Bush and the Black Swan

For eight years, George W. Bush has tortured the axis-of-information – language, truth, and logic – yet reality steadfastly refuses to yield to his delusions. Bush has overseen the destruction of New Orleans, Iraq, the U.S. economy, America's credibility, and the Republican Party, but he ludicrously clings to the vain hope that history will overturn the verdict the American people have arrived at: namely, that the Bush administration has been a colossal failure.

Bush admits no doubt. His absolute certainty is façade that conceals his ignorance. This admixture of arrogance and ignorance has proven to be central to Bush's downfall. For Bush, doubt is a weakness. For the wise, embracing doubt and uncertainty is the beginning of wisdom. After all, Socrates was the wisest man in Athens precisely because he acknowledged the gaps in his knowledge.

Bush's confidence that he'll be vindicated by history is shallow, self-serving, and incoherent. Bush has been parroting the lame talking point that if historians are still debating George Washington's legacy, then it's way too early to speculate about Forty-three's legacy. Bush has a point; it is within the realm of possibility that future historians will view Bush's mishandling of Katrina, the botched reconstruction of Iraq, and the economic meltdown as an axis-of-triumphs, but the odds of this are vanishingly small.

We recognize Washington as a great leader who made many wise decisions: 1) He adamantly rejected torture. 2) He wisely recognized that the best way to defeat the British was to avoid engaging them directly. And 3) he harbored a deep suspicion towards unfettered executive power. Simply put, Washington's instincts seem diametrically opposed to Bush's (and the results appear to speak for themselves).

Another of Bush's feeble talking points is the notion that at least he's kept us safe since 9/11. "Since 9/11," of course, happens to be one heck of a qualifier, especially given that Bush spent the weeks prior to the worst terror attacks on American soil blissfully ensconced at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, dismissing and ignoring intelligence briefings warning that al-Qaeda was preparing to strike the homeland.

9/11, of course, is a prime example of what the philosopher/statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb terms a black swan
– a highly improbable event that entails massive consequences. By their nature, black swans are singular, seismic, unpredictable, and history altering occurrences. As a species, humans are not particularly good at forecasting and preparing for the unexpected. We tend to assume that tomorrow will be like today and that next week will be like this week, and so on. In other words, we infer that the future will resemble the past.

We also tend to deduce, incorrectly, that the next black swan will resemble a previous black swan. After a rare but devastating earthquake, for instance, it's only human nature to expect the next disaster will be an earthquake. However, the next black swan is invariably something nobody anticipated.

The Bush administration never saw the black swan of 9/11 coming, at least in part, because so many of its key figures were trapped in a tunnel vision mindset that was incapable of imagining that non-state actors could pose a significant national security threat. It then assumed that the United States was facing a new wave of unconventional attacks from rogue states like Iraq. In other words, it failed to connect the dots that might have prevented 9/11. And then it connected dots where it shouldn't have – i.e., between Iraq and a future 9/11.

Bush and his defenders claim that everyone expected that we'd be hit again following 9/11, but since we haven't then it can't be an accident. Therefore, the syllogism concludes, Bush deserves extraordinary credit. In fairness, the president and his national security team undoubtedly devote a great deal of time and effort trying to safeguard the public from a variety of threats. One of Bush's far-sighted initiatives is a program to combat the AIDS epidemic in Africa, which is a sensible way of reducing the chances of an international pandemic while simultaneously mitigating the kind of misery that breeds the chaos that feeds civil wars, terrorism, etc.

By and large, however, Bush's gloating about preventing another attack falls into the same category as "mission accomplished" and "bring em' on" – it's premature and irresponsible in so far as it practically invites an attack. Al-Qaeda does not operate according to a Western timeframe; eight years is an eternity according to America's political calendar, but the jihadists are thinking in terms of decades and centuries. The invasion of Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo has probably helped recruit more terrorists than the Bush administration has been able to kill. Bush as almost certainly inadvertently helped spawn a new generation of dark birds of prey bent on devising the kind of monstrous surprises narrow-minded men and conventional thinkers can scarcely imagine.

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Top Ten Cool Things About Obama’s Victory

10). Breaks down the biggest barrier of all. Having a funny name no longer disqualifies you from becoming president.

9). Obama will have the executive authority to designate Dick Cheney an enemy combatant.

8). Obama vs. Osama: With George W. Bush out of the equation it will be a lot easier to tell the good guys from the bad.

7). I will no longer have to apologize to every international airline stewardess, foreign taxi driver, and Third World hotel clerk for being an American.

6). Obama has the power to appoint Bill and Hillary to the Supreme Court (so we’ll never have to worry about having another Clinton in the White House again).

5). Sarah Palin will have time to fill in for Tina Fey should the star of 30 Rock and SNL need a break from her busy schedule. After all, let’s face it, the Alaska governor has more potential as a comedian than as commander-in-chief.

4). Joe the Plumber’s hopes of parlaying his 15-minutes of fame into a political career or a position in a McCain/Palin administration have gone down the drain.

3). The Axis-of Idiots – Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage – are exposed as impotent, washed-up, useless old farts who can no longer stir up enough angry & ignorant voters to tip an election.

2). Democratic Congress with full investigative and subpoena powers can make George W. Bush’s retirement a living hell.

1). After eight years of enduring “Dubya,” it will be great to have a president who is not a joke for a change.

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The No Voter Left Behind Quiz

Presidential “hopeful” John McCain insists none of his colleagues would confuse him with Miss Congeniality. But if the truth be told, the vitriolic voters mouthing off at McCain’s campaign rallies could make the late Queen of Mean, Leona Helmsley, seem like Miss Manners in comparison. In order to alleviate extreme voter ignorance and anger, Congress has passed emergency education measures designed to enlighten the America’s dimmest citizens. Take the test now to ensure your political IQ is up to snuff.

1). Barack Obama hails from which foreign country?

a) Barackistan
b) Guantanamo
c) Hawaii
d) Iraq

The correct answer is C. Technically, Hawaii is sovereign U.S. territory, but you need a passport to get there and most real Americans do not have passports. The discerning reader will note that Iraq is de facto America’s 51st state. Of course, Guantanomo both is and isn’t U.S. territory at the same time, so this was a trick question. Deduct 15 points only if you picked A.

2). Barack Obama will _____ if he’s elected.

a) Raise your taxes to pay for the Bush deficits.
b) Convert America to Islam.
c) Take away your God given right to own the assault weapon of your choice.
d) Institutes educational reform which scraps silly multiple choice tests that emphasize rote learning.

The correct answer, Allah be praised, is D. If you answered C please multiply the number of assault weapons you own by 5 and deduct the answer accordingly. If you answered A, then deduct 500 points and please send a check covering your final point total to the address below.

3). Sarah Palin’s plan to solve America’s energy crisis and climate change can be summed up with which slogan?

a) “We hockey moms are pit bulls with lipstick.”
b) “Say it ain’t so Joe. There you go again”
c) “Drill, baby, drill!”
d) “Our opponents want to raise the white flag of surrender.”

The correct answer in C. What distinguishes this platitude from the other cliches is that it is actually about energy. If you had trouble with this section I suggest you brush up on your banalities. Joe six-packs that got this question wrong should deduct 2 points for every beer you normally consume for breakfast on Election Day (2 x 24 = 48). Hockey moms who got this question wrong should deduct one point for every month your youngest daughter is pregnant out of wedlock.

4) John McCain’s plans on appointing ______ as Treasury Secretary in order to get America back on track.

a) Meg Whitman – the former CEO has a great plan to auction derivatives and credit default swaps on Ebay, which would allow individuals to get a better deal on the toxic mortgages than if the government bought them wholesale on behalf of all taxpayers.
b) Phil Gramm – This is the guy who astutely observed we Americans are in a mental recession. $700 billion in free therapy with Dr. Phil sounds just like what the doctor ordered to cure a nation of whiners.
c) Carla Fiorina – Former HP CEO managed to turn her company around. Unfortunately it was in the wrong direction, but her golden parachute was less obscene than many others were.

d) Joe the Plumber

e) None of the above

The correct answer is E. We hope. Deduct 2000 Dow Jones points for answering A, 5000 points for B, and 3000 points for C. But you can bet the ranch that the economy will really go down the drain if McCain taps Roto Rooter Man, Joe Wurzelbacher, to be Treasury Secretary

5). George W. Bush’s most enduring legacy is likely to be?

a). He single-handedly ruined the Republican Party.
b). He discredited the idea of privatizing Social Security once and for all.
c). Americans will be forever indebted to Bush for his fiscal policies.
d). Succeeded in doing more damage to the United States than Osama bin Laden.
f). All of the above

The correct answer is F, which as it happens is the grade History will give our 43rd president.

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The Collapse of Bush's Market Fundamentalism

George W. Bush’s reputation is sinking deeper than the Dow Jones, which says a lot considering the fact that stock market wealth is vanishing faster today than John McCain’s chances of winning a third Bush term.

Eight years of Republican misrule are coming to an end, big time. The causes of the current economic collapse are myriad, but they were predictable consequences of unwise, unsustainable, and unjust GOP policies. To begin with, the myth of the all-wise marketplace is now deader than Karl Marx’s corpse. Secondly, laissez-faire economics, deregulation, and the simplistic notion than “government is part of the problem” stand revealed as an axis-of-idiotic ideological assumptions. And thirdly, the massive financial bailout plan aimed at preventing a complete economic meltdown proves that capitalism, left to its own devices, entails socialism for the rich.

Years ago, Warren Buffet warned that the United States was well on its way to becoming a nation of sharecroppers. As the billionaire noted, a nation cannot continue to consume more than it produces indefinitely. Dick Cheney, who insisted that Ronald Reagan had proved that “deficits don’t matter,” contradicted Buffet’s common sense. As far as the VP was concerned, America could borrow money from the Chinese to purchase Arab oil without diminishing America’s economic position.

The Bush administration also financed the war in Iraq and its massive tax cuts with borrowed money. Supply-side economics is supposed to pay for itself – just as the Iraq War was supposed to be self-financing – but all taxpayers have for their “investments” so far is a sea of red ink, and blood.

Deficit spending is not bad per se. Borrowing money to invest in public education, universal healthcare, and infrastructure improvements will pay dividends in terms of restoring America’s competitiveness. As historian Arnold Toynbee observed, civilizations that reform themselves are more likely to prosper. On the other hand, those that seek to reform the rest of the world invariably exhaust themselves in the process.

The architects of America’s “shock and awe” campaign have transformed the U.S. model into an object of fear and loathing. The Iraq War, Katrina, and now the implosion of America’s financial institutions have decimated our image in the eyes of world opinion. Eight years ago the Neoconservatives that hijacked the Bush administration proclaimed that the American system of democratic capitalism was the end point of history for all humankind. Today, neither our global adversaries nor our allies view the American model as capable of delivering social justice, economic stability, or the good life.

We have reached this stage of national senescence due to a mixture of imperial hubris, intellectual sloth, moral turpitude, economic shortsightedness, and political cowardice. President Bush has laid the blame for the current financial calamity on the financial sector –“Wall Street got drunk” – and on subprime mortgages that went bad. But these factors are only part of the story. The truth is that for the past thirty years United States has followed a pattern eerily similar to the Spanish Empire’s downfall under Phillip II. In a nutshell, the financialization of Spain’s economy, expensive imperial/military expeditions that failed to pay for themselves, and the erosion of the manufacturing sector bankrupted the empire.

America’s free market fundamentalists insisted that the invisible hand of the market place would cure all national and economic ills. Deregulation was their mantra. In particular, the market fundamentalists argued that government shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers. The problem with this, of course, is now obvious. As economist James K. Galbraith observes, markets are incapable of long-term planning. Deregulation unleashed predatory practices that privatized profits and socialized risk. And a dysfunctional relationship between politicians clamoring for campaign donations and corporate executives pushing for even less regulation created a vicious cycle that reinforced the self-interest of the few at the expense of the public good.

Renewing America – and the American idea – will necessitate rejecting the reigning Republican ideology in favor of a new social compact that rejuvenates the liberal ideals that proved so effective in rescuing America from the excesses of the Gilded Age that brought on the Great Depression. Tailoring liberal values to meet the challenges of the 21st century will be a tall order, but the principles are easy enough to articulate. First, as F.D.R. noted more than sixty years ago, “we are all in this together.” This is self-evident, and the current crisis illustrates this only too well; if Wall Street doesn’t get its bailout, then Main Street will sink too. We would do far better, of course, recognizing this up front by investing taxpayer dollars in universal healthcare, public works, and far-sighted economic initiatives (as opposed to funding bailouts for wealthy speculators).

To begin with, universal coverage is inherently more efficient because it eliminates vast bureaucratic layers that do not provide patient care. To put it bluntly, private health insurers spend at least a third of their revenue on overhead designed specifically to deny health coverage. Additionally, universal coverage will allow U.S. businesses to shed the substantial cost of insuring employees, which will make them far more competitive in a global environment.

Treating healthcare as a commodity is inimical to human dignity. Likewise, CEOs making 350 times what their employees earn is inimical to democracy, sound business practices, and ultimately the dignity of work. Put simply, lionizing CEOs who garner huge bonuses by sending jobs overseas and slashing workers is perverse, especially when ponders how often such executives end up running their companies into the ground.

Vast income inequality invariably leads to what Plato once called the worst catastrophe of all, a society divided against itself. Bolstering the minimum wage and setting limits on executive compensation can help restore a dignity of work climate (as opposed to the vanity of wealth climate we have now). Further, contrary to free market fundamentalism, government should and must partner with the private sector to map out strategic economic goals for the nation. The Internet, for instance, began as a government initiative. Only government has the long-term vision and resources to shape the marketplace in ways conducive to achieving national goals. Market fundamentalists have contented that government should not be in the business of picking winners and loser, but their simpleminded ideology has led to the perverse outcome where the government is bailing out losers after the fact, rather than grooming industries and technologies that fit with our national objectives.

Clearly, the United States needs to develop the alternative fuels and energy savings technologies of the future, both to lessen our dependence on foreign sources of oil and also to reduce greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. If the U.S. government doesn’t take the lead in this endeavor, then American consumers will continue to transfer vast sums of our dwindling national wealth to adversarial regimes. Meanwhile, the challenges associated with global warming will mount.

The Bush administration has decimated America’s fortunes because it clung to a bankrupt ideology. When disaster struck, Bush didn’t ask Americans to sacrifice. Instead, he told them to shop. Market fundamentalism is not just economically unsound; it is morally bankrupt. A liberal political philosophy helped America rise following the Great Depression. It can do so again because it recognizes markets are imperfect institutions meant to serve individual and communities, as opposed to gods who demand our blind faith.

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McCain vs. Obama: Strategy vs. Tactics


President Bush insists that the United States has a strategy to defeat terrorism. Most counter terrorism experts, however, have concluded that Bush’s strategy is incoherent or counterproductive. In simple terms, Bush’s strategic vision rests on the following assumptions: (1) undemocratic regimes spawn terrorism because they stifle economic, political, and religious freedoms. (2) Repression breeds violence and resentment, which tends to be aimed at peaceful and successful democracies. (3) Therefore, spreading liberty is best long-term antidote to reducing and eliminating the animus that gives rise to terrorism.

Helping Iraq make the transition from dictatorship into a democracy is, in Bush’s view, the catalyst necessary to transform the entire Middle East. It’s an appealing notion – and it is not without some merit – but it is a dangerously simplistic approach to a very complex challenge. Put simply, Bush fails to understand is that terrorism is the flip side of globalization, a movement where individuals and small groups are gaining power at the expense of nation states. In the past, when non-state actors had grievances their means for wrecking havoc were limited. But now, thanks to the information revolution, disaffected entities are rapidly gaining access the most destructive technologies. It is probably only a matter of time before fringe elements acquire WMD.

America’s homegrown terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, was a product of a prosperous democracy. Similarly, the perpetrators of Columbine style mass shootings invariably hail from the freest of free societies. Spreading democracy will in no way diminish the murderous madness of demented loners, irrational cults, and other fringe elements.

Nevertheless, Bush insists that winning in Iraq will deflate the terrorists, by which he means al-Qaeda. The resurgence of al-Qaeda in Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan contradicts the president’s claims. The United States may well prevail in Iraq (by achieving a tolerable outcome), but this “success” will be offset by setbacks in Pakistan and elsewhere.

At best, Iraq is looking like a tactical success, but a strategic debacle. In chess, it doesn’t matter how many pieces you win if you can’t protect your king. Similarly, winning in Iraq means virtually nothing when one appreciates that the United States under the Bush administration has lost its moral authority, it’s financial health, and its role as a global leader. The United States is a vastly weaker country because it invaded Iraq.

This brings me to the point in the first McCain/Obama debate, where the senator from Arizona accused his opponent of failing to understand the difference between tactics and strategy. If anything, the lesson of distinguishing tactics from strategy appears to be lost on McCain, in so far as he views Iraq as the make or break issue for the United States. We can continue to spend $10 billion dollars a week in Iraq – so long as the Chinese and other foreign creditors continue to lend us the money – while our own infrastructure crumbles and our healthcare system collapses. But the tradeoffs of remaining in Iraq are becoming more and more apparent.

At the end of the First World War, Germany won a series of tactical battles that actually undermined their military’s strategic position. The German public could hardly believe that their heroic victories were for naught. We may be in for a similarly bitter lesson. Those who fail to have a sound strategy, and those who elevate tactics above strategy, usually defeat themselves.

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Top Ten Reasons Bush is NOT to Blame for America’s Economic Meltdown

10). “It was that major league a-hole, Dick Cheney, who absolutely, positively assured me “Deficits don’t matter.”” – G.W.B

9). “Wall Street got drunk, drove into a ditch, and totaled America’s economic engine. And for that, you blame the bartender? I don’t think so.” – Barbara Bush

8). “I think it’s fair to say that George Jr. is not responsible for anything.” -- George H.W. Bush on truth serum

7). “Bush is already responsible for the debacle in Iraq, Katrina, global warming, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo. Blaming him for the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression as well would seem to me to be too much for any one individual to bear.” – Dr. Phil

6). “We are in a crisis mode here, but it would be a mistake . . . and we can’t blink on this . . . because we couldn’t see Russia from our backyard if we did . . . but it would a mistake to blame the current economic meltdown on either global warming or the Bush Doctrine.” -- Governor Sarah Palin

5). “Taxpayers will come out ahead on this fifty or sixty years from now on account of the fact that my administration led the way in burying the Death Tax.” -- Dubya

4). “Capitalism is nothing more than socialism for the rich. The current crisis is simply the inevitability of historical forces engaged in a dialectical process that seeks to reconcile opposing ideologies on a higher plane. President Bush is merely a cog in a predestined historical process through which tragedy and farce are synthesized” -- Groucho Marx

3). Bush has super-duper secret plan to wager $700 billion of bailout money in on-line poker competition against China, North Korea, and Iran. The president is absolutely 100% certain that he’ll win enough money to save the economy.

2). “Where there is crisis, there is opportunity.” – Chinese fortune cookie Bush got at the Beijing Olympics.

1). 53 million Americans voted for a bozo like Bush, a candidate who peddled his economic snake oil with slogans like, “It’s your money, you paid for it.” If you voted for our nincompoop-in chief, then I think it’s fair to say this joke is at your expense.

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It's Your Money, You Paid for It: How the Bush Administration Bankrupted America

Once upon a time -- eight years ago to be precise -- the Bush administration rudely proclaimed that the American economic and political model was the universal blueprint for all humankind. Today, the Bush administration is standing in the rubble of its own hubris.

The meltdown of America’s financial system is a seminal event. The era of America’s financial and geopolitical hegemony is coming to an end. The debacle in Iraq, the bungled federal response to Katrina, and now the virtual collapse of America’s economic order has exposed the moral emptiness that was at the core of the Republican Party’s governing philosophy.

The Bush administration has accomplished the impossible; it has turned a Superpower into Banana Republic. It has managed to reverse and undermine the nation’s economic fortunes by burying America under a mountain of debt. Trillions of dollars have been committed to Iraq -- and the now the looming Wall Street bailout – but the dividends from these “investments” are dubious indeed.

Imagine, for instance, if the United States has spent the trillions it is now spending to buy off Sunni insurgents, and buy out predatory financiers, had been invested in providing universal healthcare, shoring up our infrastructure, and developing alternative sources of energy. We might be well on the road to greater economic competitiveness and energy independence. Instead, we are stuck in a ditch of the Bush administration’s making.

We are mortgaging America’s future to pay for policies that at best simply mitigate the failures and misjudgments of the Bush administration. The Surge has succeeded in lowering violence in Iraq, but growing anarchy in Pakistan, where al-Qaeda has regrouped, is canceling out the increasing stability in Iraq. Put simply, Bush’s simplistic assumption that defeating al-Qaeda in Iraq would deflate the jihadists is nothing more than wishful thinking. Likewise, Bush’s certainty that changing the regime in Iraq would necessarily serve as a catalyst for transforming the Middle East for the better appears more quixotic than ever. In other words, Don Quixote seems like a realist in comparison to Bush.

Invading Iraq has not enhanced America’s strategic position anymore than Bush’s tax cuts enhanced America’s financial health. Indeed, in some sense U.S. troops are hostages in Iraq, and U.S. taxpayers are financing a $10 billion ransom every month to keep the country from exploding. After all, just think what will happen if we stop doling out $300 a month to each member of the Sons of Iraq. The former Sunni insurgents will once again be shooting at U.S troops, but this time with American supplied weaponry.

Bush’s free market fundamentalism has led to a dead end too. Supply side economics, deregulation, and faith that markets are all wise and self-correcting are ideas that now belong in the ash heap of history.

The United States is in the process of finding out what it means to be hostage to foreign lenders. Dick Cheney, who once said we’d be greeted as liberators in Iraq, also insisted that deficits don’t matter. They matter now, however, big time. After all, the federal government either has to borrow the money to finance the roughly trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout or it will have to raise taxes. Needless to say, given America’s already over extended state of indebtedness foreign creditors are certain to insist on higher rates of interest, which will certainly crimp economic growth. The declining strength of the dollar too, will increase the cost commodities like gas and food, thus we are likely facing a period of stagflation – slower economic growth and rising inflation.

Until now, the U.S. has had the luxury of denominating debt in dollars, which is another way of saying that so long as the dollar was the world’s reserve currency the costs of indebtedness were in some sense borne by creditors. With the dollar falling to a nine year low against the euro, however, the U.S. can no longer devalue its debt by simply printing more money.

All this means that average Americans are entering a period of wealth destruction where the value of their assets are eroded by inflation, the declining dollar, negative income growth, higher interest rates, higher state and municipal taxes, and cuts in government services. I can think of no better slogan to sum up this mess than the one Bush used to justify borrowing trillions to finance his tax cut scheme: “It’s your money, you paid for it.”

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Bush and the Power of Prayer

Three centuries ago, as colonists began displacing Native Indians across the continent, smallpox and other epidemics ravaged many indigenous tribes. Undoubtedly, the settlers in so far as they carried and spread infectious diseases, were at least partly to blame for what turned out to be biological genocide. Tragically, by and large the American Indians effected refused Western medical treatment because they believed that supernatural forces caused the illnesses they faced.

It is hard to blame the mistrust Native Americans had for the settlers. In retrospect, however, the triumph of superstitious beliefs over rational forms of explanation and medicine proved catastrophic. History tends to repeat itself, of course. And today large segments of fundamentalist Christians believe that the cataclysmic weather events associated with global warming are really God’s way of punishing the United States for losing its moral bearings, particularly when it comes abortion and gay marriage.

It is tempting to believe that we live in a just world and that a beneficent Deity metes out rewards and punishment to prod individuals (and even nations) in the right direction. History and experience, however, demonstrate that superstitious notions regarding divine interventions are a luxury the human species cannot afford. The Bush administration, in particular, should be Exhibit A when it comes to debunking the religiously inclined notion that a morally righteous leader has anything to do with national flourishing. For instance, the United States enjoyed eight years of peace and prosperity under Bill Clinton, an adulterer who favored abortion and gay marriage. But the United States is in a moral and financial freefall following eight years under the morally abstemious George W. Bush, a leader who championed the pro-life and sanctity of marriage causes dear to his Christian base.

The Bush administration has been characterized by prayer breakfasts, Bible study groups, and an unprecedented merging of faith and public policy. The results, of course, speak for themselves: disastrous decision making, repeated misjudgments, and a general increase in bureaucratic incompetence throughout the government. Put simply, substituting prayer for rational-decision making procedures is a recipe for failure.

To paraphrase Nikos Kazantzakis, the author of Zorba the Greek, praying to God is like knocking on the door of a deaf man. President John F. Kennedy, I believe, took the most mature attitude to problem-solving when he said that the greatest challenges mankind faces have been created by us, therefore they will have to be solved by us. In this respect, religious assumptions concerning the Will of Providence amount to metaphysical baggage that hinder our ability to navigate challenges like global warming, the credit crisis, nuclear proliferation, and the war on terrorism.

It is no secret that George W. Bush relies on his gut instinct to make decisions. He has also said that he derives great comfort from the fact that millions of Americans are praying for him. No doubt, his many religiously inclined followers hoped and believed that God would illumine the president’s conscience and thinking. The fruits of Bush’s presidency – Abu Ghraib, the bungled handling of Katrina, the disastrously managed war in Iraq, and the economic meltdown on Bush’s watch – all belie the notion that God and politics mix.

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Panic in the Street -- The Wall Street Meltdown

Wall Street is melting faster than the polar icecaps. Savings and retirement accounts are evaporating faster than an ice cube in a microwave. America’s wealth is being siphoned off quicker than a keg of beer at a frat house. George W. Bush’s party is almost over, but the national hangover is just beginning.

As George Soros observed, we are entering one of the intensive periods of wealth destruction since the Great Depression. The value of the dollar is plummeting, inflation is rising, economic growth is stagnating, unemployment is increasing, and the stock market is tumbling.

History will probably blame all this on George W. Bush, but in fairness he’s only part of the problem. Besides, Forty-three will have to shoulder responsibility for the Iraq debacle, the bungled response to Katrina, the torture and abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the failure to recognize and respond to the challenge of global warming, and the unraveling of the Republican Party. There’s only so much blame one person can handle.

Still, the unfolding financial catastrophe represents the complete discrediting of the economic philosophy of conservative Republicans like Bush. Supply side economics (the notion that tax cuts are self-financing) and Laissez-faire economics (the idea that markets are self-regulating and self-correcting) are as officially defunct as Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers.

Everyone likes tax cuts and rebate checks. But if you cut taxes and fail to cut spending you increase the deficit, which amounts to a tax increase on future generations. Rebate checks are nice too, but there are only two ways the government can afford to send you money: 1) borrow or 2) raise taxes. If you think about it, George W. Bush really made sense when he justified his tax cut plan by saying, “It’s your money, you paid for it.”

George W. Bush has presided over the weakest economic and jobs growth rates in decades. To put things in perspective, Bill Clinton presided over an economy that created over 20 million new jobs while George Bush’s administration as presided over just 5 million jobs created. Of course, Clinton’s exceptional jobs creation numbers were achieved while he raised taxes and balanced the budget. Bush, on the other hand, inherited a budget surplus and managed to turn it into the largest deficit in history.

Thanks to the Bush administration, America now owes a trillion or two (or three) to pay for the Iraq War. America is on the hook for a couple of trillion from assuming the obligations of Fannie May and Freddie Mac. And let’s not forget the expense of Bush’s Medicare package, a corporate welfare boondoggle that should cost taxpayers another trillion or two. Hey, a trillion here and a trillion there. Pretty soon we’re talking about real money.

The myth of the free markets has obscured a predatory form of crony-capitalism where government insiders steer corporate benefactors to the public trough. Enron was just the canary in the coalmine. George W. Bush has cannibalized America with his socialism for the rich policies.

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Sarah Palin -- Not Ready for Primetime

The only difference between Sarah Palin and George W. Bush is lipstick. Actually, that’s not entirely fair to the president, since he presumably knows what the Bush Doctrine is. In fairness to Sarah Plain, however, there have been five Bush Doctrines: 1) America’s right to engage in preventive war, 2) America’s right to act unilaterally, 3) America’s right to establish a Pax Americana, and 4) America’s duty to spread liberty across the Middle East. Ok, off the top of my head I can only name four out of the five Bush Doctrines, but then I’m not running for Vice-President. However, some of my friends think I should run for high office, especially since I can see the Russian coastline from my backyard, which is pretty impressive since I live in Connecticut.

Watching Sarah Palin’s interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson left me with the feeling that America has long since slipped into a Twilight Zone where the lunatics will be running the asylum for the duration. Palin, of course, showed plenty of grit and gumption in her one-on-one, but no gravitas. She’s clearly smart, but her vacuity on foreign affairs was disconcerting to say the least. As David Brooks of the NYT noted, Palin has tendency to use decisiveness to cover up for her lack of knowledge and experience. This is precisely the same defect that has gotten the current occupant of the Oval Office into so much trouble.

Palin shares another character trait with the much reviled and discredited Bush; both have displayed a glib and even cavalier attitude towards war. One can debate whether including the Ukraine and Georgia in NATO makes strategic sense for the United States, but it was unsettling to see the ease with which Plain accepted and espoused logic that could commit the U.S. to war with Russia. She also seemed unperturbed by the thought that Israel might take unilateral against Iran without consulting the United States, action which would have profound implications for America’s foreign policy and national security.

Palin is clearly not ready for primetime. Just a few weeks ago McCain was lambasting Obama as a celebrity, but the geriatric Senator has clearly pinned his presidential hopes to a political glamour queen. The country is facing a financial meltdown – both on Main Street and Wall Street – severe weather patterns associated with climate change, two protracted and indecisive wars, and the prospect that terror groups like al-Qaeda will acquire WMD. But it seems that throwing in a few cosmetic changes is all that it will take to convince tens of millions of citizens to vote for Bush redux.

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The Bush Legacy

George W. Bush is about as popular with Americans as a funeral director visiting a nursing home. The most reviled president in American history, however, is dead certain he’ll be vindicated by posterity. Several prominent pundits – Robert Kagan, Fareed Zakaria, and David Frum – wrote recently that history might go easier on the forty-third president than liberals imagine. They argue, for instance, that the surge is working, liberals are in denial, and Bush has succeeded in his most important responsibility: protecting the nation against another attack. However, an overwhelming body of evidence suggests that Bush’s tenure will almost certainly rank at or near the bottom of American presidents.

When Bush leaves office the world (and most Americans) will breathe a collective sigh of relief. There is no doubt that the next chief executive will inherit the most formidable domestic and foreign policy challenges any American leader has ever faced. The American financial system is on the precipice of the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, the U.S military is stretched to brink in two indecisive wars, and ecological and weather-related events are taking their toll on America’s resilience and infrastructure as never before. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden is on the loose and the threats stemming from nuclear proliferation and “loose nukes” is growing more urgent by the day. To make matters worse, the precipitous decline in Bush’s short-lived Pax Americana is occurring at the same time that authoritarian regimes like China and Russia appear to be on the rise.

On the economic front, Bush’s supply-side policies have been a complete bust. The administration’s policies have engendered the weakest job growth in the past sixty years, inflation is rising at the most torrid pace in nearly thirty years, and the country is drowning in debt. As Al Gore trenchantly observed some years ago, we’ve been borrowing money from China in order to keep buying Middle Eastern oil, thus mortgaging our future to a rising rival while transferring wealth to a region brimming with anti-Americanism.

The Bush administration has come close to bankrupting America morally too. The so-called “enhanced” interrogation techniques codified by Cheney’s legal scriveners have decimated America’s moral authority. Put simply, Bush’s decision to unilaterally suspend the Geneva Convention when it came to the War on Terror has proven as unwise as it was unlawful. America’s Constitution refers to the inalienable rights that belong to all persons. Thus, Bush’s efforts to deny a certain category of persons – enemy combatants – all due process and legal rights is nothing less than an assault upon the most cherished and fundamental of American values.

Bush is the first American president to hold an MBA, but his management “skills” makes Drew Carey seem like CEO material in comparison. The bungled mishandling of post-war Iraq and post-hurricane New Orleans shattered America’s image as a can-do nation. Bush’s installation of political hacks at FEMA, the Justice Department, and the reconstruction efforts in Iraq corroded the competencies of institutions Americans count on. And Bush’s gut instinct has proven disastrous when it comes to picking subordinates (e.g., the axis-of-incompetents: Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, & Michael Brown) or sizing up world leaders (Vladimir Putin and Pervez Musharraf).

Bush’s apologists and enablers claim that “victory is within sight” in Iraq. It may be possible to win a phyrric victory in Iraq (“one more victory like that and we are doomed”), but America is sacrificing its global strategic position to “win” in Iraq. How long can the United States afford to spend $10 billion dollars a month in Iraq, essentially paying Sunni insurgents to shoot at al-Qaeda instead of us? It may seem like a bargain, except that al-Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq until after we invaded, and the Sunni militias are likely to start shooting at us and/or the Shiite government if their U.S. taxpayer financed monthly stipends are ever cut off. Meanwhile, Iran’s regional ambition, which include acquiring nuclear weapons and dominating the Persian Gulf, have been furthered because the U.S. toppled the Mullahs’ main enemy, the Baathists, and then got bogged down in Iraq where U.S. soldiers would essentially become 160,000 hostages should America attack Iran’s nuclear program.

The invasion of Iraq set a dangerous precedent because the U.S. came to be seen as a rogue nation. Conservatives have a hard time absorbing this, convinced as they are of America’s exceptionalism. But the Bush administration’s attempt to establish a Pax Americana has instead led to a steep decline in America’s power and prestige. Sensing this, Russia and other authoritarian countries are likely to ally themselves against American interests and cite U.S. hypocrisy to cover their own unilateralism and aggression. Russia’s foray into Georgia is likely just a prelude to an era where the “strong do what they can and weak suffer what they must.”

Scrapping the Geneva Conventions, unilaterally abrogating the ABM treaty, heaping scorn upon the Kyoto Accord, trashing the UN, and ignoring international law was in keeping with the Bush administration’s mind-set, namely that “might makes right.” The concept that peace and stability might be promoted through collective security, international legitimacy, and soft power seemed inconceivable for the ideologically rigid reactionaries that made up the administration. Bush has demonstrated greater flexibility, including an increased emphasis on diplomatic suasion, in his second term, but much of the administration’s energy has been consumed undoing the damage wrought during the first term.

It would be hard to pick the most despicable aspect of Bush’s failed presidency. But certainly, Bush and Cheney’s willingness to let a low-level military personnel take the heat for abusive practices approved at the highest level is especially loathsome. Top legal advisors to the president and vice-president (David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, and John Yoo) crafted torture memos that codified barbarism, sexual sadism, and psychological cruelty. These legal scriveners did for the law what Arthur Anderson did for accounting; they made a mockery out of the ideals their respective professions stand for. For Bush and Cheney to deplore the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo that their policies legitimized is cowardly, hypocritical, and dishonest.

Few thinking Americans take the Bush administration seriously anymore. Bush’s rhetoric has been so at variance with reality that most people sensibly ignore what he has to say. Bush’s greatest accomplishment -- prior to his 5 to 4 win in the Supreme Court, which effectively overturned the will of the majority of American voters – was overcoming his chronic alcohol abuse. Power has a way of revealing character – or lack thereof – and so does history. That’s why I wouldn’t bet a wooden nickel that George W. Bush will look much better once the dark recesses of his shady administration are exposed to the light of history.

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Russian Offensive Against Georgia

In 1990, following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the first President Bush (George H.W. Bush) worked with his Soviet counterpart (Mikhail Gorbachev) to roll back the dictator’s unprovoked aggression. With the Cold War over, the elder (and wiser) Bush viewed Saddam’s invasion as an opportunity to establish a precedent whereby the United States (and other responsible powers) would establish and enforce international norms aimed at creating and sustaining a more peaceful and stable world order. Chief among these standards, Bush argued, was the basic principle that the world community could not sit back and allow predatory regimes to violate the sovereignty of weaker states without inviting anarchy.

The senior Bush’s “new world order” was much derided at the time, particularly among paleoconservatives who thought international law was for wimps. But the logic and wisdom of Bush’s concept was rooted in ethical and political precedents that had a proven track record (compared to the alternatives) of engendering a more peaceful global order – i.e., the Treaty of Westphalia and FDR’s vision of the United Nations as a arbiter of international disputes.

It is one of history’s ironies George W. Bush has simultaneously undone his father’s legacy while proving the wisdom of it. Bush Junior’s invasion of Iraq, of course, was a not too subtle repudiation of everything the realists in the first Bush administration (Bush Sr., Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker) stood for, such as building a consensus among allies and establishing legitimacy by working through international institutions. Bush Jr., and the neoconservative idealists that steered him into the disaster of a “preventive” war to remake Iraq, in contrast, extolled the virtues of imperial hegemony, unilateralism, and the doctrine that might makes right. Their attitude at the time could be summed up by the ancient Roman dictum, “let them hate us so long as they fear us.”

The war in Iraq has brought about the worst of all possible worlds; the United States is neither liked nor respected. Russia’s invasion of neighboring Georgia – timed as it was while George W. Bush was attending the Olympic ceremonies with his buddy Vladimir Putin -- is symptomatic of how little respect the cagey Russian leadership has for the lame duck Bush. With the U.S. tied down in two inconclusive, mismanaged, and immensely draining wars the Bush administration can ill afford to open up another front by defending Georgia. As a result, Bush’s rhetoric about defending and spreading democracy will soon ring even more hollow as the administration is viewed as impotent by Eastern Europeans and others.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia may be viewed as ironic extension of Bush’s doctrine of preemption. In this case, Russia’s aggression was meant to preempt Georgia’s inclusion in NATO, which would have obligated a NATO response to Russia’s invasion. The Russian gambit, of course, is of great geo-strategic significance. After all, a crucial oil-pipeline passes through Georgia, and a pro-Western government in that country will help to contain an increasingly authoritarian Russia. Conversely, Russian autocrats would dearly love to reverse what they view as Washington’s (through NATO) encroachment on their sphere of influence.

For those of us who opposed the Iraq War -- on the grounds that the Bush administration’s unilateralism would weaken America’s position strategically and set the stage for resource wars -- the Russia-Georgia conflict may be a prelude of things to come.

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The Conservative Meltdown

The conservative movement is melting faster than the polar ice caps. Speaking of which, a seven square mile chunk of ice just broke off from an arctic glacier the other day. But global warming is hardly the only issue that conservative curmudgeons have mussed up. The Republican establishment has virtually imploded thanks to its incestuous relationships with corrupt lobbyists, rampant sexual hypocrisy among the rank and file of the supposed “values” Party, and the bankruptcy of its economic and social ideologies.

Katrina, Iraq, and the looming Bush Recession. Talk about an axis-of-evils. There’s an overwhelming consensus that when Bush finally leaves office he’ll bequeath his successor the most formidable set of foreign and domestic challenges since Herbert Hoover dropped the Great Depression on to FDR’s lap.

Republican stalwart Phil Graam, until recently McCain’s economic advisor, contends America is in a “mental recession.” But by any measure America’s economic outlook has been pretty bleak of late. After all, the economy has shed jobs seven straight months and the United States is drowning in red ink. Indeed, impending bailout of mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will effectively double the size of America’s debt obligations virtually overnight.

The fiasco at the heart of Freddie and Fannie is symptomatic of how the Bush administration mortgaged America’s future to pay for yesterday’s tax cuts, which mainly benefited those who benefited the most from rigging the system to their advantage. On the assumption that some institutions are too important to fail (i.e., institutions that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbyists) America’s taxpayers will be expected bailout foreign investors who bought bad loans (in the form of complex financial instruments) peddled by Wall Street.

Here’s the essence of the problem: the collateralized debt obligations the financial wizards packaged and sold to foreign interests have proven to be as toxic as the dog food the Chinese sell to us with the money we borrow from them. If the American taxpayer doesn’t make good on their losses, then they’ll stop lending us money and interest rates will soar.

Sure, the apple juice the Chinese sell us tastes like radiator fluid, but if foreign creditors like China stop lending us money we won’t be able to afford to buy gasoline from regimes that hate us. The whole economic order will collapse and the United States will descend into a Hobbesian nightmare where life is “short, nasty, and brutish.” Oddly enough, this brings me to Dick Cheney, architect of the Bush administration’s “enhanced” interrogation policy. Enhanced interrogation, of course, is a euphemism for the torture techniques perfected during the Dark Ages by inquisitors and witch hunters.

The civilized world has equated torture as barbarism ever since the Geneva Conventions were ratified. The United States was a signatory and the custodian of that treaty, until George W. Bush unilaterally (and unlawfully) cast them aside as “quaint” relics of a bygone era. In doing so he ignored the advice of counter terrorism officials, law enforcement experts, and human rights activists. Put simply, the experts recognized that torture yields false confessions at least as often as valuable intelligence, as detainees tell their captors what they think they want to hear in order to stop the pain. The case of Ibn al-Shaykh al Libi, for instance, is instructive; after being tortured, al-Libi told his captors that Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden. In other words, it wasn’t just the Bush administration’s tortured reasoning that brought about the strategic blunder of Iraq.

There is an insidious connection between the Bush administration’s moral bankruptcy and America’s dire economic predicament. The administration has treated laws, regulations, and oversight as impediments to the brute exercise of force. Indeed, with Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, and John Yoo (the infamous trio who crafted Bush’s torture memos) the law was parsed and twisted so finely that the barbarism associated with the Middle Ages was codified and bureaucratized for the 21st century. Simply put, they provided the veneer of legality for criminal acts. Such mediocre political hacks, of course, have been the rule rather than the exception in the Bush administration. Their legal contortions have since been rejected multiple times by the Supreme Court, but the damage to America’s reputation has been as damaging as the images the world saw in the aftermath of the Bush administration’s shameful response to Katrina.

The conservative movement has squandered America’s economic, intellectual, and moral capital at a time when environmental, financial, and military challenges are mounting exponentially. It’s not hard to see where the Bush administration went wrong. Torture and preventive war cannot serve as the basis for a sound national security policy. Rigid ideological assumptions, like the ones that treated the scientific evidence of global warming as a hoax, or the ones that insisted that less taxes and less regulation always led to economic growth, are invariably pernicious. Support for the conservative movement has evaporated, in no small measure because it has been so radically wrong.

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Torture and the Soul of the Nation

In the wake of 9/11 George W. Bush unilaterally scrapped the Geneva Conventions. The decision, which amounted to a lawless power grab, has proven to be one of the most fateful and pernicious choices made by an administration identified almost exclusively its colossal blunders. There is now no doubt that Bush’s executive overreach has led directly to a systematic pattern of human rights abuses so appalling that it rivals the war crimes perpetrated by the Nazis and the Japanese during the Second World War. That the United States, a signatory and custodian of Geneva Conventions, effectively bureaucratized torture and sadism under the Bush administration, must rank as one of the greatest tragedies in our nation’s history.

For more than two centuries, the United States distinguished itself by rejecting the brutalizing and abusive treatment of prisoners of war. George Washington, for instance, insisted that the Continental Army would not stoop to the barbarous and inhumane treatment meted out by British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries. Scholars and historians universally recognize Washington’s stand against torture was not just a moral gesture; it was a shrewd calculation that brutality undermines discipline in the ranks and strengthens the resolve of adversaries.

Following WWII, the United States led the effort to develop the Geneva Conventions so that the treaty covered every aspect of warfare. Embraced by the entire civilized world the treaty was the law of the land until George W. Bush decreed otherwise. His decision was not debated or subject to a formal policy review. Indeed, Dick Cheney and the vice-president’s top aides circumvented normal policy-review channels and simply had the historically illiterate president sign off on what would euphemistically be called “enhanced” interrogation techniques.

In an Orwellian twist, Bush claimed that although the Geneva Conventions were no longer law, nevertheless the United States would still abide by them as a matter of policy. His assurances would prove false, big time. The “special” interrogation methods employed systematically by the administration included: sexual humiliation, sleep and sensory depravation, waterboarding, numerous other techniques designed to induce extreme stress and discomfort. By any standard – the Geneva Convention, the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, and U.S law – these methods constituted torture. However, legal goons allied with the vice-president, most notoriously David Addington and John Yoo, concocted such a narrow definition of torture -- only procedures that led to pain associated with death and organ failure would be considered torture -- that the administration effectively codified the kind of irrational barbarism one normally associated with the Inquisition or the Salem witch trials.

Times columnist Anthony Lewis has rightly characterized the legal guidance Bush was given to the kind of advice a Mafia don would get from his concilierge on how to stay out of prison. Indeed, most of the infamous legal memos have an Alice in Wonderland quality in so far as they attempt to stretch language and push logic beyond the breaking point. Needless to say, the loopholes the Bush administration created were used to asphyxiate far more than common sense.
Harsh interrogation methods, the Bush administration assured the public, were necessary to deal with terrorists. Most counter terrorism experts agree, however, that physically and psychologically coercive techniques are more likely to lead to unreliable intelligence than good information. For instance, the Bush administration adopted techniques used by the Communists designed to break the will of interviewees. But the Communists had only been interested in eliciting false confessions, which they used at show trials, rather than truthful confessions.

It is now clear, contrary to the Bush administration’s claims, the much of the so-called “intelligence” gleaned from coercive interrogations is of the false confession category. In one notorious case, for example, a supposedly high level al-Qaeda figure, Ibn al-Shaykh al Libi, admitted after being tortured that he knew of links between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden. In reality, al-Libi was a comparatively small fish that simply told interrogators what they wanted to hear in order to stop the abuse he was undergoing. President Bush cited al-Libi’s confession as proof for going after Saddam. The Iraq War, in other words, was at least partially a product of a demonstrably false confession.

The corruption of law and language has led inextricably to a degeneration of decency and morality on the part of our elected leaders, civic officials, and military personnel. Those charged with protecting our values have donned black hoods, treated detainees like dogs, and forced prisoners under their supervision to perform unspeakable acts. The origins of such abuses stem directly from Bush’s directive that “enemy combatants” constitute a class of un-persons not subject to even the most rudimentary traditional legal safeguards.

The Supreme Court has since slapped down the administration’s brazen assertion of unfettered executive authority. But there are still a great many hard-line conservatives that believe affording terror suspects any legal protections whatsoever is scandalous. They are mistaken. As Alberto Mora, former General Counsel of the U.S Navy, puts it “The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America.” If we try and carve out exceptions, Mora goes on to note, the Constitution crumbles. That, in essence, is why the Bush administration’s policies, in so far as they have condoned and sanctioned torture, have been so inimical and corrosive of our values.

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Bush and Crimes Against Humanity

The trajectories of George W. Bush and Al Gore since the fateful election in 2000 could hardly be more divergent. The once highflying Bush has tumbled from the sky like a dodo while Gore has risen from the ashes like a phoenix. Tragically, America’s fortunes have been hitched to the incompetent bungling Bush who has single-handedly managed to destroy America’s reputation, moral character, financial health, and military preparedness.

Bush, of course, still clings to the delusion that his presidency and the decision to invade Iraq will be vindicated by posterity. It is worth noting, in this vein, that Reich Marshall Hermann Goring once boasted that future generations would honor him and his fellow henchmen with monuments. Needless to say, Goring’s predictions regarding his future place in history have proven every bit as empty as the Nazis’ wartime propaganda.

The Bush administration and its league of apologists in the media have generally scoffed at any suggestion that the president and his aides might guilty of war crimes, but a growing body of evidence indicates that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, and David Addington knowingly sanctioned torture and other abuses that amounted to same kind of gross violations of the Geneva Conventions that leading Nazis were prosecuted for at the Nuremberg Trials. Put simply, the concept of “command responsibility,” which implicitly recognizes that political and military leaders are responsible for the moral tone that is set within the chain of command, directly implicates the Bush White House to some of the most heinous human rights violations ever committed in our nation’s history.

“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.” That’s the dispiriting conclusion of Major General Antonio Taguba (Ret.) in his preface to a report issued by Physicians for Human Rights.

Bush’s decision to scrap the Geneva Conventions is not just immoral; it’s self-defeating and stupid. Innocent individuals have been incarcerated and tortured without due process, which has sullied the image of the United States. And at least one false confession – a subject who told interrogators what they wanted to hear, namely that Saddam possessed WMD – helped mislead America into the Iraq War. The Bush administration claims (without evidence) that waterboarding has saved lives, but most counter terrorism experts agree that coerced confessions are inherently unreliable.

The Supreme Court has finally – and repeatedly – slapped down the Bush administration’s legal rationales for denying enemy combatants even a modicum of legal safeguards. The next president, whether it is John McCain or Barack Obama, will represent a repudiation of the moral vacuity the Bush administration has displayed in regards to detainees. There is no doubt that Bush and Cheney have undermined the values they purport to defend. Their contorted logic and reasoning for denying terror suspects even a minimum of legal rights has not only made a mockery of the rule of law, it shocked the conscience of the world. The magnitude of Bush’s failures, however, extends to nearly every aspect of our national life: the reckless invasion of Iraq, the incompetence of Katrina, the failure to do anything about global warming and America’s crumbling infrastructure, and the administration’s fiscal irresponsibility. A staggering 84% of the public now agrees that the Bush administration has taken the country in the wrong direction. Historians will likely be even more scathing; most already concur that the Bush administration represents one of the lowest points in our Republic.

In 2000 the Supreme Court intervened to thwart a statewide recount in Florida. The Court’s reasoning was right out of Alice in Wonderland: there was not enough time for the recount to proceed, a fact the Court itself had made true by stopping the recount the day before. Justice delayed is justice denied. The verdict of history is taking shape: the Court didn’t just install the wrong man; the majority’s sophistic reasoning helped put in place a war criminal.

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Top Ten Jobs for Bill and Hillary Clinton in an Obama Administration

10). Obama should immediately appoint Bill and Hillary to the Supreme Court. Hey, those black gowns will work a lot better for Hillary than her candy-colored pantsuits. And I bet Bill and Clarence Thomas will enjoy discussing legal theories concerning the Constitutionality of adult videos.

9). Since Hillary has shown an inclination to work till 3am, why not assign her to the top job at the White House switchboard?

8). Hillary’s vivid accounts of dodging sniper fire and mortar rounds indicate she would make her an ideal candidate for America’s top ambassador to the Green Zone in Baghdad.

7). Hillary talks about being a fighter a lot so why not give her five stars and appoint her as Secretary of War? I bet the Iranians will think twice about enriching uranium when she’s got the top slot at the Pentagon because they’ll know Hillary has a penchant for proving she’s man enough for any job.

6). If I were Obama, I’d appoint Hillary and Bill as goodwill ambassadors to the international space station.

5). Bill and Hillary have proven they’ll do anything it takes to get back to the White House. Hillary has downed shots of vodka, visited NASCAR, and passed herself off as a good’ old gal. Obama should assign Bill and Hillary to the White House motor pool, and let them be responsible for keeping the presidential limo spiffy shiny and clean.

4). I’m sure the Clinton’s just great at leading tours of the White House, though the secret Oval Office broom closet and the Lincoln bedroom should be off-limits to visiting girl scouts troops, unless Hillary accompanies her hubby.

3). Appoint Bill Clinton to the Court, the White House indoor basketball court that is. Hey, Bill Clinton supported affirmative action, so it’s only fair to have a token white guy who can’t jump on Obama’s team.

2). Bill Clinton playing “Hail to the Chief” on hi sax. How cool would that be? Obama should pick the big guy to lead the White House Band.

1). If Obama is foolish enough to pick Hillary as his VP he should insist on getting two for one by getting Bill as his food taster.

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Bush, Obama, and Appeasement

Man, in his unwillingness to understand other men, becomes like the beasts of the jungle. And their ways become his ways. This sentiment comes from the brilliant film, “The Naked Prey,” directed by Cornel Wilde. But it is probably the best encapsulation of all that has gone wrong with America’s foreign policy under the tragic tenure of George W. Bush. Dialogue equals appeasement, or so the architects of the Iraq debacle hold. But these would be vanquishers of Evil have spawned Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and four million Iraq refugees.

George Bush and John McCain have blasted Barack Obama over his willingness to talk to Iran without preconditions. Bush, in particular, has had the temerity to imply that taking to Iran would be Munich all over again, but this time in the Middle East (Munich was the moment the Europeans appeased Hitler). Of course, Bush’s historical analogies involving Nazi Germany might carry a little more authority if he and his bunker buddy, Dick Cheney, hadn’t decided to unilaterally scrap the Geneva Conventions and launch a preemptive war under false pretenses. After all, wasn’t it Herr Hitler who insisted he was “liberating” Eastern Europe after claiming Poland had attacked the Third Reich? Bush would do well to avoid drawing analogies involving the megalomaniacal but hopelessly incompetent Furher.

Bush’s spiel that dialogue equals appeasement is wrong on multiple counts. First, reactionary conservatives during the Cold War argued in favor of preemptive war against the Soviet Union on the grounds that any form of diplomacy with the “Evil Empire” was appeasement. Needless to say, most sane observers now agree that containment, diplomacy, and dialogue were the right approaches to take, while the rollback doctrine that led to calamities like the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs would have been suicidal.

There is a second and even more insidious way in which Bush’s dialogue is appeasement argument is a dangerous delusion. He is applying it not just to al-Qaeda -- the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11 -- but also to Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and anyone else the Bush administration designates in its ever expansive catch-all category: the Enemy. It is worth noting that Iran was the one country in the Middle East that held public rallies demonstrating their solidarity with the United States following the 9/11 attacks, and that the Iranian government cooperated with the U.S. military’s campaign to oust the Taliban. The invasion of Iraq, however, coupled with the Bush administration reckless plans to refashion the Middle East in America’s image, have helped turn an erstwhile ally into an implacable adversary. You are either with us or against us works better when you don’t piss everybody off so much that everyone is rooting against you.

The tragedy, of course, is that moral obtuseness – assuming one always in the right, not listening to other perspectives, and the unwillingness to compromise with adversaries – leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy that has a tendency to bring out the worst in everybody. The irony, needless to say, is that with George W. Bush the War against Evil has only one exit strategy: escalation.

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Top Ten Ways Hillary Can Pander Her Way to the Presidency

10). Promise to give each and every American $1,500 gift card to use at the mall of their choice. Hey, if every American could afford to purchase a second or third giant screen TV it sure would help stimulate the economy. And who better than Hillary to get tough with the Arab oil sheiks in order to get them to lend us the money to finance this scheme.

9). Hey, if Hillary would promise to obliterate Crawford, Texas it sure would make up for her vote to give the warmonger George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

8). Offer raffle tickets to ordinary citizens where the prize is an overnight sleepover in the Lincoln bedroom. The prize should include quality time with Bill and other VIPs. Winners, of course, must be over 21.

7). Subsidize massive federal boondoggle to turn marijuana into cannabis-based ethanol. Hey, weed is already America’s #2 cash crop. Let’s see if we can get higher mileage with hybrid cars that run on fumes. This should solve global warming too. And it’s doubtful it will lead to more traffic accidents, assuming drivers don’t inhale.

6). Forget the gasoline tax holiday. Like a lot of Americans I consume a lot more alcohol than I do petrol. How about a tax holiday on Hillary’s favorite beverage, the boilermaker? I’ll drink to that.

5). Hey, if Bill can pardon billionaire fugitive Marc Rich, then why couldn’t Hillary pardon me for the $28,432 I owe in unpaid parking and traffic fees? A traffic infraction amnesty for all Americans is just what Hillary needs to propose to pick up some Red states.

4). Draft dodging chicken hawk Republicans have succeeded in Swift boating liberal war heroes for too long. Hillary should retroactively reinstate the draft for top government officials who used multiple deferments and the National Guard to avoid one senseless war when they were young only to start another when they were old. Let’s see how Dick Cheney and George Bush look in Kevlar helmets and body armor as they dodge IEDs, mortar rounds, and sniper fire in “Free Iraq.”

3). I’d vote for Hillary if the Clinton campaign would make “She’s so Cold” by the Rolling Stones her theme song. Hey, but if Obama should happen to get the nomination after all I’d love to hear “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” following Barack’s acceptance speech.

2). Hillary should pledge to appoint Al Gore as Chief Justice of the World Court responsible for investigating and prosecuting Crimes Against Humanity (including any and all high government officials who may have authorized torture, preemptive war, and election fraud). Let’s face it, I want to see the rightful winner of the 2000 election order Bush confined to a straightjacket while the disgraced ex-president undergoes a thorough psychiatric evaluation.

1). Hillary should promise to pick her vice-presidential running mate from a pool of contestants that face off on a popular reality-based TV show like “Survivor.” Contestants will have to compete in a series of silly tasks designed to reveal their capacity for ruthlessness, duplicity, and backstabbing. The contestant that would make the Clinton’s want to hire a food taster the most wins the second spot on the ticket.

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Reverend Wright vs. the Right

A debate between Jeremiah Wright and Sean Hannity would probably be about as subtle and intellectually rewarding as a scene from of Hamlet played by Vince McMahon and Donald Trump. Rightwing bloviaters are in perpetual need of bogeymen to rail against, and what better foil to make stupid white men seem smart than an African-American Archie Bunker. If Reverend Wright weren’t the product of the far left the far right would have had to invent him.

Projection is a psychological mechanism whereby unacknowledged emotions of one’s own – fear, aggression, and bigotry – are attributed to another, thus alleviating oneself of the responsibility for toxic feelings. One can imagine, for instance, the temporary psychological relief a KKK member gets from watching loops of Reverend Wright venting his spleen; the white supremacist feels justified by locating the source of his anger in the uppity black minister spouting “God Damn America.”

Reverend Wright and his most vociferous critics are in many ways mirror images of one another. This can be seen, for example, in the mindset of figures from the religious right, such as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, who insisted that the 9/11 attacks were God’s retribution upon America for promoting abortion, gay marriage, and secularism. This is arguably an even cruder and more irrational explananda than Wright’s “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” commentary on 9/11.

Ironically, Wright and his detractors share the same dubious premise: namely, that we live in a just universe where human events are governed by a benevolent deity who nevertheless dispenses rewards and punishments for our moral good. The notion that the perpetrators and victims of terrorism are part of a divine scheme to dispense justice is so patently anti-scientific, juvenile, and irrational that it is beyond embarrassing.

Reverend Wright’s view, however, at least has the virtue of being more theological sophisticated and tenable than that of his counterparts on the right. For instance, Wright makes the perfectly valid point when he draws the connection between America’s foreign policy and a terrorist backlash. Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noregia, and Osama bin Laden were all recipients of U.S. military aid. In a very real sense, as Benazir Bhutto noted decades ago, al-Qaeda was the Frankenstein monster the Reagan/Bush administration helped create.

Wright is an astonishing mixture of erudition and ignorance. He weaves uncomfortable truths and conspiracies into a narrative that can be odious and illuminating at the same time. I don’t doubt that he and his church have done good work ministering to the poor and championing the cause of the disenfranchised and disaffected. Wright’s legacy will be even more mixed, however, if he succeeds in derailing a candidate who transcends the divisiveness that religious demagogues feed on. Here Wright shares another trait with the far right cable crowd: if he spent as much time solving problems as he did whipping up anger and resentment he’d be out of business.

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Bush vs. Justice

Justice is to society what health is to the body. That is, justice is a kind of harmonious interplay between the various components of the social order that engenders optimum functioning. Philosophers, of course, have long inquired about the nature of justice. For a character named Thrasymachus justice is synonymous with the interests and advantage of the stronger, and attitude summed up by the notion that “might makes right.” When the tiny island of Melos resisted the unilateralism of the Greek Empire a forerunner of George W. Bush simply informed the inhabitants that you are either with us or against us. After all, as the official put it, fairness and justice only pertains to equals. And in disputes between non-equals, the sophistic official went on, “the strong do what they can and weak suffer what they must.”

This is a cynical and corrosive understanding of justice, needless to say, since it reflects the notion that justice is little or nothing more than one side imposing its will on the other, through force of arms, rhetorical sleight-of-hand, or whatever means happen to be at one’s disposal. On this account there are no objective standards, save one: winning is proof that one is right, as evidenced by the fact that the victors will get to write history.

In examining this notion, which extols power as the end all and be all, it is worth quoting the words of John F. Kennedy. He wrote on the pitfalls of power not tempered by a poetic dimension:

“When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses”

Eight years of Bush’s unilateralism, zero-sum politics, and legal sophistry have convinced most Americans that the country could use a moral disinfectant to purge the taint associated with an administration that completely squandered the public trust. This was a president, after all, who insisted the United States did not engage in torture, illegal eavesdropping, or manipulate intelligence even though the administration’s own internal memos explicitly contradict his public assurances.

It is now abundantly clear that administration lawyers – particularly David Addington and John Yoo – contrived Alice in Wonderland type rationalizations to legitimize interrogation methods that were outside the U.S. military code of justice, international law, and the Geneva Conventions. Moreover, these logic-chopping legal sophists attempted to promulgate a perverse doctrine whereby the President supposedly had the inherent authority to ignore, interpret, or fashion the law in any way he chose to in his role as Commander-in-Chief. This so-called theory of the Unitary Chief Executive might just as well be called the Humpty Dumpty Doctrine, after the cracked character who tells Alice after she’s fallen through the looking glass that a word means just what he says it means – neither more nor less. After all, thanks to Bush’s signing statements a law means just what he says it means – neither more nor less.

A law that depends on the whim of a single individual, however, is a contradiction in terms. That is, just as the philosopher Wittgenstein showed that the idea of a private language is incoherent, so the idea of a single individual serving as the fount of what is permissible and not is the very antithesis of the law. Bush’s pursuit of executive omnipotence has in fact led to a form of schizoid irrationality – i.e., torture is not illegal if the president orders it or defines it in ways that makes even the most inhumane and degrading interrogation methods acceptable.

Wittgenstein, incidentally, is famous for saying that “ethics could be shown, but not spoken.” By the same token, it might be said that justice cannot be defined, but still we might find examples that exemplify it. I believe Mozart’s great opera, The Marriage of Figaro, contains a sublime illustration of justice. Here the story concerns a decadent aristocrat presiding over a disordered household. To distract himself from the decaying and dysfunctional state of affairs he governs, the Count in question pursues a series of amorous affairs with the household help. His wife, distraught by her husband’s unfaithful intentions, makes plans to exact her revenge: she will impersonate one of the servant girls that is the object of her husband’s lust. In other words, the Count thinks he is seducing a maid, but he is really pursuing the wife he has spurned.

When the ruse is revealed the Count realizes how much he loves his wife and he begs her forgiveness. The tables have been turned and the wife can now extract her pound of flesh, but in one of opera’s most sublime arias she orgives him. We in the audience immediately recognize the poetic justice in the way the conflict has been resolved. As the opera concludes order has been restored, love triumphs, and justice reigns. Life, alas, does not often imitate art, but perhaps it should. In any event, I believe Mozart’s opera provides an archetypal example of justice.

In contrast, the Bush administration’s conception of justice is nothing but a prosaic counterfeit. Everywhere one turns – Bush vs. Gore, Guantanamo, the trumped up case for invading Iraq – one finds only rhetorical sleights-of hand, ad hoc and post hoc rationalizations, and endless excuses and evasions. Deep dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, the decline of America’s moral authority, and the tanking of the economy are symptomatic of a country that is seriously out of order. There is a lesson here: the arrogance that equated brute force with justice is being undone by a far great power: poetic justice.

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George W. Bush: The Most Unpopular President Ever?

George W. Bush is about as popular with the American people as an undertaker visiting a nursing home would be. Seventy-one percent of the public disapproves of Bush’s job performance, the highest negative rating ever. Not even Richard Nixon was so reviled.

By some estimates a million Iraqis have been killed since the war began, two-and-a-half million Iraqis have fled the country or been displaced, and virtually every expert agrees the invasion has enhanced the influence of America’s chief nemesis in the region, Iran.

The dollar is near an all-time low, gas prices are soaring, and the country is teetering on the brink of what some are predicting will be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Bush, however, is so clueless that he didn’t even seem to know – or care – when someone told him that gas would likely top $4 a gallon by this summer.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has described Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina as “disgraceful.” When you factor in the mortgage meltdown; the failure to find WMD in Iraq; the collapse of Bush’s efforts to privatize Social Security; the explosion of the deficit, the discrediting of the administration’s democratization agenda for Iraq; the setbacks in Afghanistan; the failure to catch bin Laden; and the precipitous decline in America’s power and prestige during Bush’s tenure . . . well it’s a no-brainer that George W. Bush has been a monumental failure. You might say that Dubya is kind of like Nero, but without the musical talent.

George Bush has decimated virtually everything he’s come in contact with: FEMA, the U.S. military, Iraq, the economy, and the Republican Party. But you can bet your retirement account and/or your economic future that Forty-Three earnestly believes he’s been doing a “heck of a job.”

Bush likes to claim that he’ll be vindicated by history. Many decades from now, Bush claims, historians will recognize he made the right choices, particularly in regards to his decision to invade Iraq. This is a facile, self-serving, and irresponsible way of looking at things. As chief weapons inspector Hans Blix noted, had Bush delayed his decision by as little as two weeks the world would have know with certainty that Saddam did not posses the dreaded WMD that were the casus belli of the invasion.

Certainly, from a military standpoint, it would be important to know that U.S. troops would not be facing chemical and biological weapons. Needless to say, this would have simplified the invasion, or perhaps made it unnecessary. But the Bush administration has invariably been hostile to evidence that contradicts its ideological convictions, as its foot-dragging approach to global warming demonstrates.

Bush could (and should) have fired the incompetent Donald Rumsfeld earlier. He should have set up a unified chain of command so that Paul Bremer wasn’t disbanding the Iraqi Army on his own. And he never should have allowed political loyalty to trump competence when it came to sending personnel to reconstruct Iraq. Put simply, it’s not just that the choices that Bush has made that have been disastrous, but rather that his entire ideological, managerial, and political style has engendered catastrophe at every step. George Bush, in short, has about as much chance as going down as a successful president as Britney Spears has of winning an Oscar.

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The Case Against Scalia.

In the film The English Patient a Nazi interrogator muses over a question he thinks has great moral and metaphysical import. In the scene he and his henchmen are threatening to strip a detainees’ fingernails when the Nazi commander has a brainstorm: are thumbs fingers?

Such obsessively abstract logic chopping can engender a mind-numbing moral obtuseness. That’s the feeling I had as I watched “Justice” Scalia being interviewed on 60 Minutes Lesley Stahl. The subject of torture came up -- as did Bush vs. Gore -- but by Scalia’s reasoning torture didn’t fit in the punishment category. Presumably, torture is used on detainees to get information. Therefore, the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” doesn’t apply since no one is using waterboarding, thumbscrews, or the wrack to punish the aforementioned detainees. I’m glad “Justice” Scalia cleared that little moral conundrum up for me!

Scalia was equally disingenuous on the subject of Bush vs. Gore. He makes no apology for that ignominious decision, a verdict that is in the process of tainting his legacy and discrediting his judicial philosophy. He argues, implausibly, that the outcome would have been the same whether the Court intervened or not. Indeed, he has the temerity to blame Al Gore for getting the courts involved in the first place. Needless to say, Scalia blithely ignores inconvenient facts: namely, that tens of thousands of machine unreadable ballots were never tabulated, that Bush ally Katherine Harris misused her office as Secretary of State to thwart a recount, or that the chief legal rationale trumpeted by the Bush campaign (that examining the uncounted ballots would be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause) was right out of Alice in Wonderland.

The Bush administration is universally recognized as a catastrophe. But all the hallmarks of their opportunistic mendacity were on display during the election fiasco that led to current debacle. The sophistic legal reasoning, the fear mongering, and the pandering to the lowest common denominator all had a trial run as the Bush’s campaign took their case to what proved to be a kangaroo court.

“Justice” Scalia’s anxiety was palpable as Stahl queried him. He clearly wanted to change the subject. Bush vs. Gore, it should be clear, will not stand as a paradigmatic case that illustrates the values and principles that exemplify the highest ideals of the United States. Rather, it will mark a crucial moment where the ideal of a fair and impartial judiciary resorted to brazen political expediency. It is only poetic justice that those who lent their seal of approval to Bush’s dubious political ascension should be discredited the most by his disastrously incompetent reign. Justice Stevens was on the right side of Bush vs. Gore when he wrote in dissent that the biggest loser in all this would be the American people and the rule of law. “Justice” Scalia is an oxymoron.

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The Case for Gore/Obama

Hillary Clinton has risen from the dead more times that Count Dracula. She’s sending shudders down the Democratic establishment, however, since the more primaries she wins the less popular she becomes. Indeed, with Hillary’s likeablity rating hovering around 35% -- a virtual untenable number for a candidate who hopes to win the presidency – her only shot at winning the Democratic nomination lies in tarnishing Obama. Hence the paradox, the better she does against Obama the more despised she becomes among the younger and better-educated voters that represent the future of the Democratic Party.

Hillary is drawing kudos from conservative commentators for her tenacity. Her single-minded willingness to fracture her party in order to win the nomination is reminiscent of George W. Bush’s obsessive quest to “win” in Iraq even if it means destroying the U.S. military, the dollar, and America’s strategic position. The scorched-earth self-righteous obliviousness of the two “leaders” is more than a little eerie. No wonder right-wing pundits are singing Hillary’s praises; they recognize in her a kindred spirit.

Hillary’s penchant for distorting the truth, her top-down management style, her us vs. them outlook, and her proclivity to pander to the lowest common denominator make her seem like a liberal mirror-image of that discredited “compassionate conservative,” George W. Bush. I don’t believe the United States can withstand another four to eight years with a polarizing politician who has trouble acknowledging the truth and can never admit they’re wrong.

Hillary, however, has exposed significant weaknesses in Obama’s candidacy. The first African American candidate with a chance at winning the presidency has trouble connecting with the so-called Reagan Democrats. I’d like to think this has more to do with the fact that many of the blue-collar workers that have trouble with Obama are anti-intellectual rather than racially bigoted. To be fair, Hillary also has to contend with stereotypes and misogynistic attitudes that unfairly hamper her ability to be judged on the basis of her message, record, and character.

Hillary probably cannot catch Obama in terms of the pledged delegates or the popular vote count. But her efforts to pin the “elitist” label on her rival could well cost Democrats the election in November. It would be a catastrophe for the Democratic Party the country, and progressive values if the Clinton’s perpetual selfishness helps hand the White House to George Bush designated successor, John McCain. The best way to avoid political suicide -- particularly if Obama cannot convincingly close the deal in the remaining contests – would be for Democrats to turn to Al Gore to head the ticket with Obama as his running mate.

For those of us who support Obama – and see in him the potential to be a great president and a champion for progressive values – a decision on his part to accept the vice-presidential nomination would be disappointment, unless that figure was Al Gore. But a decision of that kind on his part would be in keeping with the kind of character Obama has displayed; he would be putting the needs of his country and his party above his own. More importantly, a Gore/Obama ticket would almost certainly present the most formidable team the Democrat’s could field in 2008. Indeed, a Gore/Obama victory would put the final nail in the coffin of the catastrophically tragic Bush era.

Presidential campaigns need to articulate grand narratives. Hillary has failed to do this. Indeed, it seems woefully clear that she lacks the capacity to be a figure that educates the public. Gore and Obama, however, are both leaders with the kind of vision and judgement to chart a new course for the United States after the debacle of Bush’s failed presidency. They were the only two major figures in the Democratic Party, incidentally, to speak out forcefully against the Iraq War, the torture and abuse sanctioned by the Bush administration, and Bush’s other abuses of power. Hillary loses my respect when she refers to Obama’s prescience on the war as “just a speech.” Speaking out against the war was an act of political courage, a quality that is difficult to associate with the competent but dismayingly prosaic and politically expedient Clintons.

Electing Gore and Obama would signal to the world that America has atoned for the morally hideous aberration of Bush/Cheney. Neither the seventy-one year old McCain or the baggage-saddled Clinton has quite what it takes to turn the page the way Gore and Obama would.

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Sean Hannity’s America: The Politics of Hate

Sean Hannity has taken journalism to a level even Joseph Goebbels would have to admire. In Hannity’s hands, insinuation and guilt by association are art forms. Indeed, his ability to make the worse argument appear better is virtually unmatched by any rhetorician I know of. He may be the finest sophist America has. But let’s give credit where credit is due. After all, Hannity’s success depends critically on the virtually unlimited obtuseness of his audience. It takes a rare and exceptional mind to fall for the same fallacies over and over again, but Hannity’s viewers are unvaryingly consistent in their credulity.

How does Hannity manage to pull the wool over the eyes of his audience while viewers flock away from liberal commentators? I believe this has something to do with the fact that the politics of fear and resentment has proven a winning strategy for the right wing in the past. Put simply, for a lot of voters it’s easier to imagine things that make them angry than to envision ways of solving the challenges that make them fearful and angry in the first place. Hannity’s genius, and that of his compatriots, is to deftly turn public figures like Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama into emblems that stir the anxiety and ire of a significant portion of the electorate.

Hannity and his ilk do this by twisting the words, exploiting gaffes, and manipulating images in ways that make candidates they oppose seem foreign, condescending, and disloyal to America. For instance, prior to the 2000 election Al Gore said he took the initiative in creating the Internet (which was true). But this was twisted to make it seem like Gore was claiming credit for inventing the Internet, which was supposed to feed into the notion that the VP was a serial exaggerator. Conservative commentators had a field day with John Kerry’s windsurfing, which they used to pigeonhole him as a flip-flopping elitist.

The tactics Hannity and company are using to disparage Barack Obama are no less inane, but they are arguably more subtle and potentially more pernicious. It is essential to expose the sophistic ploys they use to manipulate public opinion so that the 2008 election is decided on basis of ideas and character, not character assassination.

Hannity and like-minded conservative commentators are determined to paint Obama as not one of us. They have to eschew overt forms of bigotry, of course, so rather than attack Obama directly they resort to guilt by association. For example, there are determined to link Obama to William Ayers. Ayres was once a member of an extremist group that protested the Vietnam War forty years ago by building and setting off bombs. Ayres is now an English professor who happens to live in the same neighborhood as Obama. The two also sat on the board of an anti-poverty foundation. Barack Obama was eight years old when Ayers was engaging in his subversive activities and has condemned the acts in question as “detestable.”

If standards of logic and reason were applied there few if any inferences one could deduce from Obama’s tenuous association with Ayres. However, Hannity and his crowd are experts at twisting facts in order to generate and pin a negative emotional connotation on Obama. Here’s how they do it. First, they deliberately exaggerate Ayers’ moral culpability. They do this by stating that Ayers was part of a terrorist group that set off bombs that killed people, but they fail to mention two important facts: 1) Ayers did set off bombs, but no one was killed. 2) Three members of Ayers’ group were killed when a bomb they were making exploded accidentally, but these are the only deaths caused by the group. In other words, attempts to paint Ayers as public enemy number one are overblown.

Ayers, however, had the misfortune of publishing a book on the same day as 9/11. In it he says, “I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough.” Ayers claims that “I feel we didn’t do enough” refers to the efforts to end the war and that he did not mean that he wished he had set of more bombs. In fact, he has acknowledged feeling embarrassed by the arrogance, rigidity, and narcissism he and his compatriots exhibited at the time. Ayers, however, as clearly provided Hannity with the opening he needs to portray him as a terrorist in the same moral category as bin Laden, which he does by depicting Ayers as some one who unrepentantly hates America. After all, as Hannity boils over with righteous indignation, Ayers had audacity to make his “I feel we didn’t do enough” comment on 9/11.

Hannity next step is to keep referring to Ayers as a terrorist while mention the coincidental 9/11 connection over and over again. The idea is to plant in the minds of viewers that Ayers is a guy who attacked America and said these dreadful things on 9/11. Never mind that Hannity has interpreted Ayers’ views out of context -- and in the worst possible way -- while deliberately conflating Ayers and 9/11 in a disingenuous way. The final step of course, is to make the leap that because Obama sat on the same board and knew Ayers that this is the kind of person he surrounds himself.

Hannity also takes a relatively innocuous event, such as Obama’s participation in the Million Man march, and links him to radical black leader Louis Farrakhan. Snippets of Farrakhan are played repeatedly as Hannity makes insinuations about Obama’s associations: There’s a pattern here . . . he’s not who we think he is . . . he’s hiding something . . . etc.

The flap over Obama’s pastor, Reverend Wright, is a variation on this theme. Obama has repudiated the comments his pastor made. But by playing them in an endless loop, and piling one dubious insinuation upon another, Hannity makes several flimsy arguments seem more persuasive than they really are. He does through repetition and the juxtaposition of incendiary images (Rev Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and William Ayers) when discussing Obama. All of this is designed to create and imprint negative emotional feelings towards the likely Democratic nominee. Hannity’s method here is only slightly subtler than the conditioning Pavlov used to train dogs to salivate at the sound of a dinner bell.

Guilt by association, conflation, and other rhetorical slights of hand techniques are the same methods the Bush administration deployed to fallaciously link Saddam to 9/11 in the public mind. Can a well-oiled but increasingly decrepit right-wing propaganda machine hoodwink the American people once again? There’s an old saying, “Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.” The American people cannot afford to be fooled again.

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