America’s Lost Years Under Bush
Wednesday - October 19, 2005
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Del.icio.usIf you’re going to be around a while, clip this column and see if I’m as far-seeing as Nostradamus or Jules Vern (his 1905 Invasion of the Sea
I predict that in 30 years history writers will say George W. Bush’s eight years were America’s Lost Years Presidency.
Some may note that Gov. Linda Lingle called Bush one of our greatest presidents before she poofed into nothingness.
George Bush, the accidental president. Bad war, bad economics, bad science, bad vision.
* Failed the test of federal preparedness at New Orleans.
* Asked us to appoint as Supreme Court justice a friend who’s never been a judge, let alone an appellate judge so we can assess her judicial worth.
* A deficit-spending binge financed by the Bank of China.
* In-your-face appointment of the contentious John Bolton as U.N. ambassador during a Senate recess.
* A “No Child” education policy that’s made blue and red states mad over money and government intrusion.
* A policy of let’s allow more sulfur emissions by power plants rather than less.
* Encouragement of the notion that society, not individual women, owns the rights to a developing life-form in a womb. And that new-line stem-cell research is bad.
* Making the word “values” part of the neocon and red state vocabulary. Values aren’t some commodity you pluck out of thin air; they are things entwined in our complex culture.
New York University Law School professor Noah Feldman summed up the man as not a critical investigator of facts. “The President believes what you tell him,” Feldman said.
Global warming. I can’t say with certitude what’s causing it. It could be a cyclical event. Most smart people would lean to the let’s-play-it-safe side and suspect fuel emissions. Not George. He’s not intimidated by university types who never spent a day clearing mesquite wood in a red state.
“You know, look, there was a debate of Kyoto, and I made the decision - as did a lot of other people in this country, by the way - that the Kyoto treaty didn’t suit our needs. In other words, the Kyoto treaty would have wrecked our economy, if I can be blunt,” said George, bluntly.
“My hope is to move beyond the Kyoto debate and to collaborate on new technologies that will enable the United States and other countries to diversify away from fossil fuels so that the air will be cleaner, and that we have the economic and national security that comes from less dependence on foreign sources of oil.”
The Kyoto Protocol took effect last February after ratification by 141 countries - every industrialized nation except Australia and us. It aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to about 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
A recent Wall Street Journal full-page ad sponsored in part by local GOPers Michael Aki, George Cole, Laverne De Luz, Gloria Paet and Donald Tagawa said Bush is “working to win the war on terror, protect the home-land, pass an energy bill and strengthen Social Security.”
On all counts, he gets a grade of miserable failure.
I have to think that all but the most rabid, see-no-evil Republicans wish the party had offered up somebody better.
You don’t hear Lingle touting the man as the country’s savior any more, do you?
Losing eight years of American momentum is a darn shame.
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