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what, still at large? by alex ross/villiage voice
Enduring question for 2012: why were the Bush-Cheney
political corpses from 2008 never fully interred, but allowed to live on as
undying, ever-dangerous vampires? It wasn't for lack of widespread scorn (to this day) towards this
conspicuous, evildoing duo, but because no empowered heroes effectively planted the right
wooden stakes.
Certainly, Bushism, extending Reaganism, live on because
both share the rightwing gang's willful denial of reality. Second, and more critical, because
skittish, spineless Obama Democrats devoid of killer instinct squandered the
opportunity of a lifetime -- to dramatize W.'s manifold failures and thus shift
our political ground of being. The
first is predictable; the second, an ongoing tragedy.
What is more disheartening, yet revealing of today's horror
show than to realize our most disgraced, discredited, and despised ex-president
since Nixon still insinuates our politics long after departure? Right,
W., the Decider who failed at
everything -- nominal truth-telling, war-making, foreign policy, economic
or job growth, emergency responses, balancing the budget, education,
bank/mortgage oversight, avoiding nasty scandals -- even muzzling his
most unpopular, rogue vice
president.
So, was/is public revulsion against W. simply drastic
personality fatigue, rather than awareness of his reign of error? Yet only national psychosis explains Howard
Fineman's insight (during Iowa) about what unifies both parties: direct
affinity to Shrub. This "most
influential political figure of the last decade," even years later,
"remains one of the most consequential, though paradoxically invisible, figures
in modern American history." How
is it possible that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (by Republican wannabes) carries
such enduring sway? How is it that
Obama remains Bush's policy cousin?
A Whiff of Epic Proportions
As if that's not bad enough, Thomas Frank's new book,
"Pity
the Billionaire," describes another painfully ironic mystery -- how in
blazes did the crash of 2008 boost the very reactionaries by 2010 directly liable for
the nightmarish wreckage? The
fiasco of lawless crony capitalism focused the populace for only one election,
making history by installing a vaguely liberal, mixed breed Democrat with the
skimpiest of resumes. We still await the visible leftwing movement with electoral clout that captures
this rage, as did the Tea Party. With respect, Occupy has yet to align itself to real-world issues or
levers of power.
Frank is correct: elitist Democrats blew a
once-in-a-generation opportunity to leverage massive alienation because the "liberal culture in Washington" was not
"interested in that anger." Rather
like not swinging at softball strikes with bases loaded in the 9th inning and
no outs. Instead, though
extremists logically "had no right" to garner this anger (Tea Party types loved
Bush), the fringe succeeded in a power void. In fact, the president and top Democrats
"totally missed the opportunity" because they were/are "completely unfamiliar
with populist anger. It's an alien thing to them. They don't trust it, and they
have trouble speaking to it."
What's still amazing is how greatly Obama the Remote forgot
why and when he was elected, thus alienating his base. Compared to Hillary, then McCain, this
devout, ambitious non-ideologue filled the national desperation for a seemingly
non-entrenched, fresh face to counter the Bush Doctrine and the Bush
mindset. Who doubts candidate
Obama, absent any national achievements, was elected mainly as the best
anti-Bush to redeem us, or start the ball rolling, from eight years of horrors?
It is the worst indictment of Obama's performance that our
most hated ex-president -- not today's White House celebrity -- still frames our politics. Is not Obama to blame for missing the
chance to starve the Bush beast in the bathtub before then making significant
legislative moves? No clear
majority of '08 voters was dying for a compromised health reform bill or the
entire first year Obama agenda.
His election was about reversing Bushism, not symbolic rejections of that gang's worst, like defending torture. That meant finding a way to investigate and establish what
happened, now water past the dam. Nothing less than misguided timidity or willful amnesia, punctuated by
selling out to the 1%, took over promptly when the Obama inauguration cheers
died down. Thus followed Bush III.
Doomed by Not Re-educating
Where was the Obama re-education program to remedy
fictions about years of failed militarism? Instead, the president widened the invasions, the secrecy
and the civilian drone attacks.
Where were the weekly White House teach-ins to restore basic terms of
economic realism, beyond half-assed, politicized pump-priming? Where was/is the overt correction not
just to bad policy but GOP hysteria about public debt, false Medicare-Social
Security shortfalls, the brilliance of top science, or the "hoax" of energy
pollution and/or climate change? The tip-offs came fast and early, when Obama accepted his Nobel Peace
Prize by defending this over-reaching nation's right to act unilaterally,
echoing Bush but with nicer words. Note the egregious recent parallel when Obama declared faux victory in
Iraq, then dared to channel faux 9/11 references as relevant justification. Say what?
Frankly, I think letting Bush-Cheney off the hook doomed the
first Obama term. And likely the second,
if it happens. If Watergate was
the cancer of the Nixon disgrace, per John Dean, what diagnosis fits today's
government: cardiac arrest, respiratory collapse, or incurable paralysis? All three? It didn't happen by chance, just as the historic loss of
House members in 2010 didn't happen by chance. Could modern Democrats not have figured every Tea Party
candidate for the House or now for president would bellow to outbush
Bush?
Why not? Unvetted failure isn't perceived as
failure. Howard Fineman, again: Obama
"has done little to change the basic framework of domestic and foreign policy
laid down, brick by brick, in the Bush Years." Even on Bush's two biggest domestic policy initiatives: the
No Child Left Behind and Prescription Drug, this president "has tweaked but not
abandoned -- and in some ways even amplified." So "the Bush presidency may be gone," Fineman concludes, "but
Bush still reigns, even if we can't see him in Iowa."
Brace for a contest between a Democratic shape-shifter who inexcusably forgot his mandate (but not Bushism) with a Romney shape-shifter whose insane neo-conservatism wants to take Bush one step further. I don't know about the country, but reality is under siege and may not survive such a high-falutin' donnybrook.
