Salt Lake Tribune – Rosa Brooks: Did Bush fool us or did we fool ourselves?
So why did it take us so long to notice? Someday, historians will ponder our strange collective passivity in the face of Bush-Cheney madness. Why did the editorial boards of our major newspapers either parrot the administration line or raise only muted criticism on so many issues, and for so long? Where were the tough journalistic questions? Why didn’t more members of Congress protest the administration’s blatantly unjustified policies and transparent constitutional outrages?
For that matter, when Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft and countless others found that the administration was, at Cheney’s insistence, adopting policies they knew to be irresponsible and even illegal – when they found they had been locked out of the decision loop entirely – why didn’t any of them go public with their protests back when it would have made a difference?
It’s hard not to conclude that collectively, we were all too cowardly, slothful or puffed up with our own self-importance to ask the right questions and stand up for principle. The administration didn’t trick us; we tricked ourselves.
Someday, the Bush era may come to seem like a bad dream, a shameful, inexplicable interlude in American history. We’re right to be outraged by Bush and Cheney, but we should also save a bit of outrage for when we look in the mirror.
Outrage fatigue is a terrible thing, but a lot of people did know and were outraged almost from the beginning. It’s hard to remember that now when all the crap is starting to work its way to the surface for even the shallowest of newshounds to nose out into the daylight. It’s nice that some of them are starting to report on the meta-regret that they weren’t on the job sooner, as in the opinion above. Some of the regular media were reporting all along, but many of them won’t, and it wasn’t so much cowardice and inattention as it was misplaced loyalty, and perhaps a sense that criticising the Bush administration was just not in very good taste for a long time.
Not long ago I ran across this quote by John Wayne when Keith Olbermann led with it on his recent “impeach the guy” opinion piece:
“I didn’t vote for him,†an American once said, “But he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.â€
That—on this eve of the 4th of July—is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis “Scooter†Libby.
Fact is, we were all desperate to believe on September 12, 2001 with the declaration of the “war on terror” that George W. Bush was a strong and forceful leader who was going to kick some terrorist ass right quick (even though we’ve technically been at war with “them” a long time). Although many of us didn’t vote for Bush, more than 90% of us forgot our lingering outrage over the way the 2000 election was resolved in the Supreme Court, and loyally said to ourselves “well, we didn’t vote for this guy, but he’s the President, and we all need to pull together as one nation now.” Remember those days? That was when I could look at the American flags that fluttered everywhere – on cars, on fire trucks, and vertically displayed inside and outside buildings without flinching. Now, I think “another gung-ho idiot who’s still drinking the Kool-Aid and waiting for his pony to emerge from the pile of shit that is Iraq” when I see a flag displayed out of a normal context.
And a lot of people in the Administration really believed in him, and were tied to his political success, not only Karl “Turdblossom” Rove, but people I actually have some respect for, such as Colin Powell.
A lot of people, even then, didn’t believe in GWB – even so prescient an analyst as Barbra Streisand called him “destructive,” remember? And “President Bartlett,” who many Americans thought of as “my President” in the early days of 2002 called him a “moron,” too – and went on to protest the Iraq war. Mentioned in passing in a number of those links: the impression that it was disloyal, distasteful, or dangerous to one’s career to criticize the President, the “war on terror” itself. Remember the Dixie Chicks? Yeah, but at least their career has rebounded since then. And speaking of “The West Wing,” they won the Emmys the same year Bush was elected…in a story datelined Sept 11, 2000. Ah, the good old days – they’re so September 10th.
Okay, not so good old days. I’ll never forget the horrific feeling of dread and grief in the days and weeks right after 9/11. Was it stupid of me and David to actually approve of Bush after his post-9/11 speech? Not necessarily – we just didn’t know then how cynically the events were about to be exploited for the benefit of the Bush political machine.
Here’s an incomplete list of scandals that we’ve been through during the Bush years, that the regular media reported on. Fatigue? You don’t know fatigue.
Bush To Lead A Nation Divided Remember the first scandal – how Bush lost the popular vote, but the electoral votes in Florida and Ohio were enough to put him over the top?
Another early scandal – questions about his Texas Air National Guard service remain. And none of the rewards for proof that he served during a couple of “blank” periods of time in his records have ever been paid.
Bush Vows Action After Scandals Remember Enron? But still it contains a complaint about Congress not acting quickly enough to fund the War on Terror. And one of the earliest instances of the phrase “nothing new.”
Bush Stumbles on Economy – this was when the mood started to change, according to the Beeb – but it was over money, not scandals… back in 2002? And of course, they tried to lay the blame for the little recession on Clinton. Well, the article was right about one thing – the economy was one of the driving forces behind a couple of big Congressional elections for the Democrats.
Book Piles Pressure on Bush And then Bob Woodward was on the job, reporting in a book how the Iraq war was being planned in December 2001… well, but Paul O’Neill, a former White House adviser also wrote a book detailing that the Bush administration was all hot on Iraq just after they came to power. In 2000. Along with a bunch of other scandals. Including this one:
Plamegate. Yeah. There’s an entire industry devoted to selling books about Bush 43’s scandals.
More scandals:
Old questions about a whifty stock selloff when Bush ran a small oil company (into the ground).
Bush Defends SecretSurveillance
The Memory Hole preserves photos of flag-draped caskets, and keeps a list of stories given the cold shoulder – many of which relate to various scandals the Bush White House wishes would just stay forgotten. The photos of flag-draped caskets were not scandalous in themselves – in fact, they exhibit a stark beauty and show the military taking care of its own with respect and dignity. Rather, the scandal was because of the military regulation forbidding taking or distributing the images, which was politically useful for the Bush administration. Support for the war has dropped, and these images had a lot to do with that. After all, “Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war,” according to Donald Rumsfeld.
U.S. Attorneygate
A whole list of other criticisms, deserved and inflated, goes on and on and on at Wikipedia, making my little list seem pretty lame by comparison. Of course, how authoritative is a publically edited web-based encyclopedia? Still, the facts happened, and they’re catalogued so that they won’t be easily forgotten.
There’s a whole host of Congressional scandals in the past 6 1/2 years, and Iraq scandals, and oil-based scandals, and so on and so on. Bush can’t be linked to everything, but in many cases, his party can. Or his administration can. Or some guy in the administration can take the fall guy role. Scooter Libby isn’t the first White House Fall Guy, and probably won’t be the last.
Libbygate is only the most recent scandal, but certainly won’t be the final one for the administration of George W. Bush. But at least reporters are reporting the stuff, and some of them have been reporting it all along. It is up to the rest of us to take notice. I’m pretty sure that impeachment isn’t in the cards, or good for the country. I’m just glad that more and more people are waking up, so that we can get on with cleaning up the mess he and his cronies have made.
[tags]Bush, scandals, miserable failure, Iraq, Plame, Abu Ghraib, MSM, blame[/tags]