Everybody knows that Our Fearless Leader doesn't make mistakes, doesn't second-guess himself, and certainly doesn't have any time to invest in garnering contradictory opinions, either from ancestors who have also held presidential office, or from the media, or even from dissenting fellow Republicans. He lives in a bubble or dome of impenetrable certainty, guided by his direct line to the Almighty (should we be calling Him the "Other" Almighty, given Bush's high opinion of his own importance?), as well as, perhaps, his booze-damaged brain...and his staff, especially "Vice-President" Cheney and political mastermind Karl Rove, like to keep it that way.
So now W. is facing his second electoral defeat for presidential office in four years. Last time, a weird symmetry of events, persons in positions of authority down in Florida as well as in the District of Columbia, and possibly the starry-eyed naive faith we Democrats hold in the fairness of our elections system, combined to thrust the loser into the job won by his opponent, Vice President Gore. We all like to think that once the crushing, painful truth of his second, even greater loss penetrates his barely-working brain, the second man named George Bush to hold the highest office in our land will step aside for President-elect John Kerry.
Here's a scary question, kids, just in time for All Hallows Eve/Samhain: since we know he's going to lose again, what if Bush won't willingly leave office?
Bush boasts of his disinterest in newspapers, televised news reports, and other forms of information that do not spring directly from the pages of his two most hallowed publications, the Bible and the Wall Street Journal (possibly in that order). He has been rewarded for failure all his adult life, if not from birth itself. There has never been, to my knowledge, a defeated incumbent who had to be removed, either by legal writ or by force, from the office he had been denied by the voters of America.
I believe Kerry will metaphorically bitch-slap Bush, next Tuesday night. Forget the media whores who call it a dead heat; the popular and Electoral College vote tallies will, if anything, make W.'s defeat a rout, a mugging, a blow-out. What I do not yet think with conviction, though, is that he will leave with grace, dignity, or earnest conviction, regardless of what he has already claimed in at least one interview. Remember his sputtering "I'm gonna win" response to a debate question about Kerry's fitness, should he be elected, to lead the nation.
Does George W. Bush know something we don't? Or is he simply so arrogant, so blind with power and ambition and what the Greek playwrights called hubris, that he thinks he cannot be defeated? Of course, his party is striving hard to steal ballots all over the place; one member of my family, in fact, is a poll watcher in a contested state. We are well informed of the plethora of Rovian dirty tricks W.'s people have amassed to try to steal this thing. I wonder if we're not overlooking a vitally important, if admittedly remote, possibility: that once re-defeated, incumbent Bush may "dismiss" or "brush off" the election results.
"I'm a war president," he may say. "You don't change horses in the middle of the stream. We've got an enemy out there who wants to kill us, because he hates our freedom, hates our way of life, hates everything America stands for. And in the name of preserving freedom, I have decided to stay in office, pending the resolution of this crisis."
What are we gonna do in this eventuality, people? Is any instrumentality in place in our government to ensure that a defeated politician, regardless of his high station, actually be removed to make room for his successor? I'm not up on this, but it seems to me that people who have successfully ignored reality for four years the way these cretins have done could ignore an election result that puts them out on the street.
Any history, government, or poli-sci majors out there, please post reassuring answers to this dilemma! And, my apologies for being too prolix with this, it's my first time --- on Kos, that is. (-;