First Door on the Left

There have always been ‘third-rail’ issues in American politics, subjects that, if touched upon, will lead to certain political death. For a long while, and until very recently, Social Security was one of these issues.

A new one, surrounding the attacks of September 11, has been born in this political season. If September 11 is discussed, the only allowable sub-topic to be broached is whether or not the Bush administration is capable of keeping us safe from another onslaught.

Friday’s edition of the Boston Globe had a case in point on the front page. An article titled ‘For Bush, Readiness is Key Issue’ stated that, “In speech after speech, President Bush has emphasized his administration’s pledge never to forget the lessons of Sept. 11. He says the top goal of his administration is to prevent another attack.” The Globe article contained, in the next paragraph, the standardized rejoinder: “And while Democratic opponents of the administration are unanimous in their hope that that vulnerability is not exposed with deadly results, they have also argued that Bush has done far too little to protect the country from another attack. He has refused to adequately reimburse state and local officials for homeland security costs, they argue, and has ignored dangerous gaps in air cargo and port security.”

Thus, the ‘preparedness-gap’ becomes the whittled-down talking point du jour. This is a whiff of colossal proportions, the implications of which will echo down the halls of history unless someone develops enough spine to speak the truth into a large microphone. The talking point is not difficult to manage. It was splashed in gaudy multi-point font across the front page of the New York Post in May of 2002.

Two words: ‘Bush Knew.’

(snip)

George W. Bush is going to run in 2004 on the idea that his administration is the only one capable of protecting us from another attack like the ones which took place on September 11. Yet the record to date is clear. Not only did they fail in spectacular fashion to deal with those first threats, not only has their reaction caused us to be less safe, not only have they failed to sufficiently bolster our defenses, but they used the aftermath of the attacks to ram through policies they couldn’t have dreamed of achieving on September 10. It is one of the most remarkable turnabouts in American political history: Never before has an administration used so grisly a personal failure to such excellent effect.

Never mind the final insult: They received all these warnings and went on vacation for a month down in Texas. The August 6 briefing might as well have happened in a vacuum. September 11 could have and should have been prevented. Why? Because Bush knew.

This administration must not be allowed to ride their criminal negligence into a second term. Someone needs to say those two words. Loudly. After all, Bush has proven with Social Security, and with September 11, that third rails can be danced across. All it takes is a little boldness.

by Neal Starkman

Millions of words have been written as to the motivations of voters. Particularly in close elections, as in the 2000 presidential contest, pundits and laypeople alike have speculated on why people voted for whom. The exit poll has been a major tool in this speculation.

But the speculation misses the mark by far. It’s increasingly obvious, for example, that none of the so-called theories can explain President Bush’s popularity, such as it is. Even at this date in his presidency, after all that has happened, the president’s popularity hovers at around 50 percent — an astonishingly high figure, I believe, given the state of people’s lives now as opposed to four years ago.

What can explain his popularity? Can that many people be enamored of what he has accomplished in Iraq? Of how he has fortified our constitutional freedoms with the USA Patriot Act? Of how he has bolstered our economy? Of how he has protected our environment? Perhaps they’ve been impressed with the president’s personal integrity and the articulation of his grand vision for America?

Is that likely?

Granted, there are certain subsections of the American polity that have substantially benefited from this presidency. Millionaires and charismatic Christians have accrued either material or spiritual fortification from Bush’s administration. But surely these two groups are a small minority of the population. What, then, can account for so many people being so supportive of the president?

The answer, I’m afraid, is the factor that dare not speak its name. It’s the factor that no one talks about. The pollsters don’t ask it, the media don’t report it, the voters don’t discuss it.

I, however, will blare out its name so that at last people can address the issue and perhaps adopt strategies to overcome it.

It’s the “Stupid factor,” the S factor: Some people — sometimes through no fault of their own — are just not very bright.

It’s not merely that some people are insufficiently intelligent to grasp the nuances of foreign policy, of constitutional law, of macroeconomics or of the variegated interplay of humans and the environment. These aren’t the people I’m referring to. The people I’m referring to cannot understand the phenomenon of cause and effect. They’re perplexed by issues comprising more than two sides. They don’t have the wherewithal to expand the sources of their information. And above all — far above all — they don’t think.

You know these people; they’re all around you (they’re not you, else you would not be reading this article this far). They’re the ones who keep the puerile shows on TV, who appear as regular recipients of the Darwin Awards, who raise our insurance rates by doing dumb things, who generally make life much more miserable for all of us than it ought to be. Sad to say, they comprise a substantial minority — perhaps even a majority — of the populace.

Politicians have been aware of this forever; they cater to these people. They offer simplistic solutions to complex problems. They evade directed questions with non-sequiturs. They offer meaningless, jingoistic pap instead of thoughtful policy. And these people, the “S” people, eat it all up with a ladle.

I don’t have a solution to this problem. To claim I did would belie my previous arguments. But I do have some modest suggestions that might provide a start for discussion: an intelligence test to earn the right to vote; a three-significantly-stupid-behaviors-and-you’re-out law; fines for politicians who pander to the lowest common denominator and deportation of media representatives who perpetuate such actions.

It’s well past time that people confront this issue, no matter who’s offended. We are on the way to becoming a nation of imbeciles. I’m certain that a plethora of “George W. Bush” jokes is already being circulated in every capital of the world. We can stop this sapping of our national integrity but we must do it soon, lest the morons become the norm and those of us who use our brains for more than memorizing advertising jingles are ourselves ostracized from society.

Let’s start talking. Let’s bring the S factor out of the closet and into the daylight where we can all see it, gulp at its hideousness and finally make serious attempts to bring it to bay.

Governor Dean sent the following email to supporters this afternoon.

On January 20th, George Bush will deliver his State of the Union address.

Last year, he stood before Congress and the American people and misled the nation. He drove us into war with 16 infamous words about Iraq’s pursuit of nuclear weapons - words his administration knew were false before he spoke them.

But George Bush’s problems with the truth don’t end in Iraq. He calls polluting our air “Clear Skies,” destroying old growth “Healthy Forests,” and taking away our civil liberties “The Patriot Act.”

George Bush doesn’t have a clue about the state of our union. He has sold our government to the special interests and has forgotten the concerns of the American people. Between now and the day that George Bush delivers his message to Congress, tell George Bush the truth about what he’s done to the state of our nation:

http://www.deanforamerica.com/stateoftheunion

Forward this email on to everyone you know so they can tell this president exactly how his policies have affected our country.

The truth is that we’ve lost more than 3 million jobs since Bush took office. He’s given tax cuts to his biggest campaign contributors while our property taxes and college tuitions have gone up. And he’s shortchanged homeland security while spending billions on his unnecessary war in Iraq.

Millions of Americans will stand up this year to defend the truth and defeat this president. You can start right now by telling George Bush about the state of our union:

http://www.deanforamerica.com/stateoftheunion

It’s 2004 - the election has begun. Despite everything George Bush has done, the state of our union is strong - and a new age of participation in our democracy is at hand.

Tell George Bush what you think, and please forward this email on to everyone you know. If millions of us speak together right now, our message will be clear: the American people are standing up to revive a government of the people, by the people and for the people in 2004.

Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.

NEW HAMPTON, Iowa, Jan. 5 — Former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey will endorse Howard Dean at a breakfast in New Hampshire on Tuesday, the Dean campaign said today, adding to a growing list of marquee Democrats backing his bid for the party’s 2004 presidential nomination.

Dr. Dean, the insurgent turned front-runner, will interrupt four days of intense campaigning in this first caucus state for a surprise overnight trip to New Hampshire, according to a late change in his schedule. After the breakfast in Manchester, Mr. Bradley is expected to accompany Dr. Dean on his return to Iowa to echo the announcement, according to officials of the Dean campaign and other Democrats familiar with the plan.

The coming endorsement was first reported this morning on the Web site of the Boston Globe.

“I cannot confirm or deny,” Dr. Dean, a former governor of Vermont, said with a grin today when asked about the report at Tom’s Restaurant, a diner where he had breakfast with local Democratic leaders here. “I can’t talk about this.”

“How about, how about,” he continued, stopping himself when his press secretary poked his head through the crowd of reporters. “No, I can’t talk about this. We’ll talk about this at the next stop. Maybe. I can’t say anything about this right now because, I just can’t. It’s not fair.”

With an endorsement, Senator Bradley will join his former rival for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination, Vice President Al Gore, in backing Dr. Dean, who has spent most of the 2004 campaign bashing Washington politicians, but has nonetheless begun to collect their support in greater numbers.

Thirty members of Congress, including the third-ranking Democrat, Representative Robert Menendez of New Jersey, have joined Dr. Dean’s campaign, second only to the campaign of Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, who led the Democratic House delegation for years. Dr. Dean also has the support of several members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including its chairman, Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland.

It’s interesting that the two rivals for the Democratic nomination in 2000 both agree on who should be the standard bearer in 2004.

When President Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up “free speech zones” or “protest zones,” where people opposed to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined. These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event.

When Bush went to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, “The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us.”

The local police, at the Secret Service’s behest, set up a “designated free-speech zone” on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush’s speech.

The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, but folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president’s path. Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign.

Neel later commented, “As far as I’m concerned, the whole country is a free-speech zone. If the Bush administration has its way, anyone who criticizes them will be out of sight and out of mind.”

At Neel’s trial, police Detective John Ianachione testified that the Secret Service told local police to confine “people that were there making a statement pretty much against the president and his views” in a so-called free- speech area.

Paul Wolf, one of the top officials in the Allegheny County Police Department, told Salon that the Secret Service “come in and do a site survey, and say, ‘Here’s a place where the people can be, and we’d like to have any protesters put in a place that is able to be secured.’ ”

Pennsylvania District Judge Shirley Rowe Trkula threw out the disorderly conduct charge against Neel, declaring, “I believe this is America. Whatever happened to ‘I don’t agree with you, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it’?”

(snip)

The Secret Service is duty-bound to protect the president. But it is ludicrous to presume that would-be terrorists are lunkheaded enough to carry anti-Bush signs when carrying pro-Bush signs would give them much closer access. And even a policy of removing all people carrying signs — as has happened in some demonstrations — is pointless because potential attackers would simply avoid carrying signs. Assuming that terrorists are as unimaginative and predictable as the average federal bureaucrat is not a recipe for presidential longevity.

This, to me, does not sound like the United States of America. It sounds more like the actions you would expect the secret police in a third world country to take to protect their dictator from any sign of dissent.

Mr. Bush does not read newspapers and he is not allowed to see anybody who does not agree with him. Is it any wonder he operates under the mistaken impression that the whole world is in love with him?

JOHNSTON, Iowa, Jan. 4 — One by one, Howard Dean’s rivals took their best shots at the man they have to beat for the Democratic presidential nomination, the urgency of the task heightened by their awareness that the first true voters’ test of their chances is less than two weeks away.

As a winter blizzard howled outside the suburban headquarters of Iowa Public Television, inside the studio, the former Vermont governor found himself ducking a barrage, not of snowballs, but of barbed questions and criticisms. At the end of the two-hour debate, sponsored by the Des Moines Register, Dean was still standing, and no visible damage showed.

The wisdom of veteran Iowa Democrats is that the fervent following Dean has attracted by his opposition to the Iraq war and his scorn for those he calls feckless Washington leaders of his party will only be reinforced by the denunciations from his congressional rivals.

The question is whether any of the three major candidates vying with him for support among those still undecided on their course of action at the Jan. 19 caucuses can capture enough votes to deny Dean a victory in the year’s first indication of voter sentiment. The way things have gone so far, a win here could trigger an early Dean rush to nomination.

Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.), who won the Iowa caucuses in 1988, and Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and John Edwards (N.C.), who have campaigned extensively here throughout 2003, are hoping that doubts about Dean’s durability in a general election against President Bush will benefit them.

But the heaviest verbal blows came from Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), who abandoned the Iowa competition months ago to concentrate on New Hampshire’s Jan. 27 primary and Feb. 3 contests in southern and border states. Unlike retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who is following the same skip-Iowa strategy and turned down this nationally televised debate, Lieberman flew into nasty weather to challenge Dean’s credibility and electability.

The raw material for the verbal punch-out was not new. For much of the past month, even as Dean collected far more campaign cash than any of his rivals and scored the endorsement of former vice president Al Gore, the candidates have seized on growing media attention to his verbal “gaffes” and to seeming contradictions in his record.

Dean on Sunday did not back away from any of the controversial statements but sought to put them in a more favorable context.

Click on the headline to continue reading. A full transcript of the debate is available here.