The long goodbye
What does Bush have in common with Celine Dion?
The long goodbye
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
Whether you like or dislike George W. Bush, chances are that by now you are sick of reading about George W. Bush. No doubt you are sick of me writing about George W. Bush. Heck, I’m sick of writing about George W. Bush, here and elsewhere. But every time I reach what I believe to be closure, George W. Bush pops up yet again on his protracted farewell tour and says something worthy of comment. Rumor has it that his tour will finally end next Tuesday, but right now this feels like the longest public farewell since Celine Dion’s string of goodbye gigs back in ’99.
Anyway, last night the president addressed us from the White House for the last time. It was basically a 15-minute cut-and-paste of his greatest hits, including this familiar theme: “I vowed to do everything in my power to keep us safe…America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil…our nation is safer than it was seven years ago.”
This has become the closing catechism among Bush’s defenders: He made us safer. The problem, however, is that it’s impossible for us to verify that. It’s impossible to know whether the absence of another attack (for which we are all grateful) is proof of a safer America thanks to the Bush team - or whether Islamic extremists are plotting something on their own timetable, patiently exploiting security lapses that the Bush team has failed to address.
Indeed, there is already documented proof that, contrary to Bush’s claim, he has not made America safer. It’s all spelled out in one of those important bipartisan reports that few people bother to read. This particular document – “The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism” - was released only six weeks ago, and naturally it received a lot less public attention than Madonna’s breakup with Guy Ritchie.
The bipartisan commission, chaired by former Democratic senator Bob Graham and former Republican senator Jim Talent, did not mince words. It concluded that, in the years since 9/11, the WMD threat from terrorists has actually increased, not lessened. The executive summary states: “The simple reality is that the risks that confront us today are evolving faster than our multilayered responses…in our judgment, America’s margin of safety is shrinking, not growing…Though U.S. policy and strategy have made progress, they have not kept pace with the growing risks.”
In a sense, this conclusion that we’ve actually become less safe is not surprising; back in April 2006, a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Islamic terrorists “are increasing both in number and geographical dispersion.” But the Graham-Talent report declares that the Bush team has lagged in the fight against potential nuclear and biological terror because it hasn’t sufficiently tried to win the hearts and minds of those who seek to kill us:
“The next administration needs to go much further, using the tools of ‘soft power’ to communicate effectively about American institutions, and to build grassroots social and economic institutions that will discourage radicalism and undercut the terrorists in danger spots around the world – especially in Pakistan.”
The report also said it would be a good idea to have one person at the highest level who would focus exclusively on the WMD threat – a “WMD coordinator,” as recommended four years ago by the 9/11 Commission. Congress passed a law in 2007, authorizing the creation of that job. But the Bush White House resisted the idea, and, as the Graham-Talent report dryly noted: “As of this writing, the position has remained vacant for nearly 15 months.”
All told, there’s ample reason to question Bush’s repeated claim that he has made us safer. It’s arguaby just as likely that former Navy secretary Richard Danzig was correct when he told the Graham-Talent commission, “Only a thin wall of terrorist ignorance and inexperience now protects us.”
And on that cheery note, let’s roll back to a separate Bush remark, uttered earlier on his farewell tour, during last Monday’s final press conference: “I am disappointed by the tone in Washington, D.C. I’ve – I try to do my part by not engaging in the name-calling and – and, by the way, needless name-calling I have worked to be respectful of my opponents on different issues.”
It’s a bit rich for Bush to claim “disappointment” with the tone in Washington, D.C., considering his many contributions to the tone in Washington, D.C. – such as his complaint, in September 2002, that the Senate Democrats “were more interested in special interests in Washington, and not interested in the security of the American people.” And his September 2004 complaint that domestic critics of his Iraq policy “embolden the enemy.” And his June 2006 complaint that those selfsame critics “wave the white flag of surrender.”
And, lest we forget, a president’s tone is typically mimicked by his minions. Case in point: Bradley Schlozman.
Perhaps you missed the story this week about Schlozman, a Bush official who spent three years helping to run the Justice Department’s civil rights division. The inspector general for the Justice Department did a whole report about this guy, and released the results on Tuesday. It states that Schlozman violated federal civil service laws by hiring only right-wingers, while discriminating against all applicants and employes who didn’t fit the conservative Bush agenda.
That’s standard stuff, considering what we’ve learned these past two years about the ideological politicization of Justice. More striking were Schlozman’s creative contributions to the tone in Washington, D.C. In email and voicemail messages, Schlozman considered all non-conservatives to be “pinko” and “crazy lib” and “Politburo members” and “adherents of Mao’s Little Red Book.” By contrast, he said he was only interested in “real Americans” and “right-thinking Americans.”
So there it was, the administration’s belief system in sharp relief. Anyone who failed to embrace the Bush ideology was deemed not to be a “real American.” It’s fair to say that this pervasive attitude did much to debase the tone in Washington, D.C. these past eight years, notwithstanding Bush’s attempt to distance himself from blame.
His farewell tour is nearly over, but let’s not forget that Celine Dion came back after insisting in ’99 that she was saying goodbye. Bush can always pitch his legacy from the lecture circuit, singing his own praises. But I doubt that our hearts will go on.
lib, the Congress, including our new Sectry of State, voted to go to war and most of the country agreed! If Congress had objections they should have voted against it! Did the press call for prosecuting FDR for interring Japanese American citizens with no trials or due process? Or trying to load the Supreme Court with extra members to support his agenda? Bush had good press because he did a good job, 62 million Americans thought so in 2004! Lets not rewrite history!— NEPhilly- Boy we must all be really stupid, including Congress. That idiot George Bush fooled us into a war in Iraq!! But we will insult him without any hesitiation. What does that make us?— sleepy
- Celine Dion analogies? Lame.— rbpeeple
- Bush should be cleaning up dog *** in the parks in texas,,,whatta failure!— FedupDem
- lib, I said poor people getting loans they could never pay back, not black or immigrants. I'm sure most of them were white. The CRA and Fannie, protected from regulation by liberals in congress, were at the core of this economic meltdown involving subprime mortgages, the more I look into it the more sure I am! They were trying to get poor people into homes, an honorable goal, but they did them no favors by undercutting the economic rules of banks and look where it has gotten us. Who is hurt the most by this meltdown, poor people! Where is the link that states most of these subprime loans were to upper income suburban white people? If they were upper income people why would they need a subprime loan? I say we have an independent counsel to look into who is at fault and let the chips fall where they may! Also, I say we should have let all these companies go bankrupt instead of bailing them out. What say you?— NEPhilly
- jmc: In February of 2002, the NE Patriots won the Superbowl. We have not been attacked since. I dare you to challenge either of these facts. I can therefore state that the former caused the latter. It's self-verifying.— still_independent
- NEPhilly; for the last time, CRA did not encourage any subprime lending. Most of the institutions covered by the CRA were barred from subprime lending. All the CRA did was say that if you service a given community, and accept deposits in a given community, you can not refuse to lend to otherwise qualified borrowers simply because they live in that community ("redlining").— still_independent
- still, that may be your opinion and the opinion of others, but some disagree! http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo125.html and this; From Wikipedia: "The new rules went into effect on January 31, 1995 and featured: requiring numerical assessments to get a satisfactory CRA rating; using federal home-loan data broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race; encouraging community groups to complain when banks were not loaning enough to specified neighborhood, income group, and race; allowing community groups that marketed loans to targeted groups to collect a fee from the banks.[5] The number of CRA mortgage loans increased by 39 percent between 1993 and 1998. Other loans increased by only 17 percent.[7]" These changes created the Housing Bubble, as demand for homes went through the roof and the cost of homes began to increase faster than inflation. In order compete with the larger banks that were issuing loans subject to CRA, smaller banks were likely compelled to follow suit or lose business. (A normal market reaction) Therefore, I believe that the housing crisis does have it's roots in the CRA changes of 1995. Whenever you try to artificially stimulate a market, it's going to crash on you sooner or later. A combination of bleeding heart activist groups that used bad legislation to force banks to loan to unqualified recipients or face penalties, irresponsible people taking on loans they couldn't afford, predatory lenders and greedy CEOs all capitalized on the CRA changes of 1995. If it weren't for the CRA changes of 1995, the ball would have never rolled in the direction of today's crisis. http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2008/09/the_subprime_mortgage_crisis_a.php— NEPhilly
- FDR did get very bad press for his court-packing plan--which incidentally was a proposal for legislation involving nothing illegal or unconstitutional--and he backed off because the public didn't favor it. As for interning the Japanese-Americans, FDR received practically no criticism at the time, because the country was very racist in those days, and of course had been attacked by the Japanese. You'll recall that shortly after 9/11 the FBI rounded up all arabs in the NY area who allegedly had immigration status issues and imprisoned them, some for many months. Some were beaten or otherwise mistreated. There was very little outcry over this, for somewhat similar reasons.— liberal
- NEP, You've answered your own question. The subprime loans were not issued to rich or even middle class people. Those folks were issued high risk, high value loans by lenders who were not even affected by the CRA. It was built on the assumption that the value of real estate would rise sharply forever. The loans were made by mortgage brokers who sold the papre so fast that they knew they'd never be on the hook if it all failed. When the value stopped rising and the credit got tight, the defaults started. The sheer size of the losses should indicate to you that no number of poor/subprime loans could ever account for the size of the problem. large developments of spec houses, 750K+ condos, and massive refi loans were made in florida, California, Nevada, etc. They wweren't made to all the poor people there. Subprime loans have been on the scene for over 30 year and although they (and congressional malfesance!!!) have fueled the fire this time around, they weren't the huge problem before and they are not the huge problem now. Your basic premise (subprime is at fault) is mis-applied.— JimR
- NE PHIL: I can understand how for you it's hard to believe that anyone would find fault w/ Bradley for wanting only Conse 'Pubs to fill every single gov. job of importance, and no affirmative LOL action types. You know, like Obama.— Talvenada
- NE, I agree that we need more hard data on where the bad mortgage loans were, but just looking at Philadelphia market, where a huge percentage of the poor people in Pennsylvania are located, your view can't possibly be right. The average home value in most low-income neighborhoods covered by the CRA is less than $100,000--and was considerably less than that in the 1990s. There just couldn't have been enough bad mortgage dollars in Phila and CRA districts in similar cities on the worst-case assumption to create this trillion dollar crisis.— liberal
- NEPhilly, the 1995 CRA changes MAY have accelerated the housing bubble (although we didn't "bubble" 'till much later, so I'm not sure I even buy that). That isn't what you asserted. You stated that the CRA encouraged SUBPRIME loans. It didn't, nor did you offer anything to back that up.— still_independent
As an RTA ... Bush - WPE!- As an RTA ... Bush - WPE!
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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