Bush Wins!

The Autonomist ^ | 8/8/04 | Chris Matthew Sciabarra

[Hank Kerchief]

Bush Wins!

by Chris Matthew Sciabarra

I know this might be one of those "Dewey Defeats Truman" moments... and I realize fully that there are great hazards in making predictions five months prior to Election Day [ed: This article was written in May 2004]. And, as of this writing, things don’t look that great for George W. Bush. Abu Ghraibgate—a prison torture scandal in which American troops engaged in conduct unbecoming while interrogating Iraqi POWS—is just starting to have a deleterious effect on the President’s popularity. News of that scandal, however, has been tempered slightly by the release of a graphic video depicting the murder of American Nick Berg by rabid jihadists screaming "Allahu Akbar"—"God is Great."

Nevertheless, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll tells us that Bush’s job approval rating has fallen to its lowest point yet. 51% of likely voters now disapprove of the President’s handling of his job, the first time Bush has received a majority negative rating. Bad news at home and abroad may still have a cumulative effect that leads to the demise of the Bush White House.

But if there is anything the last year has shown, it is that events move rapidly, while Bush keeps pace. A parade of authors, whom the administration has labeled disgruntled former employees, has published one exposé after another, illustrating lapses in intelligence, homeland security, and war planning. The economy has not quite recovered from either a recession or the tragedy of 9/11. But Bush continues to give new meaning to the phrase "Teflon President." Moreover, many people seem to connect with him on a personal level, appreciating the fact that he has convictions.

Unfortunately, for lovers of liberty, many of these convictions are theocratically based. The right-wing Bible belt, which voted overwhelmingly for Bush in the 2000 slugfest with Gore, has been trying to cash-in its chips. This President has yet to provide these constituents with any Supreme Court nominees, but he has proposed a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as a purely heterosexual union, and he has forged new restrictions on abortion, "obscenity" over the airwaves, and stem-cell research. His cabinet appointments of those who were perceived as "moderate" Republicans, both African Americans—Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice—did nothing to check the rise, within his administration, of hard-core neoconservative policymakers like Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, senior advisor Karl Rove, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. (As of this writing, the Defense Secretary is in a bit of trouble over Abu Ghraib. But in light of the reprehensible Berg snuff film, I suspect that few Americans will be asking for Rumsfeld’s head in return.)

The Bush tax cuts have not been coupled with anything that might qualify as fiscal conservatism; the President has presided over an exploding federal budget deficit—the largest in U.S. history—and an expanding federal debt. In addition, Bush has signed into law the extension of Medicare prescription drug coverage for senior citizens, thus staking a claim to a traditional Democratic voting bloc. And the cost of the Iraq War alone will soon surpass the nearly $200 billion inflation-adjusted U.S. share of the costs of World War I.

That Iraqi campaign—absent the discovery of any weapons of mass destruction or any formal ties between the Hussein regime and Al Qaeda—may have hurt some of Bush’s credibility, but it has not shaken his resolve. This resolve was first punctuated with evangelical calls for a modern-day "crusade" against the "Evil Ones," but it has since become a mission to make the world safe for "democracy" (or Halliburton and Bechtel, depending on your perspective). For a man who campaigned against the Clintonistas’ belief in the nation-building enterprise, Bush has picked up the Wilsonian mantle proudly, while extolling the virtues of a PATRIOT Act, which has been used as a weapon against privacy and in the "war on drugs."

The good news for Bush: Barring any massive attack on the U.S. home front, or an utterly devastating defeat in Iraq, on a par with, say, a Shi’ite and Sunni uprising that slaughters thousands of American troops, his approval rating will most likely remain stable. Even if the foreign policy arena should collapse for Bush, history shows that, in times of war, few Presidents are turned out of office, since the electorate rarely changes horses in mid-apocalypse.

The most recent example of a President hurt by the conduct of war is Lyndon Baines Johnson, who chose not to run for re-election in 1968. But the transition from LBJ to Richard Nixon should give critics of the new JFK (John Forbes Kerry) pause, for even if Bush is defeated in November, it is highly unlikely that his successor would change anything fundamentally in the conduct of foreign affairs. A President Kerry would further institutionalize the Iraq War. He might be positively Nixonian in his approach: Before Nixon committed to the "Vietnamization" of the war in southeast Asia, to troop reductions and the elimination of conscription, his quest for "Peace with Honor" actually entailed a widening of the war. Likewise, Kerry himself might actually increase the number of troops in Iraq. He will do everything in his power not to go down as the President who "lost Iraq." In an April 13, 2004 Washington Post essay, he declares:

Americans of all political persuasions are united in our determination to succeed. ... Our country is committed to help the Iraqis build a stable, peaceful and pluralistic society. No matter who is elected president in November, we will persevere in that mission. ... But to maximize our chances for success, and to minimize the risk of failure, we must make full use of the assets we have. If our military commanders request more troops, we should deploy them. ... We owe it to our soldiers and Marines to use absolutely every tool we can muster to help them succeed in their mission without exposing them to unnecessary risk. That is not a partisan proposal. It is a matter of national honor and trust.

Kerry has his share of "image" problems. He’s a Vietnam hero, who turned against the war and threw away his medals, or his ribbons, or somebody else’s medals, and who now twists himself into a pretzel every time he is asked a pointed question. His penchant for advocating two sides of every issue does not obscure the fact that he voted with his congressional colleagues to provide Bush with all the executive powers necessary to wage a war to which he himself is now committed. Indeed, Kerry is no "Peace Candidate." And the American people are once again provided with very little fundamental difference between the major party candidates.

Other things being equal, voters are not going to choose Kerry, when they’ve already got in Bush a Republican dedicated to all the conventional Democratic planks: an expanding welfare state, budget deficits, and a war abroad. A long and potentially nasty campaign beckons; the race may center on 17 battleground states that are not yet claimed by either candidate and so much can happen between now and Election Day. But, as of this moment, I still think Bush wins.

Postscript: The above article was written in May 2004, and though a post-Democratic National Convention Kerry is likely to experience a bump in the polls, I still think George Bush is going to win the 2004 Presidential election. The Democratic contender gave an unusually impassioned acceptance speech, which focused on a number of credibility problems that the current administration has. But Kerry himself has enormous credibility problems, which I fully expect the Bush campaign to exploit. In any event, there are far more significant cultural forces at work here that, I believe, will virtually assure Bush’s victory. The character of those forces, the impact they are having on mass media, popular culture, and American politics, is the subject of my newest article in The Free Radical (August-September 2004). That article, "Caught up in the Rapture," examines the profound influence of the Christian fundamentalist movement on culture and politics; it is a movement whose hero is George W. Bush, and it is Bush who embodies some of its most troubling tendencies. Troubling or not, if the fundamentalists "get out the vote," Bush’s victory is assured.

---

Originally published in The Free Radical, republished on The Autonomist with permission.

Dr. Sciabarra is the author of "Dialectics & Liberty Trilogy" which includes Marx, Hayek, and Utopia; Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical; and Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism; as well as Ayn Rand: Her Life and Thought, and Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation. He is also the co-editor, with Mimi Reisel Gladstein, of Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand

He is also a founding co-editor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. His cyberspace contributions are regularly updated at "Not a Blog").

[Hank Kerchief]

PHILOSOPHY PING

(If you want on or off this list please freepmail me.)

Hank

[Notwithstanding]

Author is an anti-Christian bigot.

[aynrandfreak]

Sciabarra bump!

[cousair]

Agree bigtime. These types seem to run on the old templet and can't get over the fact that Bush beats them at every turn. It is being out of power that makes them so mad.

[Vision]

This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. I wonder if he makes money doing that?

[coconutt2000]

Anti Christian like the UCLA or pro-secular like... no there aren't any pro-secularists who are not also rabidly anti-christian...

That kind of sucks.

[NicknamedBob]

Anyone who has read Huyek and Rand is probably well inoculated against anything Marxian. This fellow is certainly well-spoken and well-read; he seems well worth listening to.

At the same time, it is quite possible that learned and studious analysts such as he can still be wrong about the election -- because stupid wins out over logic every time, and many of our fellow citizens, and voting non-citizens, will "vote their conscience" for the most petty and ridiculous reasons.

My advice, of course, is to stay the course. Unlike legendary Florida panhandle voters who got turned around over premature election results, I intend to make my way to the polls in November, not matter what!

[rdb3]

This fellow is certainly well-spoken and well-read; he seems well worth listening to.

Except if you are a person of the Christian faith. He digs taking cheap-shots at Christians.

$710.96... The price of freedom.
VII-XXIII-MMIV

[x]

Randian nonsense aside, this is true and worth repeating:

The most recent example of a President hurt by the conduct of war is Lyndon Baines Johnson, who chose not to run for re-election in 1968. But the transition from LBJ to Richard Nixon should give critics of the new JFK (John Forbes Kerry) pause, for even if Bush is defeated in November, it is highly unlikely that his successor would change anything fundamentally in the conduct of foreign affairs. A President Kerry would further institutionalize the Iraq War. He might be positively Nixonian in his approach: Before Nixon committed to the "Vietnamization" of the war in southeast Asia, to troop reductions and the elimination of conscription, his quest for "Peace with Honor" actually entailed a widening of the war. Likewise, Kerry himself might actually increase the number of troops in Iraq. He will do everything in his power not to go down as the President who "lost Iraq."

Kerry gets a lot of support from people who think his election will "solve" Iraq, but that's not the case. Whoever is elected is going to be in a major bind over Iraq. Stay or go, he'll face a lot of blame and grief. The question for those who want to "swap horses in the middle of the stream" is whether their man really has the character, the "right stuff," to make the best decision and stick to it.

In 1968, it looked like getting rid of Johnson was the main thing and would improve conditions immeasurably. But the problems Johnson made were left behind to bedevil his successor, and his unpopularity was simply passed on to the next President.

I don't know what Kerry will do in Iraq, but it's clear by now that he won't satisfy the Michael Moore types who are his most passionate supporters, any more than Nixon or Humphrey could have satisfied the most convinced critics and opponents of Lyndon Johnson.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The swift boat vets apparently have the goods on Kerry. IMHO the question is, "Does it matter?"

Kerry's campaign does not make sense on face value - a mere Lieutenant with a bronze and a silver star, and three purple hearts (but no permanent marks) as credentials as Commander-in-Chief.

Kerry's campaign is not that of a war hero but of a leftist who used military ribbons to politically defeated the American Right during the 1970s. The leftists who support Kerry are not interested in the provenance of those medals and would cheer his chutzpah all the more if they knew that he had done nothing at all to earn them.

Kerry's campaign will not be defeated on the basis of why he got those medals. Nixon could have won that argument. The nomination of Kerry is a challenge not merely to George Bush but to the idea of the shining city on the hill. It is an attempt to turn the clock back to the era John Kerry helped to take us to the first time. God help us, the Democrats want to bring back the good old days when Communism was at its strongest and the example of the US free economy was at its weakest since the Great Depression. They want a revival of the Carter Administration.

The Democrats recruited R. Prescott Reagan to undertake to smear President Bush by using his father's name against his father's political admirers. While the Democrats try to downplay the similarities between Bush and what Reagan actually did, Republicans must challenge Kerry to explain the malaise of the Carter era and the glorious reversal engineered by President Reagan.

[CyberAnt]

"Abu Ghraibgate—a prison torture scandal"

And .. obviously the author does not know the difference between real "torture" (like having your hand chopped off and screaming in horror when you see the blood spurting; a person swinging a huge sledge hammer and hitting your arm and breaking it into pieces while you watch) .. and intimidation (naked with panties on your head).

[theFIRMbss]

>Whoever is elected is going to be in a major bind over Iraq. Stay or go, he'll face a lot of blame and grief.

There are two issues --
One, Kerry might just pull out,
and, to many folk,

that's better than the
stop-go business like Najaf.
Second, we can hate

Kerry actively
and work against him because
he's a Democrat.

We can't hate Bush or
work against him because Bush
is us, regardless

of how much we hate
the way he's pulling punches
in Iraq. It's tough.

[Vision]

To me this election is not about issues, it's about numbers of votes. Meaning, voting for Kerry will not make sense, but is this enough to overcome all new voters the Dems are registering places such as Nashville, Flordia.