Based on the children's book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day heard here being read by the author, Judith Viorst.
They started September with the war on terror but now nobody mentions the war on terror and when they get out of bed each day they trip over the paper and it says by mistake another colleague did something illegal while the camera was running and they can tell it is going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month.
Click to enlarge. Shows the number of stories (number published each day as recorded on Google News) for the phrases `war on terror' or `war on terrorism' was high at the beginning of September with Bush's coordinated media campaign, but died off quickly. Much, much more below...
At the end of September the Democrats found
Bill Clinton on the
attack again saying Bush let Osama get away with it and the press found
Bob Woodward on the beat again saying Bush is in a State of Denial and all the Republicans found was a really sticky keyboard in
Mark Foley's empty office.
Click to enlarge. The Foley scandal completely dominated the news (see here for an example from newsmap) and what was overshadowed wasn't good either: Woodward and Clinton. Clinton has since stayed in the news by campaigning and speaking up for Democrats. Meanwhile, the Foley story just ... won't ... die....
Maybe they'll all move to Paraguay.
In Iraq the Democrats said it was all the Republicans' fault. Bush said he was going to stay the course. The Republicans said they were being scrunched. They said they were smushed into a bad position. They said if they can't formulate a better position on Iraq besides `Stay the Course' they were going to be sick on election day. No one even answered.
They could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month.
Click to enlarge. Iraq is a constant drumbeat of bad news for Republicans that just cannot be drowned out.
In polls, the public said they liked Clinton's time of peace and prosperity better than Bush's invisible economic recovery.
At press conferences the public said Hastert doth protest too much. When counting Iraqi casualties, Johns Hopkins said Bush left out a half million dead. Who needs a half million Iraqis? They could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month.
They could tell because evangelical conservatives said Republicans weren't their best friends anymore. They said that Jesus was their best friend and that James Dobson was their next best friend and that Bush was only their third best friend.
I hope you get Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, Bush said to the evangelical conservatives. I hope that next election you get Harry Reid as majority leader and he gives the scary brown people amnesty and gays get married and they take over your schools and jobs and churches and you have to move to Paraguay.
There was a National Intelligence Estimate leaked to the New York Times and the Democrats got an Abramoff scandal in several districts and Bob Woodward's book is still being mentioned in the press. Guess who didn't get any good news?
It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month.
Click to enlarge. The NIE was big news for a while, while Abramoff continues to pop up to a lesser extent day after day.
That's what it was, because after all this North Korea said they were going to test a nuclear weapon and then they went and did it, and everybody blamed it all on Bush. Come back next week and I'll fix it, said China.
Next week, said Bush, I'm going to Paraguay.
Click to enlarge. The Korean nuclear test was the biggest story of the month, and sets the scale for all the graphs in this diary. Within a day, stories were out talking about how Bush's Korea policy had failed.
On the way to the Korean diplomatic disaster, the Taliban came back and slammed reality into the news and while Bush was waiting for Pervez Musharraf to go get Osama bin Laden his friend Hamid Karzai made him look stupid and then when he started crying about the War on Terror again because of the elections the public said he was just crying wolf and when he was telling the public to shut up and be scared Pervez Musharraf came back and said Osama was in Afghanistan.
Republicans were having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month, they told everybody. Nobody even answered.
Click to enlarge. Another constant drumbeat of stories about violence, drugs, and the resurgence of the Taliban.
So then they went to Congress to talk more about the War on Terror and brown people. McCain chose to play games to look moderate. The Democrats chose to sit back with some popcorn and let them fight. The Republicans chose to build a fence along the Mexican border and torture anybody they want, but then the press said, we're not paying attention. They made the Republicans talk about Mark Foley, but they can't make them give up homophobic rhetoric.
Click to enlarge. These stories were clearly supposed to dominate the month leading up to the election according to the Republican gameplan, after people were primed from the September 11th politicization. First the debates, then the votes, then the signing ceremonies at nicely spaced intervals. The country greeted it with a collective yawn, and didn't even notice when habeas corpus disappeared.
When Republicans turned their attention back to the people at home the public said they couldn't protect them from violent killers in their schools, but Republicans stayed quiet. They also said why can't Republicans be as forgiving as the Amish, and Republicans were careful to keep out of the whole issue. They also said you can't just run away from this problem, but Republicans called in absent. The public said please don't mess with domestic policy anymore.
Click to enlarge. A major news event the Republicans just couldn't politicize. Violence run amok: they couldn't exactly promote gun control. And metal detectors at every one-room Amish school house?? Meanwhile, the country watched as the Amish community worked through difficult times with healing and forgiveness instead of fear mongering and hatred.
It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month.
There were spinach problems too and they hate spinach.
There were Republican gays kissing and telling and Republicans hate when kissing exposes their hypocrisy.
The political climate is just too hot, they can't pull the wool over people's eyes anymore, approval ratings are going down the drain, and some of them have to wear horrid prisoner's pajamas. They hate prisoner's pajamas.
As the month ends, another shoe might be about to drop and the Democratic wave is coming and they've just about bit it.
The public wants the Democrats, not Republicans.
It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month.
History says some months are like that.
Even in Paraguay.