The
Chicago Tribune has, predictably,
endorsed Dumbyanocchio for president. As
Mustang Bobby remarked, this is hardly an earth-shattering revelation. Had the Trib endorsed Kerry, "Col. McCormick would have risen out of his grave to wreak havoc over downtown Chicago."
Looking at the actual endorsement, however, I am put more in mind of a brilliant satire that might grace the pages of The Onion than the normally staid and conservative prose that is the usual product of the Tribune's editorial board. In fact, if we were in the custom of holding our elections on April 15 instead of paying taxes that day, I might suspect today's endorsement of being a wry April Fool's joke. Consider the following:
This year, each of us has the privilege of choosing between two major-party candidates whose integrity, intentions and abilities are exemplary.
I would never dream of using the word "integrity" in any sentence referring to George W. Bush--unless it were qualified by a strong negative. To call his intentions or his abilities "exemplary" suggests to me either a significantly diminished mental capacity or an utter lack of attention to events on the world stage and here at home over the last four years--either of which is enormously troubling to find in the editorial board of a major newspaper.
There is much the current president could have done differently over the last four years. There are lessons he needs to have learned. And there are reasons--apart from the global perils likely to dominate the next presidency--to recommend either of these two good candidates.
But for his resoluteness on the defining challenge of our age--a resoluteness John Kerry has not been able to demonstrate--the Chicago Tribune urges the re-election of George W. Bush as president of the United States.
Resolution is normally a good quality in a leader. But what Bush has displayed since he came back from his summer vacation in 2001 has not been resolution, it has been bullheaded, blinkered tunnel vision. Any thinking person, and certainly any leader worthy of re-(s)election, does not plunge headlong down a path that has repeatedly proven to be the wrong course: s/he recognizes that circumstances have changed, and changes direction accordingly. This is a skill that Commander Codpiece has apparently never learned--and one of the main reasons that millions of furious voters have for wanting to toss his sorry ass out of the White House. For the Tribune to fail to recognize this salient fact is, again, deeply troubling.
Bush, his critics say, displays an arrogance that turns friends into foes. Spurned at the United Nations by "Old Europe"--France, Germany, Russia--he was too long in admitting he wanted their help in a war. He needs to acknowledge that his country's future interests are best served by fixing frayed friendships. And if re-elected, he needs to accomplish that goal.
But that is not the whole story. Consider:
Bush has nurtured newer alliances with many nations such as Poland, Romania and Ukraine (combined population, close to 110 million) that want more than to be America's friends: Having seized their liberty from tyrants, they are determined now to be on the right side of history.
Kerry is an internationalist, a man of conspicuous intellect. He is a keen student of world affairs and their impact at home.
But that is not the whole story. Consider:
On the most crucial issue of our time, Kerry has serially dodged for political advantage. Through much of the 2004 election cycle, he used his status as a war hero as an excuse not to have a coherent position on America's national security. Even now, when Kerry grasps a microphone, it can be difficult to fathom who is speaking--the war hero, or the anti-war hero.
Yes, Bush has "reached out," if you can call it that, to nations such as Poland. But he has not succeeded in keeping them on our side. Even as I type this, Poland is planning to pull its troops out of Iraq. And Bush has also reached out to nations that we really have no business being in business with. Leaving aside the obvious elephant in the room (the Saudis), we are yet again propping up tinpot dictators in several of the former Soviet republics, feeding their paranoia and aiding their despotic rule in return for concessions such as basing rights, oil and natural gas leases, and pipeline routes. Bush's "with us or agin' us" strategy has gotten us entangled with régimes every bit as illegitimate as his own, and from whose clutches we will escape only with difficulty.
And if the Tribune is going to castigate anybody for "serially [dodging] for political advantage," they had better start with their man Shrub. When he was campaigning in 2000, Bush asserted that he did not want the United States to be adventuring abroad and getting entangled in nation-building. That changed quickly once he was in office. In the aftermath of the terror attacks, Bush opposed the creation of an independent commission to investigate them, until that stance proved politically costly. He subsequently flip-flopped on allowing his handler-minions to appear before the commission once it was established, and on whether and how he and his puppet-meister would appear as well. Bush also opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (which Kerry favored, by the way), until he changed his mind and supported it--and then tried to use it as a vehicle to bust a few government unions along the way.
George W. Bush is, in my estimation, a dangerous, if not lunatic then certainly monomaniac. His belief that he has been appointed by God to lead this nation is troubling at best and delusional at worst. His régime's denigration of what they call the "reality-based community" (about which I blogged yesterday) is not only disquieting but potentially ruinous. His deep and abiding willingness to do anything to anything in order to get or retain power borders on the criminal. His multitudinous connections to monied special interests have had a disturbing and detrimental effect on our nation's public policy. Several members of his cabinet, and of the Republican leadership in Congress, are under federal and/or international investigation for high crimes and misdemeanours for which they should, if found guilty, be liable to be impeached.
In short, there is no good reason to return George W. Bush to the White House for another four years. If we were lucky, such a reckless course of action would only result in four more years of the same kind of malaise and malapropisms that we have seen in the four years since the Shrubbery stole power via the Supreme Court. But the next four years could look a hell of a lot worse than the last four did, especially considering what is at stake.
Kerry is the only way. Fortunately, a majority of the American people already seem convinced of that fact.
(Cross-posted from Musing's musings). If you agree with my analysis, please consider sending the Tribune a letter to the editor.