R
Raymond
Guest
The Disastrous Rule of a Mayberry Machiavelli
In his second term, Clinton had the highest sustained popularity of
any president since World War II, prosperity was in its longest
recorded cycle, and the nation's international prestige high......and
along came the drunken dunce.
Lest ye forget history)
Bush ran as a moderate, tacked right and governed ineffectually --
before 9/11. Since then he has become the most radical American
president in history, and arguably the worst.
The following is an excerpt from How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a
Radical Regime (Princeton University Press, 2006).
Alternet-No one predicted just how radical a president George W. Bush
would be. Neither his opponents, nor the reporters covering him, nor
his closest campaign aides suggested that he would be the most
willfully radical president in American history.
In his 2000 campaign, Bush permitted himself few hints of radicalism.
On the contrary he made ready promises of moderation, judiciously
offering himself as a "compassionate conservative," an identity
carefully crafted to contrast with the discredited Republican radicals
of the House of Representatives. After capturing the Congress in 1994
and proclaiming a "revolution," they had twice shut down the
government over the budget and staged an impeachment trial that
resulted in the acquittal of President Clinton. Seeking to distance
himself from the congressional Republicans, Bush declared that he was
not hostile to government. He would, he said, "change the tone in
Washington." He would be more reasonable than the House Republicans
and more moral than Clinton. Governor Bush went out of his way to
point to his record of bipartisan cooperation with Democrats in Texas,
stressing that he would be "a uniter, not a divider."
Trying to remove the suspicion that falls on conservative Republicans,
he pledged that he would protect the solvency of Social Security. On
foreign policy, he said he would be "humble": "If we're an arrogant
nation, they'll view us that way, but if we're a humble nation,
they'll respect us." Here he was criticizing Clinton's peacemaking and
nation-building efforts in the Balkans and suggesting he would be far
more restrained. The sharpest criticism he made of Clinton's foreign
policy was that he would be more mindful of the civil liberties of
Arabs accused of terrorism: "Arab-Americans are racially profiled in
what's called secret evidence. People are stopped, and we got to do
something about that." This statement was not an off-the-cuff remark,
but carefully crafted and presented in one of the debates with Vice
President Al Gore. Bush's intent was to win an endorsement from the
American Muslim Council, which was cued to back him after he delivered
his debating point, and it was instrumental in his winning an
overwhelming share of Muslims' votes, about 90,000 of which were in
Florida.
So Bush deliberately offered himself as an alternative to the divisive
congressional Republicans, his father's son (at last) in political
temperament, but also experienced as an executive who had learned the
art of compromise with the other party, and differing from the
incumbent Democratic president only in personality and degree. Bush
wanted the press to report and discuss that he would reform and
discipline his party, which had gone too far to the right. He
encouraged commentary that he represented a "Fourth Way," a variation
on the theme of Clinton's "Third Way."
In his second term, Clinton had the highest sustained popularity of
any president since World War II, prosperity was in its longest
recorded cycle, and the nation's international prestige high. Bush's
tack as moderate was adroit, shrewd and necessary. His political
imperative was to create the public perception there were no major
issues dividing the candidates and that the current halcyon days would
continue as well under his aegis. Only through his positioning did
Bush manage to close to within just short of a half-million votes of
Gore and achieve an apparent tie in Florida, creating an Electoral
College deadlock and forcing the election toward an extraordinary
resolution.
Few political commentators at the time thought that the ruthless
tactics used by the Bush camp in the Florida contest presaged his
presidency. The battle there was seen as unique, a self-contained
episode of high political drama that could and would not be
replicated. Tactics such as setting loose a mob comprised mostly of
Republican staff members from the House and Senate flown down from
Washington to intimidate physically the Miami-Dade County Board of
Supervisors from counting the votes there, and manipulating the
Florida state government through the office of the governor, Jeb Bush,
the candidate's brother, to forestall vote counting were justified as
simply hardball politics.
The Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, by a five-to-four margin,
perversely sanctioned not counting thousands of votes (mostly African-
American) as somehow upholding the equal protection clause of the 15th
Amendment (enacted after the Civil War to guarantee the rights of
newly enfranchised slaves, the ancestors of those disenfranchised by
Bush v. Gore). In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia argued
that counting votes would cast a shadow on the "legitimacy" of Bush's
claim to the presidency. The Court concluded that the ruling was to
have applicability only this one time. By its very nature, it was
declared to be unprecedented. Never before had the Supreme Court
decided who would be president, much less according to tortuous
argument, and by a one vote margin that underlined and extended
political polarization.
The constitutional system had ruptured, but it was widely believed by
the political class in Washington, including most of the press corps,
that Bush, who had benefited, would rush to repair the breach. The
brutality enabling him to become president, while losing the popular
majority, and following a decade of partisan polarization, must spur
him to make good on his campaign rhetoric of moderation, seek common
ground and enact centrist policies. Old family retainers, James Baker
(the former Secretary of State who had been summoned to command the
legal and political teams in Florida) and Brent Scowcroft (elder
Bush's former national security adviser), were especially unprepared
for what was to come, and they came to oppose Bush's radicalism,
mounting a sub rosa opposition. In its brazen, cold-blooded and single-
minded partisanship, the Florida contest turned out in retrospect to
be an augury not an aberration. It was Bush's first opening, and
having charged through it, grabbing the presidency, he continued
widening the breach.
The precedents for a president who gained office without winning the
popular vote were uniformly grim. John Quincy Adams, the first
president elected without a plurality, never escaped the accusation of
having made a "corrupt bargain" to secure the necessary Electoral
College votes. After one term he was turned out of office with an
overwhelming vote for his rival, Andrew Jackson. Rutherford B. Hayes
and Benjamin Harrison, also having won the White House but not the
popular vote, declined to run again. Like these three predecessors
Bush lacked a mandate, but unlike them he proceeded as though he had
won by a landslide.
The Republicans had control of both houses of the Congress and the
presidency for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was elected. But
Eisenhower had gained the White House with a resounding majority. He
spent his early years in office trying to isolate his right wing in
the Congress, quietly if belatedly encouraging efforts to censure
Senator Joseph McCarthy. Eisenhower greeted the Democratic recovery of
the Congress in 1954 with relief and smoothly governed for the rest of
his tenure in tandem with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. The
outrageous behavior of the Republicans during the brief period in
which they had held congressional power and unleashed McCarthy was a
direct cause of their minority status for 40 subsequent years. But the
Republicans who gained control of the Congress in 1994 had not learned
from their past.
The Republican radicals in charge of the House of Representatives
remained unabashed by their smashing failures of the 1990s. They were
willing to sacrifice two speakers of the House to scandals of their
own in order to pursue an unconstitutional coup d'
In his second term, Clinton had the highest sustained popularity of
any president since World War II, prosperity was in its longest
recorded cycle, and the nation's international prestige high......and
along came the drunken dunce.
Lest ye forget history)
Bush ran as a moderate, tacked right and governed ineffectually --
before 9/11. Since then he has become the most radical American
president in history, and arguably the worst.
The following is an excerpt from How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a
Radical Regime (Princeton University Press, 2006).
Alternet-No one predicted just how radical a president George W. Bush
would be. Neither his opponents, nor the reporters covering him, nor
his closest campaign aides suggested that he would be the most
willfully radical president in American history.
In his 2000 campaign, Bush permitted himself few hints of radicalism.
On the contrary he made ready promises of moderation, judiciously
offering himself as a "compassionate conservative," an identity
carefully crafted to contrast with the discredited Republican radicals
of the House of Representatives. After capturing the Congress in 1994
and proclaiming a "revolution," they had twice shut down the
government over the budget and staged an impeachment trial that
resulted in the acquittal of President Clinton. Seeking to distance
himself from the congressional Republicans, Bush declared that he was
not hostile to government. He would, he said, "change the tone in
Washington." He would be more reasonable than the House Republicans
and more moral than Clinton. Governor Bush went out of his way to
point to his record of bipartisan cooperation with Democrats in Texas,
stressing that he would be "a uniter, not a divider."
Trying to remove the suspicion that falls on conservative Republicans,
he pledged that he would protect the solvency of Social Security. On
foreign policy, he said he would be "humble": "If we're an arrogant
nation, they'll view us that way, but if we're a humble nation,
they'll respect us." Here he was criticizing Clinton's peacemaking and
nation-building efforts in the Balkans and suggesting he would be far
more restrained. The sharpest criticism he made of Clinton's foreign
policy was that he would be more mindful of the civil liberties of
Arabs accused of terrorism: "Arab-Americans are racially profiled in
what's called secret evidence. People are stopped, and we got to do
something about that." This statement was not an off-the-cuff remark,
but carefully crafted and presented in one of the debates with Vice
President Al Gore. Bush's intent was to win an endorsement from the
American Muslim Council, which was cued to back him after he delivered
his debating point, and it was instrumental in his winning an
overwhelming share of Muslims' votes, about 90,000 of which were in
Florida.
So Bush deliberately offered himself as an alternative to the divisive
congressional Republicans, his father's son (at last) in political
temperament, but also experienced as an executive who had learned the
art of compromise with the other party, and differing from the
incumbent Democratic president only in personality and degree. Bush
wanted the press to report and discuss that he would reform and
discipline his party, which had gone too far to the right. He
encouraged commentary that he represented a "Fourth Way," a variation
on the theme of Clinton's "Third Way."
In his second term, Clinton had the highest sustained popularity of
any president since World War II, prosperity was in its longest
recorded cycle, and the nation's international prestige high. Bush's
tack as moderate was adroit, shrewd and necessary. His political
imperative was to create the public perception there were no major
issues dividing the candidates and that the current halcyon days would
continue as well under his aegis. Only through his positioning did
Bush manage to close to within just short of a half-million votes of
Gore and achieve an apparent tie in Florida, creating an Electoral
College deadlock and forcing the election toward an extraordinary
resolution.
Few political commentators at the time thought that the ruthless
tactics used by the Bush camp in the Florida contest presaged his
presidency. The battle there was seen as unique, a self-contained
episode of high political drama that could and would not be
replicated. Tactics such as setting loose a mob comprised mostly of
Republican staff members from the House and Senate flown down from
Washington to intimidate physically the Miami-Dade County Board of
Supervisors from counting the votes there, and manipulating the
Florida state government through the office of the governor, Jeb Bush,
the candidate's brother, to forestall vote counting were justified as
simply hardball politics.
The Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, by a five-to-four margin,
perversely sanctioned not counting thousands of votes (mostly African-
American) as somehow upholding the equal protection clause of the 15th
Amendment (enacted after the Civil War to guarantee the rights of
newly enfranchised slaves, the ancestors of those disenfranchised by
Bush v. Gore). In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia argued
that counting votes would cast a shadow on the "legitimacy" of Bush's
claim to the presidency. The Court concluded that the ruling was to
have applicability only this one time. By its very nature, it was
declared to be unprecedented. Never before had the Supreme Court
decided who would be president, much less according to tortuous
argument, and by a one vote margin that underlined and extended
political polarization.
The constitutional system had ruptured, but it was widely believed by
the political class in Washington, including most of the press corps,
that Bush, who had benefited, would rush to repair the breach. The
brutality enabling him to become president, while losing the popular
majority, and following a decade of partisan polarization, must spur
him to make good on his campaign rhetoric of moderation, seek common
ground and enact centrist policies. Old family retainers, James Baker
(the former Secretary of State who had been summoned to command the
legal and political teams in Florida) and Brent Scowcroft (elder
Bush's former national security adviser), were especially unprepared
for what was to come, and they came to oppose Bush's radicalism,
mounting a sub rosa opposition. In its brazen, cold-blooded and single-
minded partisanship, the Florida contest turned out in retrospect to
be an augury not an aberration. It was Bush's first opening, and
having charged through it, grabbing the presidency, he continued
widening the breach.
The precedents for a president who gained office without winning the
popular vote were uniformly grim. John Quincy Adams, the first
president elected without a plurality, never escaped the accusation of
having made a "corrupt bargain" to secure the necessary Electoral
College votes. After one term he was turned out of office with an
overwhelming vote for his rival, Andrew Jackson. Rutherford B. Hayes
and Benjamin Harrison, also having won the White House but not the
popular vote, declined to run again. Like these three predecessors
Bush lacked a mandate, but unlike them he proceeded as though he had
won by a landslide.
The Republicans had control of both houses of the Congress and the
presidency for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was elected. But
Eisenhower had gained the White House with a resounding majority. He
spent his early years in office trying to isolate his right wing in
the Congress, quietly if belatedly encouraging efforts to censure
Senator Joseph McCarthy. Eisenhower greeted the Democratic recovery of
the Congress in 1954 with relief and smoothly governed for the rest of
his tenure in tandem with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. The
outrageous behavior of the Republicans during the brief period in
which they had held congressional power and unleashed McCarthy was a
direct cause of their minority status for 40 subsequent years. But the
Republicans who gained control of the Congress in 1994 had not learned
from their past.
The Republican radicals in charge of the House of Representatives
remained unabashed by their smashing failures of the 1990s. They were
willing to sacrifice two speakers of the House to scandals of their
own in order to pursue an unconstitutional coup d'