Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Tweet

Senator Arlen Specter got himself into hot water with fire-breathing anti-abortion Republicans for stating the obvious–that no anti-abortion Supreme Court nominee will pass a divided U.S. Senate.  Here’s what the New York Times quotes him as saying:

The Senate, Mr. Specter said, would be unlikely to approve "judges who would change the right of a woman to choose.”

Anyone who can count knows that the Republicans now have 55 votes and without five Democrats they can’t beat a virtually assured Democratic filibuster.

The anti-abortionists got themselves into high dudgeon over Specter’s candid remarks:

Michael Schwartz said his organization [Concerned Women of America] would continue to press the case against the lawmaker.

"It is clear to me that with this statement and his past record of performance, Senator Specter has disqualified himself from any right to be considered as chairman of the Judiciary Committee.”

I actually think it’d be a great development if the Republican senators caved to the hard right and shunted Specter aside.  Every Democrat in America knows whose side Arlen Specter is going to be on in a Supreme Court fight.  He’s not going to be on the side of women or abortion rights.  He’s going to be on the president’s side even if his nominee is anti-choice.  In fact, in the same Times article, Specter points out that he’s voted for every single execrable nominee Bush has proposed for the federal bench.

But the problem with Specter as chairman is that he adds a veneer of moderation to the process.  Republicans can say that with Specter in charge the committee will give fair and balanced hearings allowing both sides to air their views; when everyone knows that the outcome of the hearings will be predetermined.

I’d really like to see someone like Rick Santorum take over that committee.  Then the hard-right will be mollified and we will know who our real enemies are.  So I say, let ‘em dump Arlen.  Good riddance to a temporizer.  The harder right the Republican party goes, the faster Democrats will get back into the running as a viable contender for national political leadership.

Of course, Bush, Rove and Gonzales will be far smarter than to nominate an out and out anti-abortion nominee.  They’ll nominate a stealth candidate who has a record that cannot be construed as overtly anti-abortion.  And this will give that nominee cover for refusing to answer questions from Democrats about his or her views on abortion.  You can be damn sure that this is the advice that Arlen Specter is giving the bastards as I write this.

Now that I think about all of this, I’ve come to realize why rumors are flying that Ashcroft may not be back for a second term.  Can you think of any bigger lightning rod for opposition to a Bush appointee than John "Hatchetman" Ashcroft?  I can’t.

Tweet

Russ Baker recently published an article in Guerilla News Network, Two years before 9/11, candidate Bush was already talking privately about attacking Iraq, according to former ghost writer, which revealed that Bush was contemplating the invasion of Iraq years before he actually did so and far before he told the American people that war with Iraq was not inevitable if Sadaam disarmed.

Mickey Herskowitz, Bush’s former official biographer, said the following about his conversations with the president on this subject:

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”

In today’s New York Times (Confident Bush Outlines Ambitious Plan for 2nd Term), Richard Stevenson quotes Bush as saying in yesterday’s news conference: "Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it," Mr. Bush said, asserting the power he held after a decisive win…"  Just goes to show you that worn out tropes never die, at least in the mouth of George Bush.  Last time he used those words we invaded Iraq.  One can only wonder on what new adventures Bush will spend his ‘political capital’ in the coming four years??

Tweet

Bush exits his post-election press conference (credit: Shaun Heasley/Reuters)

In Bush’s News Conference today, he said something startling and quite lacking in credibility given his past history:

Every civilized country also has a stake in the outcome of this war. Whatever our past disagreements, we share a common enemy, and we have common duties to protect our peoples, to confront disease and hunger and poverty in troubled regions of the world.

It’s clear from this sentence, the entire press conference, and his past statements that what he’s really concerned about is crushing terrorism and enemies of the U.S. (whether terrorist or not) as he perceives them.  But what interested me is the closing portion which emphasizes our duty to confront disease, hunger and poverty in the world.  If he’s ever said that before in that way, I don’t remember hearing it.  I know he’s proposed an AIDS project in Africa, but this seems a fairly sweeping and comprehensive statement.

Of course, I don’t believe it.  But who knows, perhaps leopards do change their spots (to reverse the Biblical saying)?  The proof will be in the pudding.  I once knew a university president who was a fairly unlikable person, but who did say one smart thing.  He’d served at the National Institute of Medicine and was a proficient bureaucratic infighter I presume.  He said: "Don’t listen to what a politician says, watch his budget.  Where a politician spends money tells you his or her real priorities."  Indeed, this holds true with the above statement.  If Bush DOES SOMETHING to implement the high-flown rhetoric above, then he’ll have truly changed his spots.

But why should we hope or believe this is possible?  He’s betrayed his supposed compassionate Conservative values in the past.  It’s doubtful he’d change his tune now.

I found one of his statements supremely laughable:

"I am glad people of faith voted in this election. I don’t think you ought to read anything into the politics, the moment, about whether or not this nation will become a divided nation over religion.”

Oh, no!  His campaign certainly didn’t divide people over religion or moral values, did it?  And how about those Americans who are Muslim?  Is their worship as protected in Bush’s eyes as that of his beloved evangelicals?  Don’t you believe it.

Mideast

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the most intractable and divisive issue in the Mideast (aside from Iraq) and his record over the past four years has been worse than dismal.  Today’s comments on this subject left me less than hopeful that anything can change in the coming four years:

The Middle East peace is a very important part of a peaceful world. I have been working on Middle — Middle Eastern peace ever since I’ve been the president. I laid down some — a very hopeful strategy in June of 2002. And my hope is that we’ll make good progress. I think it’s very important for our friends the Israelis to have a peaceful Palestinian state living on their border. It’s very important for the Palestinian people to have peaceful, hopeful future. That’s why I articulated a two-state vision in that Rose Garden speech. I meant it when I said it, and I mean it now.

More of the same platitudes, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."  Haaretz stated accurately, but rather charitably: "his administration has made only sporadic attempts to bring Israelis and Palestinians together."

Tony Blair also spoke recently quite urgently of the Mideast: "The need to revitalize the Middle East peace process is the single most pressing political challenge in our world today."  Bush doesn’t seem to share this sense of urgency to the sorrow of future Israelis and Palestinians who will needlessly die due to U.S. lethargy and inaction.

Tweet

Second term: The Rapture (credit: Doug Mills/NYT)

It is an act of supreme optimism on the day after such a dismal election, when hope is in tatters and the Republicans have tightened their grip on the levers of power, to think of a future rise of the prospects of the Democratic party. But we should remember that every party goes through long cycles of being out of power; of seeming to be out of favor or out of touch with the electorate. Indeed, this election seems an especially stinging rejection. But this will not last forever.

I think that George Bush, Karl Rove and Tom DeLay will actually help bring that day closer by overreaching. Their hubris in this apparently sweeping victory will, as it did with Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America fiasco, cause them to propose a sweeping, stridently right wing political-social agenda: abolition of the estate tax, new tax cuts, privatizing social security, hard-right Supreme Court candidates, etc. They think this is a mandate. But if the Democrats remaining in the Senate and House can play their cards right (and admittedly they don’t have many good ones in their hand), the Republicans will overplay theirs. It is especially important that Democrats prosecute the campaign against Tom DeLay’s ethical and legal lapses vigorously. That is one of the biggest current chinks in their armor.

There is possibly a small problem with my analogy to Newt Gingrich in 1994. That is, that BIll Clinton was in power and he availed himself of the presidency to stymie Gingrich every step of the way. Now, we don’t have a Bill Clinton to help Gingrich look like the fool he was. But I’m still hopeful that the Democrats can present a wise and cautious alternative to fire-breathing hard-right advocacy.

I’m curious to see what cabinet changes a second term will bear. It seems obvious that Colin Powell will go. But who’d want that unwelcome chair in a Bush cabinet? Could BUsh persuade a moderate like Richard Lugar to take this portfolio on? If he did, all I can say is good luck Dick. You’ve taken on a thankless task to moderate those dragons, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Will Bush keep Rumsfeld? If not, would he appoint a moderate Republican to fill the slot or another hard right dragon?

Bush’s victory speech was a laugh. Clearly, an excellent speech writer had wanted Bush to put his best foot forward as one tends to do in these magnanimous speeches:

Reaching these goals will require the broad support of Americans. So today I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation. We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America.

But no one, least of all Rove and his crowd in the White House, believes any of it. Their motto certainly will be: “Bitches, if you think the last four years have been bad for you, you ain’t seen nothing’ yet!”