Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Folly: Bush vs. Gore Revisited

Officials and government insiders are ditching the Bush administration faster than the corporate sponsors that dumped Michael Vick, the disgraced quarterback recently indicted for dogfighting. Put simply, being associated with the administration of George W. Bush is becoming a badge of dishonor. For instance, Alan Greenspan, Paul O’Neill, Matthew Dowd, Colin Powell, and a host of others are stepping forward to preemptively disassociate themselves from the disasters Bush has wrought. The latest is former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who now describes Bush – the candidate she voted for twice in the 2000 election! -- as “arrogant, lawless, incompetent, and extreme.”

O’Connor’s mea culpa is on target, if a bit late. But her broadside against Bush could very well describe the majority’s dubious legal rationale in the infamous Bush vs. Gore decision, where she was the decisive vote that installed the very man she now derides. Talk about flip-floppers.

The vast majority of Constitutional scholars have long recognized that the Court’s decision in that case was right out of Alice in Wonderland – “Sentence first, verdict later.” Put simply, the majority disgraced itself when it abrogated its responsibility to be an impartial umpire and instead allowed itself to become an instrument for pursuing and exploiting partisan advantage.

Justice O’Connor (if putting those two words together don't amount to an oxymoron) put her ties to the Bush family and the Republican Party before her loyalty to the country and the cause of justice and equality before the law. In her most important decision she revealed herself to be nothing more than a political hack. Her legal reasoning, always shallow at best, was especially thin in the case of Bush vs. Gore. Interestingly, in overturning the will of the electorate – the majority of whom had voted for Gore – the fastidious O’Connor went on the blame Florida’s voters for being sloppy and stupid with their ballots. The verdict of history, however, is in the process of reversing O’Connor’s decision. It isn’t stupid and sloppy voters in Florida -- who had to contend with illegal purges, confusing ballot designs, systematic irregularities, inferior punch card voting machines, and the like -- who got it wrong, it is O’Connor who screwed up. And she botched it with a decision filled with stupid, sloppy, and disingenuous reasoning. At least O’Connor can see how wrong she was. Now that’s what I call poetic justice.

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The New Axis of Evil: Bush, Britney, and O.J.

Here’s a story you won’t hear from the mainstream media: following current events too closely may do grave injury to your mental health. O.J. is on the loose, kind of, out on bail on kidnapping charges, which will probably only increase the value his autographed memorabilia is fetching.

The Clintons are once again enveloped in a scandal involving an Asian con artist. It’s seem the Clinton’s political and financial fortunes are about as Kosher as the Pork Chop Suey you might buy from a street vendor in Chinatown. And just as you wouldn’t eat at a Chinese restaurant if you saw them preparing the food, so you wouldn’t vote for the Clintons is you saw where they got their money.

Meanwhile, Britney Spears is still getting behind the wheel, George Bush still has 16th months to go as the leader of the free world, and Dick Cheney wants to nuke Iran. And do you know the worst part of all this? The Mullahs in Tehran want the United States to attack their country to generate an anti-American backlash! Here is a message for the clerics in Iran: If you want to engender an anti-American backlash in among your people, then just invite O.J. and Brittany over for a visit. It will save the Bush administration a lot of cruise missiles and I’m sure Britney would look good in a veil.

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Bush vs. O.J Simpson

O.J is back in jail, a Clinton political donor is in the slammer, and a president named George Bush has U.S. troops camping out in the Persian Gulf. It seems like the 1990’s. Or as Yogi Berra would say, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

Actually, it would be pretty nice to travel back in time to a period when the White House scandals mostly involved sex. Bush has his Democratic Peace Theory – spreading democracy will lessen the chances for war. But I have what I’m calling the Lusty Peace Theory – spreading sexy young interns throughout the White House will lessen the chances of war. Of course, my theory may not hold up if America elects Hillary.

Too bad I don't have a theory about how to keep O.J. out of trouble, except to lock the guy up and throw away the key this time. After all, the argument his lawyers made at his previous trial -- If the gloves don't fit, you must acquit -- was even less persuasive than the legal rationale that decided Bush vs. Gore. And now look at the trouble we're in.

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Greenspan Bashes Bush

George W. Bush is about as popular these days as French philosopher hanging out at a NASCAR barbecue. The deservedly unpopular president lost another aficionado when former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan blasted Bush this weekend for his fiscally ruinous economic policies. Yes, the economy is supposed to be one of the administration’s bright spots in a record marred by Iraq, Katrina, and Constitutional misrule, but if Greenspan is correct the bottom could soon drop out as the country faces an axis-of-ills: recession, inflation, and a monster deficit.

According to Greenspan, who at onetime gave the green light to Bush’s 1.3 trillion dollar tax cut, in future years the Fed Reserve will be forced to raise interest rates to double digit amounts in order to counteract inflation. Raising rates to fight inflation could not come at a worse time because the United States is already facing a credit crunch and an economic slowdown associated with the housing bubble. Many believe that as foreclosures rise, cash-strapped consumers, unable to use the equity in their homes as an ATM machines, will cut back spending, leading to a recession. Put simply, the average American are as maxed from the mall out as American forces are from Iraq.

This brings us to the Middle East. The Bush administration, in its bottomless wisdom, pushed ahead with its 1.3 trillion dollar tax cut at one of the least propitious moments possible; soon after discovering that the projected surpluses from the Clinton years were not going to materialize after all, and just before launching its disastrous venture in Iraq, which by some estimates could cost $2 trillion or more.

If you want unvarnished economic advice from a trusted authority figure, then perhaps you’ll find Dick Cheney’s assertion, that “deficit’s don’t matter,” reassuring. However, if you want my advice you’d be wise to spend your tax cut now before the sinking dollar depreciates even further.

Greenspan also offered his view on Iraq, confessing that "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Spoken like an honest libertarian (though many less candid libertarians (Cheney, for instance) seem not the least bit apologetic or embarrassed about privatizing warfare).

The Bush administration’s fiscal policies will eventually prove as rash and imprudent as its decision to invade and occupy Iraq. Just as Iraq is a vicious cycle (the invasion has had the effect of driving up the price of oil, which fuels Iran anti-Western forces like Iran and al-Qaeda), so the Bush deficit will push up interest rates, which will hamper economic growth growing forward. Eventually these two vicious cycles will reinforce each other as higher oil prices, higher interest rates, a bigger deficit, and declining dollar lead to slowing economic growth, which will make most Americans poorer and less secure. Well, As Bush once said of his tax cuts, “It’s your money, you paid for it.” At least that sounds more honest than Bush’s latest slogan “return on success.”

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Bush's Simulated Version of Reality

As the governor of Texas, George W. Bush visited a juvenile prison in order to reinforce his image as tough but compassionate conservative dedicated to reforming the juvenile justice system. After Bush’s photo-op tour, a young African-American inmate, a petty thief named Johnny Demon Baulkmon, asked the governor a simple but affecting question: What do you think of us now? Bush seized the moment to demonstrate his tough-love brand of conservatism. He grew misty eyed as he explained to the young man, “The state of Texas loves you all. We haven’t given up on you. But we love you enough to punish you when you break the law.”

The governor’s aides and supporters high-fived one another following the encounter; indeed, Bush frequently recounted the incident to friends and made it the centerpiece of his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in 2000. Bush would run as a different kind of Republican, a compassionate conservative and a reformer with results.

Things would not turn out so well for Johnny Demon Baulkmon, however. He was raped by another juvenile shortly thereafter. And in 2006, Baulkmon, now serving time in an adult prison for petty theft, would say of Bush, “He doesn’t care about anything but himself. He’s complete trash, a horrible evil person.” A harsh verdict, perhaps, but the full story does not reflect well on Bush’s claim to be a reformer with results (or the effectiveness of his Responsibility Era reforms).

One cannot blame Bush personally, of course for all that has gone wrong on Johnny Baulkom’s life. But the incident seems symptomatic of Bush’s penchant for staging phony photo-ops – think “Mission Accomplished” – that allow him to project a grandiose and overly idealized image, but one that is completely divorced from reality. Bush is hardly the only politician to try and make superficial incidents appear substantive. But with Bush, the Baulkmon encounter seems the norm rather than the exception. No doubt, Bush’s aides and supporters were high-fiving themselves after his “Mission Accomplished” speech, but it wasn’t long thereafter when the evidence of sodomy and torture abuses at Abu Ghraib began to surface.

The Bush administration is attempting to present modest tactical successes associated with the surge as a significant strategic advance. However, much of the so-called progress the administration cites is either misleading or likely to be ephemeral. For instance, sectarian violence may have declined, but much of this is accounted for by the fact that four million Iraqis are now in exile, and most neighborhoods have already been ethnically cleansed. Further, the much ballyhooed American alliance with Sunni insurgents against al-Qaeda is a largely tactical alliance of convenience by the Sunnis aimed at offsetting Shiite military superiority. We are very likely arming and empowering warlords and militias preparing for civil war.

The situation in Iraq is grim and it is likely to remain so when Bush leaves office in about fifteen months. The prospect of national reconciliation in Iraq is much lower than the prospect of a larger civil war. Nevertheless, the Bush administration will continue to sell its version of simulated reality. Bush has used Iraq as political prop, but it hasn’t fared much better than Johnny Demon Baulkman.

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Is The Surge Working?: Biden vs. Graham.

A Lebanese historian once cautioned that “great powers should never get caught up in the politics of local tribes.” That’s a pretty accurate assessment, unfortunately, of why America’s intervention in Iraq has gone so wrong. The United States is spending $10 billion dollars a month in Iraq and it is now losing an average of sixty soldiers a month. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham believes this sacrifice is worth it because he foresees the prospect of a political reconciliation within the next couple of months. Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, on the other hand, argues that America will be forced to evacuate Baghdad with the next couple of years, and that our departure will resemble the fall of Saigon unless we dramatically alter our approach in Iraq. Given that the bitter Sunni-Shia schism that has existed for centuries and the fact that implanting democracy takes generations, it seems Pollyannaish in the extreme to expect that Iraq’s factions will reach any kind of political settlement in the foreseeable future.

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Bush's Dead Certainty

Bush contends that history cannot judge his presidency until long after he’s dead. Historians are still debating about George Washington, Bush contends, so how can they presume to render a verdict without the vantage point of time. Bush is not entirely wrong here, but he is betraying a glaring contradiction: how can he be dead certain that he will be vindicated by history when his perspective is inevitably subject to the same limitations he is imposing on his critics? How can he be sure that the chaos in Iraq will inevitably organize itself in the direction he envisions?

Bush is relatively young (60) as far as presidents go. He has good genes and appears to be in robust health. It is not unreasonable to expect that he will be alive for decades to come. Most Americans recognized the Carter administration was a failure immediately after it ended, and that verdict has not changed in the intervening decades. Similarly, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was, is, and always will be a catastrophic blunder. The passage of time will not appreciably change these instant verdicts.

Bush’s assertion that history cannot hold him account until he is history doesn’t hold up. This assertion is on par with Bush’s numerous feeble and discredited prognostications. One thing is certain, however, a lot of America troops and Iraqis are going to going to give their lives because Bush is determined to proof himself right. The only other certainty I can think of is that Bush will never admit he’s wrong, no matter what the facts are. But hey, America’s worst president to date, Andrew Johnson, believed to his dying day that he’d be vindicated too.

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Bush and the Art of War

Every time the Bush administration has dug itself a hole it’s asked for a bigger shovel to dig itself out. This thought is worth bearing in mind as talk of a U.S. airstrike against Iran heats up. No doubt, there are hard-line elements in Iran bent on disrupting America’s efforts in Iraq. There aim is multi-fold: 1) Keep America bleeding in Iraq so that it is less capable of responding to Iran’s nuclear program. 2) Force the United States into a humiliating withdrawal from Iraq, which would then leave Iran as the dominant power in the Persian Gulf. 3) Goad the Bush Administration into launching preemptive strikes against Iran, which would rally a pro-American Iranian public around the fundamentalist regime.

The discerning reader will notice there is more than a kernel of contradiction between these three goals. But these incongruities do not work to America’s benefit: The United States can lose by staying in Iraq, by quitting Iraq, or by attacking Iran. For the Bush administration, which has inadvertently furthered Iran’s interests by thoroughly botching the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the prospect of a game changing strike against Iran may seem like a gamble worth taking. Put simply, George Bush and Dick Cheney do not want to go down in as the architects of the biggest foreign policy disaster in American history. Accordingly, in their view the best way to get Iraq’s recalcitrant militias into line would be to decapitate their sponsors in Iran.

There is also the related problem of Iran’s nuclear program, which if successful would: a) instantly transform Iran into the dominant power in the Gulf, b) provoke a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, c) destabilize the entire region, d) leave the West over a barrel (of oil). In a nutshell, the United States cannot disengage from the Middle East without suffering catastrophic economic and geopolitical consequences. Nor can it easily continue to sustain the Bush administration’s present course, which has decimated America’s image abroad, divided the country at home, and stretched America’s military to the breaking point.

Attacking Iran can be understood as escaping forward, which is military jargon for launching a frontal assault when faced with an increasingly untenable position. As a military gambit, escaping forward is often the soundest choice one can make when facing dire straights. However, most military experts believe that it would be sheer lunacy for the Bush administration to launch a preemptive attack against Iran. After all, Iran could probably close the Straits of Hormuz, the transit way for more than 30% percent of the world’s oil. And U.S. troops in Iraq would be highly vulnerable to retaliation from groups controlled by Tehran. Indeed, a direct assault on Iran could unleash a wave of terror attacks across the globe launched by Iranian controlled sleeper networks.

So, what’s a superpower to do? The Iranian regime’s greatest vulnerability is the price of oil. In fact, if the price of oil were to drop precipitously the mullahs in Iran would likely lose their grip on power fairly quickly. It is axiomatic, for instance, that the ruling elites in petro states are corrupt and cannot sustain their rule without subsidizing inefficient state industries, supporting the security apparatuses, and buying off the political opposition. Significantly decrease the amount of petro profits flowing into the clerics’ coffers and the Iranian regime will collapse of its own accord, just as the Soviet Union did when oil prices hit bottom in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.

In Sun Tzu’s The Art of War the successful commander is the one who can defeat his enemy before the first battle even begins. Many military experts consider Sun Tzu’s meditations on warfare the most important observations ever made on the topic. But for Sun Tzu, the ideal commander-in-chief is not characterized primarily by his (or her) military skill or his genius for combat, but rather for his (or her) ability to achieve greater social harmony. The war in Iraq, or a war against Iran, is unlikely to engender a more harmonious and balanced world. However, recognizing the ecological dimension behind the conflicts America faces gives us the opportunity to adapt our energy habits so they no longer feed the forces that threaten us. Before striking Iran it is worth pondering a question that the Bush administration failed to ask before attack Iraq: what would Sun Tzu do?

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