Righting the ship after Bush

When Bush is out of office and hopefully replaced by a Democrat, or at least a reality-based politician, will the world go back to normal?

Here are some steps that would help me feel like the ship of state that Bush capsized has been righted.

First, some symbolic things.  All the people whose characters were assassinated by Karl Rove?  They need to be revived.  Richard Clarke, the guy who tried to warn the President about 9/11, should get the Presidential Medal Freedom, but only after it's ripped off of George Tenet's chest.

Joe Wilson should get something, along with anybody else in the intelligence community who dissented when the evidence and analysis was being distorted by politicians.

Karl Rove? Frogmarched.  Along with Scooter Libby.  Stephen Hadley should be threatened with prosecution for the "16 words" SOTU lie about yellowcake until he gives up Condy, the real liar behind the State of the Union lies.

And ex-President Bush II himself should be made to appear before audiences of randomly picked citizens, not hand-picked ones, just to know how it feels.

And then there are substantive changes, like fixing the USA Patriotic Act, and undoing a raft of damaging lobbyist-written legislation.

The list goes on, but it boils down to two things:

1. Dissent is patriotic.  Free speech is the bedrock of our civic life and must be preserved.
   
2. An administration that crows about accountability for schoolchildren, including 4 year old Head Start participants, should be accountable itself.

•  I'm a Clark Democrat

  Don't give me any credit for these ideas, they were General Clark's themes in his run for the 2004 Democratic nomination.

  by Steve G on Sun Aug 07, 2005 at 05:53:00 AM PDT

•  Don't count on it

  I do believe that a Democrat will be elected in 2008, and likely it will be Hillary Clinton.

  But a second Clinton Presidency will be far far different from the first.  To be sure, our society is not going back to the 1990s.  We are entering a period of great national crisis, which will require a communitarian spirit that the nation has not seen since WWII.  The WOT is here to stay, although we may see a couple years where it doesn't dominate, between the time of withdrawal from Iraq and the next attack on the homeland.  The economy is likely to be in dire shape, gas prices will be rising big time, and oil will become less available.  Further, the big deficits will continue, with massive defense spending, lack of tax revenues due to a poor economy, and as the massive Baby Boomer will start collecting SS and Medicare, the deficit will grow even larger.  I see both cuts in the entitlements and much higher taxes.
  The Patriot Act is much more likely to be extended even further, civil liberties curbed even more, "indecedcy" and "obscenity" prosecuted more.
  The biggest issue on the horizon is a real plan for energy independence.  Without that, I think we are all screwed.

  And this doesn't include the possibility of major unrest within this country.  I can easily see right-wing terrorism from the Dobsonites after Hillary's election, for example.

  by IhateBush on Sun Aug 07, 2005 at 06:09:25 AM PDT

•  Love your 2 essential points

  I fervently hope we can reclaim some of our civil liberties robbed from us during this administration, but it will be a long time coming.

  I fear that it will be more than a generation to undo the wrongs promulgated by this administration and others. I was talking with a friend the other day about this and we figured it would take 50 years of Democratics in office to get this ship back on course. My friend said it took us 50 years to break it (starting with Nixon) and will take another 50 to undo the wrongs.

  All we have had since Nixon are Carter and Clinton. Carter was never able to effect change in congress and Clinton didn't seem motivated to do so. Our man from the DLC.

  Americans have swallowed a lot of the Repug rhetoric around things like "right to work" "right to life" and "ownership". They have been cowed into submission by fear and willing to give away their constitutional rights. No one seems to worry about civil rights anymore. Caring for our fellow man seems to be wimpy; The Great Society seems to be a dirty word in this new cold world.

  The debt, the loss of rights, the unravelling of a social safety net, these things will take a very long time to regain. There's the ideas and the legislation. Very hard to undo.

  by Liberalated Woman on Sun Aug 07, 2005 at 06:17:50 AM PDT

•  Sadly

  This administration and the Republican congress has so altered almost every government entity and policy, that it will take years of Democratic control just to return to pre 2000.  That is especially devasting when you think how many issues there are that required urgent action to be effective.  There can be no righting of the ship with measures like "healthy forests", while we can overturn, we never get back to square one.  During such a critical time, where we must make radical changes to secure our future, we have gone in reverse and squandered an opportunity that has a fixed window.  We can right the ship, but we can't get back the time wasted and the permanent damage done in the meantime.

  by Stevo on Sun Aug 07, 2005 at 06:22:28 AM PDT

•  It will take at least DECADES to regain

  our stature in the world community.  That damage is severe.  Repair of domestic policy is not quite so difficult, but is likely to take decades as well.

  There is a lot of work ahead.

  by beemerr90s on Sun Aug 07, 2005 at 07:13:21 AM PDT

•  TOO LATE!!

  "It will take at least DECADES to regain...".

  correct.

  it's over, folks. you can stop pretending that all we need at this point is a dem white house in 2008.

  BushCo should have never been handed a second term. the dems could have won OH and thus the election, but they totally blew it.

  prepare for the worst.

  by Superpole on Sun Aug 07, 2005 at 07:38:21 AM PDT

  •  Yep, we blew it

    but they totally blew it

    So who is they?  If anybody blew it, we blew it.  We in the red states blew it by not getting out enough folks to win.  We in the blue states blew it by not getting out enough folks to deny Bush the popular vote total.

    We waited on the candidates to direct us in what to do.  We waited on the local party machinery to tell us how to volunteer.  Neither of those were up to the task.  And we ourselves should have stepped up to the plate instead of waiting.

    It will take more than a Democratic president in 2008.  You are correct.  Which is why we need to listen to the grassroots now.  You would be surprised at what individual ordinary people are saying when they don't think they are talking partisan politics.  You get insights into why the Democratic message has not been connecting, and it is not the conventional wisdom either from the Beltway or on the netroots.  Just get out and do it and see.  Not selling, just listening.

    It will take attention, not to the 1 position of president, but attention to 50 states and their state legislatures, attention to 210 television markets and the tenor of the political conversation, attention to 3081 counties and the local officials there, attention to 192,480 precincts, and attention to the 59,028,111 people who did vote for John Kerry and by rights should be a base for whatever we do.

    We blew in 2004.  We cannot afford to blow it in 2006 and 2008.

    by TarheelDem on Sun Aug 07, 2005 at 07:54:46 AM PDT

•  Normal

  When Bush is out of office and hopefully replaced by a Democrat, or at least a reality-based politician, will the world go back to normal?

  What is "normal"?

  We are well out of the FDR-Truman political era that ended the Depression, won World War II, and set the strategic framework that 42 years later ended the Cold War.

  The new normal will be post-Bush, post-oil, possibly post-globalization economy (cost of transportation and all that).  But a culturally globalized culture--through the internet.  We will have a world with massive inequalities between the 15% and the 85% globally and within nations, a sort of fractal pattern of inequality.  Culturally, it will be post-post-modern, what that is and how it will be named is not yet apparent, but it could herald a new renaissance or a new dark age.

  Our vision must be beyond Bush.  And I hope that our list gets articulated and expanded, not boiled down.  When the time comes, Democrats must know exactly what to do and how to do it rapidly.  That is the lesson of the Reagan-Heritage "revolution" and the Bush-PNAC "revolution".

  by TarheelDem on Sun Aug 07, 2005 at 07:40:31 AM PDT

•  Old rules or new rules?

  I was thinking of the culture of the Presidency.

  What will happen of accountability of our leaders after Bush and Rove are out of the White House?

  We went too far and help Clinton accountable (impeached him) for lying about a BJ.

  Then we swung in the opposite direction and started saying that when Rummy fails collossally in front of everyone, he's doing a "superb job" and the press nods.  Intelligence failures led us into a war by mistake?  Give the intelligence director a medal.  Lied to the Congress and the people on TV?  Promote the NSA to SecState.

  The question is whether, when a Democrat makes a mistake (we all make mistakes), will that person admit it and step down, quietly disappear, or in the Bush tradition, proclaim victory and get a promotion?

  What are the rules now?  Do we have two versions of reality and when we get more power we can impose our version and ignore the other one?

  by Steve G on Sun Aug 07, 2005 at 10:04:54 AM PDT

•  Apply Penalty

  I don't believe in the Death Penalty except in the most extreme and symbolic (cathartic) cases, but in order to restore America:

  Traitors will be shot, cremated, and their ashes spread at sea.

  The Atonement Process will begin.
  

  by LNK on Sun Aug 07, 2005 at 10:12:38 AM PDT

•  there's a huge list of people for the frogmarch

  One thing I've learned in the last four years, when I became obsessed with all of this, is that this cancer runs deep.

  It goes back to the end of WWII at the very least.

  It CERTAINLY goes back to Nixon.

  The frogmarch needs to include Kissinger, George Schultz, Poppy Bush, Rumsfeld, everyone in PNAC, anyone who heads up or funds a right-wing "think tank", Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch .....

  It just goes on and on and on .....

  by Nordic on Sun Aug 07, 2005 at 10:16:45 AM PDT