Abstract

Fantasy Island

The author comments on George W. Bush's second inaugural address and the commentary from mass media. Washington Post writer Paul Farhi cleverly compared the content and structure of George W. Bush's second inaugural address to The Rascals' classic ditty "People Got to Be Free." The word "freedom" passed Bush's lips twenty-seven times and "liberty" fifteen. Not a word either about the fact that Bush's messianic foreign policy is killing thousands of innocent Iraqis and American soldiers. Bush, like Ronald Reagan before him, invokes America's highest ideals on behalf of a policy that supports mass murder and terrorism. To me, the most revealing commentary on the inauguration was provided by The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes. Writing in the organ that has provided the ideological window-dressing for so much of the Administration's adventurism, Barnes explained that the President's address had triumphantly ended the centuries-long ideological conflict between foreign policy idealists and realists."Boom!" wrote Barnes, "The wall between the two schools is gone, at least in the president's formulation." As he explained, "The policy of idealists will lead to the goal of realists," because Bush had declared that "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one." You have to be executive editor of The Weekly Standard to believe something that stupid. Indeed, the next day found numerous Administration members, speaking under the cover of Karl Rove-like background briefings, telling reporters not to pay too much attention to the man in front of the curtain. "White House officials said yesterday that President Bush's soaring inaugural address, in which he declared the goal of ending tyranny around the world, represents no significant shift in U.S. foreign policy," reported the Post's Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei.