Los Angeles Times
Those who expect President Bush to move to the center now that Jim Jeffords has defected from the Republicans are the same people who expected that Bush would govern from the center once in office. He didn t then and he won t now.
The recent Senate inversion will slow him down, to be sure, but not alter his basic strategy. After all, it worked for the tax cut, attracting 12 defectors among Senate Democrats. So it s likely to work with the other two planks of Bushism -- the missile defense shield and the accelerated move toward fossil fuels and nuclear energy with minimum regard for the environment.
All three planks have been sold as rational responses to current or pending crises -- a ajor economic turndown; an escalating probability of attack from China, North Korea or a "rogue" state; an energy crisis. But each of these so-called crises has been manufactured by the White House.
The economy has slowed, but it's hardly in free fall. The fundamentals (growth, productivity, unemployment) continue in relatively good shape. And the Fed is responding to the counter-cyclical slowdown with interest rate cuts.
There's no new foreign peril. China is every day growing more dependent on global capital that would flee if it even slightly threatened the West. Russia is weaker than ever. North Korea was on the verge of making peace with South Korea before the Bushies pulled the plug. There are dangers, to be sure, but no "rogue" nation has nearly the capacity to launch an ICBM in our direction.
And apart from California's own zany energy system, America has no energy crisis other than a long term need to conserve. Gas prices are moving upward because of a temporary shortage of refining capacity. In the short run, the nation also needs more electric power generators and a better strategy to address supply bottlenecks, but no major new sources of energy.
Bush's ostensible solutions to these crises were cooked up in the early days of his presidential campaign, before these alleged crises. He was trying to sell his giant tax cut long before the economy slowed. He advocated a missile-defense shield way before the tensions with China and North Korea escalated. And he was flogging gas, oil, coal, and nuclear before California utilities collapsed and before gas prices around the country started rising.
It's possible that Bush was remarkably prescient, but it's more likely that since the election he and his crew have cleverly exploited every event that could be twisted or exaggerated to support their preconceived plans.
It gets only more bizarre when you realize that Bush's proposed solutions won't even deal with the supposed problems.
A huge tax cut mostly for the rich will not turn the economy around because the rich won't spend or invest their new windfall nearly quickly enough to affect the current slowdown. Trickle-down economics is, at best, a trickle. Besides, most of the cuts occur in future years.
A giant missile-defense shield won't protect America from nations or groups bent on terrorism, because terrorists don't launch intercontinental ballistic missiles. They put bombs in cargo holds, send lethal germs through the mail, and destroy computer software through the Internet.
And an immense program to get more oil, gas, and coal out of the ground and build new nuclear plants won't keep up with America's energy "needs" because those needs themselves are the problem that has to be addressed. Consumer prices must rise before Americans begin taming their appetites and conserving in a big way, and before alternative sources of energy become economical.
Even more puzzling is the fact that the American public is not exactly enamored of any of these three big plans. Polls show scant support for a giant tax cut.
For years now, "Star Wars" schemes have been greeted with widespread skepticism. Bush's giant backstep on the environment and simultaneous push for coal, oil, and nuclear are profoundly unpopular, especially among all-important independent and suburban swing voters.
So if the crises have been manufactured, the proposed solutions don't even solve them, and the public is dubious at best, why are these three big plans still on track? First and foremost, all are deeply-held cannons of the Republican right, and George W and Prime Minister Richard Cheney are true believers (for ideological reasons rather than for those publicly enumerated).
Second, Jeffords defection notwithstanding, Republicans run Congress and they've basically held together in support of each of them, while the Democrats haven t held the line against them.
Third, the big plans are big, and their sheer boldness has given them momentum.
Yet I think the basic reason these plans are moving forward is because the Bushies simply don't care what anyone else thinks. They feel under no compulsion to respond facts and arguments summoned by distinguished scientists, academicians, policy experts, or journalists, showing how wrongheaded they are. They figure if they stick to their script, reiterating the same illogic and perpetrating the same deceptions, the public will come around to seeing the world their way, eventually. The overall strategy is to eschew reasoned debate, focus on the big three, and keep pushing. They're corporate executives paying singular attention to the bottom line -- which is just getting it done.
The strategy is the exact opposite of President Clinton's. He spread his (and his administration's) energies over a vast terrain of ideas, initiatives, and programs. And after the health care debacle, his initiatives were tiny, appearing in so many small morsels and incremental steps that the public lost much interest in them.
Yet Bill Clinton also respected the process of democratic deliberation in which science, logic, and common sense counted for something. These guys don't.
