Why Campaign 2008 Started Early: Respite from Bush Delusions
"Two years before the next president is inaugurated and a full year before the first vote is cast, the contest for the White House is off to a breathtakingly fast start, exposing an ever-growing field of candidates to longer, more intensive scrutiny and increasing the amount of money they need to remain viable...The scale and swiftness of the action has the potential to upset the traditional timetables and conventions of presidential campaigning."
The WHY is easy to understand: It's a form of hope for relief from the seemingly endless exaggerations, myopic hypocrisies and outright fabrications of the Bush administration.
It's respite from the constant barrage of Bushian "arrogance, incompetence, cynicism," to quote Time magazine columnist Joe Klein this week.
It's a way to glimpse light at the end of a long, painful political tunnel constructed by George Bush, and gleefully enabled by FOX News, the sadly deteriorated Wall Street Journal, the Drudge Report and the latest addition to the rightwing smear-and-fear press, The Politico.
What America Is Supposed to Be
I hate it that we can't believe one word emanating from the Bush 43 White House. America isn't supposed to be like this.
Our great democracy is supposed to be a noble enterprise which exists to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." (Source: Preamble to the U.S. Constitution)
Justice, tranquility, general welfare and blessings of liberty are apparently not goals... or even concerns... of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and their cronies and minions. It's no wonder that April 2007 polls report that 59% of ALL Americans disapprove of President Bush's job performance.
Let me give you 3 recent examples of grossly misleading sound bytes and outright hypocrisies by this White House and its press compadres.
Example
The White House repeatedly lambasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for leading a Democratic delegation to Syria and the Middle East. The Wall Street Journal huffed on April 6, 2007:
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may well have committed a felony in traveling to Damascus this week, against the wishes of the president, to communicate on foreign-policy issues with Syrian President Bashar Assad."
What they failed to mention is that only a few days earlier, 3 Republican Congressmen... Frank Wolf of Virginia, Joseph Pitts of Pennsylvania, Robert Aderholt of Alabama... also traveled to Syria and met with President Assad to state that "This is an area where we... disagree with the administration."
The White House acknowledges trying to discourage this trip, as well, but didn't label the Republicans as unpatriotic, as aiding terrorists, or as felons.
What the Bush administration also failed to mention is that "the president is not the supreme crafter of foreign policy and that Congress must provide more than a rubber stamp for the president's agenda," observes two political science professors.
(For more info, see Why Pelosi's Trip Did Not Violate Federal Law.)
Exaggerations. Hypocrisies. Fabrications. Delusions.
Example
Per Forbes.com on April 6, 2007:
"It's a given that President Bush will veto the big Iraq money bill that sets a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops. The question is whether he'll veto the next version if it contains what he calls 'excessive and extraneous' non-war spending."
Among the extraneous "pork" the the President is whining about and portraying as Democratic corruption?
* $4 billion for medical care for veterans and troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan
* $6.7 billion for more hurricane relief along the Gulf Coast
* $745 million to cover shortfalls in providing health care to children of the working poor
The President has riduculed all non-war spending attached to the bill as special-interest funding, but per Forbes, "those types of easy-to-mock items make up a tiny fraction of the $20 billion or so added by Democrats."
And Forbes further points out that President Bush "has routinely accepted non-war items on prior war funding bills, such as a $2 billion border fence to keep Mexicans and others from entering the country illegally."
Exaggerations. Hypocrisies. Fabrications. Delusions.
Example
Here's a half-funny, totally silly example this week from conservative mud-slinger The Drudge Report and his ilk.
For several days, Drudge mockingly ran a photo of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Syria wearing a scarf on her head, apparently in respect for Syrian cultural norms for women.
The clear implication was that Speaker Pelosi was showing her "subservience" to a terrorist state... and perhap even demeaning her gender with her terrorist-loving scarf-donning habits.
Conservative misuse of this imagery was so abusive that the Washington Post felt compelled to explain the Speaker's scarves on April 6 2007:
"They allowed her to be respectful of the day's hosts while maintaining her own public identity... Pelosi, with her carefully coordinated scarves, respected her foreign surroundings without ceding any control."
Oh, and I guess the rightwing smear-and-fear press merely forgot that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and First Lady Laura Bush also consistently wear head scarves when visiting the Middle East?
Exaggerations. Hypocrisies. Fabrications. Delusions.
Why the 2008 Presidential Race Started Early
Still wondering why the American public is prematurely absorbed in the 2008 race to replace George Bush and Dick Cheney?
Still surprised that Democratic 2008 candidates received a whopping $30 million more in first quarter 2008 contributions than Republicans, most who (still) refuse to criticize Bush administration policies?
If these remain mysteries to you, consider the words of Time magazine columnist Joe Klein on April 5, 2007:
I've tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but the three defining sins of the Bush Administration--arrogance, incompetence, cynicism--are congenital: they're part of his personality.They're not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead."
Let Campaign 2008 ring throughout our land. Hope for our democracy still exists!
Related Reading
Why Pelosi's Trip Did Not Violate Federal Law(U.S. Gov Info)
The Campaign 2008 Money Race: Glorious or Grotesque?
Time.com, April 5, 2007: An Administration's Epic Collapse
Forbes.com. April 6, 2007: Dems, Bush Skittish Over War-Money Veto
Washington Post, April 6, 2007: Nancy Pelosi, Respectfully Maintaining Her Own Image
The Stranger, April 4, 2007: Nancy Pelosi Wears Head Scarf, Right Wing Contracts Amnesia
Comments
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that merely said “Is it 2008 yet?”
I’ve been blown away by how early this all started, too. In 1998, even in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal, there was nothing like this–and by the time 2000 rolled around, it was Gore vs. Bradley and Bush vs. McCain and that was basically it. This time it’s 18 months until the election and we’ve already got three strong candidates on each side, with plenty of dark horse candidates waiting in the wings in the event things open up.
This reminds me much more of the opposition party in a midterm election–in 1994, for example, there were lots of Republicans lining up to challenge Clinton. Now candidates of both parties are lining up to “challenge” Bush by presenting the image of a potential new presidency. Democrats have every reason to do this, and Republicans can’t afford not to if the alternative is to leave Democrats looking like the big new thing.
The end result will be an interesting primary season, much more interesting, I suspect, than 2004.
Cheers,
TH