First Door on the Left

It’s official: President Bush’s re-election campaign is underway.

For those who haven’t been paying attention – and Bush, Cheney and their corporate cronies certainly hope you haven’t – the president officially launched his campaign at a March 20 “kickoff” rally in Orlando. “I’m looking forward to this campaign ahead,” Bush told the assembled party faithful between chants of “Four more years!” and “USA! USA!” “With you at my side, there is no doubt in my mind we’re headed to a victory.”

Bush may claim the “political season” is just beginning, but he has spent the past nine months crisscrossing the country on a dash for cash, personally headlining 46 million-dollar fundraising events on the way to amassing an unprecedented $170 million campaign war chest. Awestruck by the sheer amount of cash on hand, the media sometimes mistake Bush’s piles of money for popularity. Venality is more like it. Bush has turned the election into an auction, an invitation-only opportunity for Corporate America to prove its loyalty to the president.

The engine in Bush’s money machine has been an elite regiment of 455 “Rangers” and “Pioneers,” the honorary titles bestowed on fundraisers who can collect at least $200,000 or $100,000, respectively. Legally, each of these individuals is limited to a maximum donation of $2,000. But the Bush campaign has perfected a sophisticated system of bundling – by which corporate executives, lobbyists or other insiders pool a large number of contributions to maximize their political influence. The Rangers and Pioneers have collected at least $64.2 million so far.

In return, these worthies have received access to the administration, relaxed regulations, legislative favors, targeted tax breaks, lucrative federal contracts, and plum appointments at home and abroad. But some hold more of a stake in Bush’s re-election than others: The 10 industries profiled here have been among the most generous supporters of the president – and they stand to reap the greatest rewards if Dubya prevails in November.

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Todays assignment…

by Jack Beatty, The Atlantic online

George W. Bush has made rationality an antonym of Republican. His is the first faith-based presidency. Above the entrance to the Bush West Wing should be St. Paul’s definition of faith—”the evidence of things unseen.”

So much of President Bush has to be taken on faith. His integrity, for example. You have to trust the evidence of things unseen to believe him, for the visible evidence indicates a disposition toward deceit. Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, the cost of his prescription-drug bill, the effect of his tax cuts on the deficit, the number of lines of stem cells available to scientists after his restrictions on research. You name it—from who hung the Mission Accomplished banner up behind him for his “victory” strut on the USS Abraham Lincoln to his claims that on September 11 he, not the Air Force Chief of Staff, was the one to order the military to highest alert—he’s lied about it.

Alternatively, Bush could be seen as what Al Sharpton called “an unconscious liar.” He asks us to accept his feelings about something as evidence of the something. In this view, he’s not deceitful; he’s innocent of the procedures of rationality—he can’t think.

Or his troubles with truth arise because he bases his thoughts on authority not reality. Bush offered an example of his dependent mind on the night of his election. When Al Gore called to retract the concession he’d offered to Bush before the race tightened in Florida, Bush told him, My brother Jeb says I won fair and square. Gore came back that Bush’s “little brother” was not an oracle. He was to George. So Bush is not a liar; he says whatever his authority figures, “Dick” or “Rummy” or “Condi,” tell him he should say. In a recent edition, The Wall Street Journal had a long backgrounder on what Bush did on September 11, showing how, under Cheney’s control, the stream of his government flowed around the President as if nobody expected leadership from George.

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