KABC Doug McIntyre: An Apology from a Bush Voter

There’s nothing harder in public life than admitting you’re wrong. By the way, admitting you’re wrong can be even tougher in private life. If you don’t believe me, just ask Bill Clinton or Charlie Sheen. But when you go out on the limb in public, it’s out there where everyone can see it, or in my case, hear it.

So, I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he’s the worst President, period.

In 2000, I was a McCain guy. I wasn’t sure about the Texas Governor. He had name recognition and a lot of money behind him, but other than that? What? Still, I was sick of all the Clinton shenanigans and the thought of President Gore was… unthinkable. So, GWB became my guy.

For the first few months he was just flubbing along like most new Presidents, no great shakes, but no disasters either. He cut taxes and I like tax cuts.

Then September 11th happened. September 11th changed everything for me, like it did for so many of you. After September 11th, all the intramural idiocy of American politics stopped being funny. We had been attacked by a vicious and determined enemy and it was time for all of us to row in the same direction.

And we did for the blink of an eye. I believed the President when he said we were going to hunt down Bin Laden and all those responsible for the 9-11 murders. I believed President Bush when he said we would go after the terrorists and the nations that harbored them.

I supported the President when he sent our troops into Afghanistan, after all, that’s where the Taliban was, that’s where al-Qaida trained the killers, that’s where Bin Laden was.

And I cheered when we quickly toppled the Taliban government, but winced when we let Bin Laden escape from Tora-Bora.

I thought the connection to 9-11 was sketchy at best. But Colin Powell impressed me at the UN, and Tony Blair was in, and after all, he was a Clinton guy, not a Bush guy, so I thought the case had to be strong. I was worried though, because I had read the Wolfowitz paper, “The Project for the New American Century.” It’s been around since ‘92, and it raised alarm bells because it was based on a theory, “Democratizing the Middle East” and I prefer pragmatism over theory. I was worried because Iraq was being justified on a radical new basis, “pre-emptive war.” Any time we do something without historical precedent I get nervous.

But the President shifted the argument to WMDs and the urgent threat of Iraq getting atomic weapons. The debate turned to Saddam passing nukes on to terror groups. After 9-11, the risk was too great. As the President said, “The next smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud.” At least that’s what I thought at the time.

I grew up in New York and watched them build the World Trade Center. I worked with a guy, Frank O’Brien, who put the elevators in both towers. I lost a very close friend on September 11th. 103 floor, tower one, Cantor Fitzgerald. Tim Coughlin was his name. If we had to take out Iraq to make sure something like that, or worse, never happened again, so be it. I knew the consequences. We have a soldier in our house. None of this was theoretical in my house.

But in the months and years since shock and awe I have been shocked repeatedly by a consistent litany of excuses, alibis, double-talk, inaccuracies, bogus predictions, and flat out lies. I have watched as the President and his administration changed the goals, redefined the reasons for going into Iraq, and fumbled the good will of the world and the focus necessary to catch the real killers of September 11th.

I have watched the President say the commanders on the ground will make the battlefield decisions, and the war won’t be run from Washington. Yet, politics has consistently determined what the troops can and can’t do on the ground and any commander who did not go along with the administration was sacked, and in some cases, maligned.

I watched and tried to justify the looting in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. I watched and tried to justify the dismantling of the entire Iraqi army. I tired to explain the complexities of building a functional new Iraqi army. I urged patience when no WMDs were found. Then the Vice President told us we were in the “waning days of the insurgency.” And I started wincing again. The President says we have to stay the course but what if it’s the wrong course?

It was the wrong course. All of it was wrong. We are not on the road to victory. We’re about to slink home with our tail between our legs, leaving civil war in Iraq and a nuclear armed Iran in our wake. Bali was bombed. Madrid was bombed. London was bombed. And Bin Laden is still making tapes. It’s unspeakable. The liberal media didn’t create this reality, bad policy did.

Most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a reasonably accurate take on a President’s place in history. So, maybe 50 years from now Iraq will be a peaceful member of the brotherhood of nations and George W. Bush will be celebrated as a visionary genius.

But we don’t live fifty years in the future. We live now. We have to make public policy decisions now. We have to live with the consequences of the votes we cast and the leaders we chose now.

After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I’ve reached the conclusion he’s either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works. Or both.

Presidential failures. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Jimmy Carter, Warren Harding-— the competition is fierce for the worst of the worst. Still, the damage this President has done is enormous. It will take decades to undo, and that’s assuming we do everything right from now on. His mistakes have global implications, while the other failed Presidents mostly authored domestic embarrassments.

And speaking of domestic embarrassments, let’s talk for a minute about President Bush’s domestic record. Yes, he cut taxes. But tax cuts combined with reckless spending and borrowing is criminal mismanagement of the public’s money. We’re drunk at the mall with our great grandchildren’s credit cards. Whatever happened to the party of fiscal responsibility?

Bush created a giant new entitlement, the prescription drug plan. He lied to his own party to get it passed. He lied to the country about its true cost. It was written by and for the pharmaceutical industry. It helps nobody except the multinationals that lobbied for it. So much for smaller government. In fact, virtually every tentacle of government has grown exponentially under Bush. Unless, of course, it was an agency to look after the public interest, or environmental protection, and/or worker’s rights.

I’ve talked so often about the border issue, I won’t bore you with a rehash. It’s enough to say this President has been a catastrophe for the wages of working people; he’s debased the work ethic itself. “Jobs Americans won’t do!” He doesn’t believe in the sovereign borders of the country he’s sworn to protect and defend. And his devotion to cheap labor for his corporate benefactors, along with his worship of multinational trade deals, makes an utter mockery of homeland security in a post 9-11 world. The President’s January 7th, 2004 speech on immigration, his first trial balloon on his guest worker scheme, was a deal breaker for me. I couldn’t and didn’t vote for him in 2004. And I’m glad I didn’t.

Katrina, Harriet Myers, The Dubai Port Deal, skyrocketing gas prices, shrinking wages for working people, staggering debt, astronomical foreign debt, outsourcing, open borders, contempt for the opinion of the American people, the war on science, media manipulation, faith based initives, a cavalier attitude toward fundamental freedoms-- this President has run the most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in my lifetime, perhaps, in any American’s lifetime.

You can make a case that Abraham Lincoln did what he had to do, the public be damned. If you roll the dice on your gut and you’re right, history remembers you well. But, when your gut led you from one business failure to another, when your gut told you to trade Sammy Sosa to the Cubs, and you use the same gut to send our sons and daughters to fight and die in a distraction from the real war on terror, then history will and should be unapologetic in its condemnation.

None of this, by the way, should be interpreted as an endorsement of the opposition party. The Democrats are equally bankrupt. This is the second crime of our age. Again, historically speaking, its times like these when America needs a vibrant opposition to check the power of a run-amuck majority party. It requires it. It doesn’t work without one. Like the high and low tides keep the oceans alive, a healthy, positive opposition offers a path back to the center where all healthy societies live.

Tragically, the Democrats have allowed crackpots, leftists and demagogic cowards to snipe from the sidelines while taking no responsibility for anything. In fairness, I don’t believe a Democrat president would have gone into Iraq. Unfortunately, I don’t know if President Gore would have gone into Afghanistan. And that’s one of the many problems with the Democrats.

The two party system has always been clumsy and imperfect, but it has only collapsed once, in the 1850s, and the result was civil war.

I believe, as I have said countless times, the two party system is on the brink of a second collapsed. It’s currently running on spin, anger, revenge, and pots and pots and pots of money.

We’re being governed by paper-mache patriots; brightly painted red, white and blue, but hollow to the core. Both parties have mastered the cynical arts of media manipulation and fund raising. They’ve learned the lessons of Watergate and burn the tapes. They have learned to divide the nation for their own gain. They have demonstrated the willingness to exploit any tragedy for personal advantage. The contempt they have for the American people is without parallel.

This is painful to say, and I’m sure for many of you, painful to read. But it’s impossible to heal the country until we’re willing to acknowledge the truth no matter how painful. We have to wean ourselves off sugar coated partisan lies.

With a belated tip of the cap to Ralph Nader, the system is broken, so broken, it’s almost inevitable it pukes up the Al Gores and George W. Bushes. Where are the Trumans and the Eisenhowers? Where are the men and women of vision and accomplishment? Why do we have to settle for recycled hacks and malleable ciphers? Greatness is always rare, but is basic competence and simple honesty too much to ask?

It may be decades before we have the full picture of how paranoid and contemptuous this administration has been. And I am open to the possibility that I’m all wet about everything I’ve just said. But I’m putting it out there, because I have to call it as I see it, and this is how I see it today. I don’t say any of this lightly. I’ve thought about this for months and months. But eventually, the weight of evidence takes on a gravitational force of its own.

I believe that George W. Bush has taken us down a terrible road. I don’t believe the Democrats are offering an alternative. That means we’re on our own to save this magnificent country. The United States of America is a gift to the world, but it has been badly abused and it’s rightful owners, We the People, had better step up to the plate and reclaim it before the damage becomes irreparable.

So, accept my apology for allowing partisanship to blind me to an obvious truth; our President is incapable of the tasks he is charged with. I almost feel sorry for him. He is clearly in over his head. Yet, he doesn’t generate the sympathy Warren Harding earned. Harding, a spectacular mediocrity, had the self-knowledge to tell any and all he shouldn’t be President. George W. Bush continues to act the part, but at this point whose buying the act?

Does this make me a waffler? A flip-flopper? Maybe, although I prefer to call it realism. And, for those of you who never supported Bush, its also fair to accuse me of kicking Bush while he’s down. After all, you were kicking him while he was up.

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?id=1627512%2C27

Republicans Shouldn't Run Away from Bush
Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | 5/3/06 | Rush Limbaugh

RUSH: There are Republicans planning to abandon George W. Bush in droves, particularly during this election year. Bush has had it, a 36%, 33% approval rating. The guy's an albatross around their neck. "We've got to get out of there! We don't want Bush doing anything but raising money for this," blah, blah, blah, blah. There's precedent for this. By the way, a couple of pollsters saying it's a bad move for the Republicans. You know, Republicans, I'll just give you some advice right now. All of you Republicans in Congress -- including you, Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe and all the rest of them, McCain -- you want to win reelection in this year, if you're up?

You want the Republicans to hold the House? Unify behind George W. Bush. Just do it. Just do it. Don't try to please moderate or Democrat voters by showing your independence. Just go out there and unify and support the president on a number of issues that you can. Fred Barnes, who at the time was a senior editor of the New Republic, posted a piece in the LA Times December 9th, 1986, Ronald Reagan's sixth year. Conservatives in '86 were abandoning Reagan, the most important conservative in the history of the movement in America.

"A dozen or so conservative leaders met privately at a Washington hotel last week to discuss the future of their political movement. Edward Feulner of the Heritage Foundation was there. So were New Right strategist Paul Weyrich, several fund-raisers, two officials of the Reagan Administration and a few Capitol Hill aides. Not surprisingly, the conversation turned to President Reagan and the Iran arms scandal. Forget Reagan, they agreed. The President's a goner, his influence shattered forever. We've got to decide how to press our agenda without him. Only William Kristol, a top official of the Department of Education, dissented, insisting that Reagan should be defended.

"Thus, the Iran scandal has achieved what Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, the 1981-82 recession and the Marines debacle in Lebanon couldn't. It has caused the disintegration of the Reagan coalition, that blend of conservatives from fundamentalist Christians to libertarians that held together as the most unified single bloc in American politics for a decade. And even if the coalition is revived on an issue or two -- aid to the Nicaraguan contras, say, or funding the Strategic Defense Initiative -- as Reagan serves out his final two years in the White House, it won't be the dominant political force anymore.

"The matter can be put quite succinctly: Without Reagan the conservatives lack a popular leader, and without the conservatives Reagan lacks a broad ideological base. Both wind up losers, and the political balance of power tilts away from them. Sure, the conservatives are still sentimentally attached to Reagan, but he's no longer the same rallying point. Worse, there's no replacement in sight. Conservatives are fragmented on who should be the Republican presidential nominee in 1988. The gravity of the split is only now dawning on Reagan and his allies. Last Tuesday, Secretary of Education William J. Bennett denounced conservatives for ingratitude and political stupidity in abandoning Reagan.

"'There is no conservative agenda without Ronald Reagan,' Bennett said. 'He is the man who made whatever good has happened to this Administration happen, and people should be mindful of that.' Patrick J. Buchanan, the White House communications director, is even more blunt. 'There's an old saying that the major failing of American conservatives is they don't retrieve their wounded,' he said. 'Now's the time you take an inventory of your friends.' Not too many friends are turning up, however. Human Events, the weekly conservative publication that Reagan reads faithfully, has only half-heartedly defended him on the Iran arms deal.

"Linda Chavez, a White House aide until last winter, published a column in the Washington Post denouncing Lt. Col. Oliver North, the ousted National Security Council official blamed for diverting profits from the Iranian arms sales to the contras; she said that he was not a 'true conservative.' Bennett, who got Chavez her first job in the Administration, was so mad about this that he quickly spread the word that he was sorry he'd ever sponsored her. Why are conservatives so wary of supporting Reagan in his moment of greatest need?

"'Nobody believes in the issue, giving arms to Iran,' says Allan Ryskind, the editor of Human Events. 'Nobody's persuaded by the arguments. And while conservatives love the contras, they think that aiding them has now been jeopardized.' (Military aid was only narrowly approved by Congress this year, and the scandal over diverted funds makes renewal of aid less than likely.) Another source of wariness by most conservatives was the firing of North. 'Was North scapegoated or did he deserve to be fired?' asks Jeffrey Bell, an adviser to Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.). 'Until conservatives know that, they'll be on hold. They love North.' And though many conservatives may be inclined to stand with Reagan, they're unsure where to do that. With new revelations in the Iran scandal occurring daily, 'they don't know what ground to stand on,' says Bell.

"Complains Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus: 'The nature of the issue keeps changing.' Finally, there are conservatives like Phillips who always regarded Reagan as too moderate for their taste. 'We wish the best for him, but we're going to focus more on the 1988 presidential race than on helping his cause,' Phillips says. 'Reagan has turned over the substance of policy to people in fundamental disagreement with the policies he's rhetorically espoused.' Phillips is resistant to lobbying. His friend Buchanan pleaded with him over dinner last Wednesday to come to the President's defense. Afterwards, Phillips went on ABC-TV's 'Nightline' and trashed Reagan."

Is it not interesting? It seems like history is repeating. Now, I know Bush is no Reagan (don't misunderstand) in the sense of leading a movement, and I've been the first to say this. But what's interesting is they just want to abandon him, and I'll tell you, there is something in here that's really true: Conservatives do not retrieve their "wounded" from the battlefield; they abandon them. There is so much -- especially more so today than ever before, there's so much -- competition out there. Conservatism has gotten so big; it has so many people who want to claim to be the leader, claim to be the definers, that if anybody takes a hit, they're happy to let them fade away because of the competition.

You know, conservatives do have competitors within the ranks. When the competitors bite the bullet, bite the dust, they're only too willing to let them, some of them them are, just fade away. There is not a whole lot of public defense, including of the president. Now, it's true the president is not defending himself, either. But I'll tell you something, I remember this period. I was working in Sacramento at the time, and I was wondering during this whole Iran Contra stuff, where's Reagan? He was being trashed every day in the media. "Where's Reagan? Why didn't he get up there and answer this stuff?"

Some people were saying, "Because he can't! Because he can't. Because it's true," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They say the same thing about Bush. "Why doesn't he go out there and defend himself?" Well Bush's answer is he doesn't care. He's got his job to do and he doesn't think it's PR spin. It's the same thing with Cheney. Cheney's got a piece coming out in Vanity Fair, I guess, or an interview with him, and they ask him (summarized): "What about your horrible public image?" He said, "I'm not in the public image business. I guess I could improve it if I went out there and tried to improve it, but that's not what my job is. My job is not public spin. My job is not my public image," and so it's amazing, these parallels.

Yet when Ronald Reagan died, all these people who abandoned him (those still around) were muscling trying to get in the front row, trying to make sure they were all over the place to be seen as loyal, never-wavering supporters. The '86 midterm elections, you know, these defections, and people who said, "We can't run with Reagan! Why, Reagan is destroying us." There's always been this tendency on the conservative side to, when there's trouble, split the scene and run away -- and, you know, Reagan did some things to irritate conservatives. While he cut taxes he also raised them at times. You know, abandoning Lebanon after the Marine barracks was hit, that wasn't popular with people. But look how time changes things. When you go back and you look at the totality of a period of time, I don't remember during the funeral week of Ronald Reagan, other than his son and maybe a couple Democrats, but even they were pretty quiet. I don't remember any of these conservatives stepping forward to remind everybody how effectiveless and worthless and pointless the last two or three years of Reagan's term were, do you?

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