans
and the Eisenhowers? Where are the men and women of vision
and accomplishment? Why do we have to settle for recycled
hacks and malleable ciphers? Greatness is always rare, but
is basic competence and simple honesty too much to ask?
It may be decades before we have the full picture of how
paranoid and contemptuous this administration has been. And
I am open to the possibility that I’m all wet about
everything I’ve just said. But I’m putting it
out there, because I have to call it as I see it, and this
is how I see it today. I don’t say any of this lightly.
I’ve thought about this for months and months. But
eventually, the weight of evidence takes on a gravitational
force of its own.
I believe that George W. Bush has taken us down a terrible
road. I don’t believe the Democrats are offering an
alternative. That means we’re on our own to save this
magnificent country. The United States of America is a gift
to the world, but it has been badly abused and it’s
rightful owners, We the People, had better step up to the
plate and reclaim it before the damage becomes irreparable.
So, accept my apology for allowing partisanship to blind
me to an obvious truth; our President is incapable of the
tasks he is charged with. I almost feel sorry for him. He
is clearly in over his head. Yet, he doesn’t generate
the sympathy Warren Harding earned. Harding, a spectacular
mediocrity, had the self-knowledge to tell any and all he
shouldn’t be President. George W. Bush continues to
act the part, but at this point whose buying the act?
Does this make me a waffler? A flip-flopper? Maybe, although
I prefer to call it realism. And, for those of you who never
supported Bush, its also fair to accuse me of kicking Bush
while he’s down. After all, you were kicking him while
he was up.
You were right, I was wrong. CRO