The Two Parties of Empire

As one who regards Gerry Ford as our greatest President (least time served, least damage done, husband of Betty, plus Stevens as his contribution to the Supreme Court), I'd always imagined the man from Grand Rapids would never be surpassed in sheer slowness of thought. When a reporter asked Ford a question it was like watching that great sequence in Rossellini's film about Louis XIV, when a shouted command is relayed at a stately pace through a dozen intermediaries from the kitchen to the royal ear. In Ford's case, to watch a message negotiate the neural path from ear to cortex was to see a hippo wade through glue.

But I think Bush has Ford beat. Had he ever made a mistake, the reporter asked at that White House press conference. The President's face remained composed, masking the turmoil and terror raging within, as his cerebrum went into gridlock. It should have been easy for him. Broad avenues of homely humility beckoned. "John, no man can stand before his Creator as I do each day and say he is without error..." Reagan would have hit the ball out of the park. But the President froze. He said he'd have to think it over.

Behind all the liberal hysteria over Bush as a demon of monstrous, Hitlerian proportions, I get the sense of a certain embarrassment, that the man is bringing the imperial office into disrepute. Hence we are served up those plaintive invocations of the distress of "America's allies," to be cured by a competent steward of empire like John Kerry. But should not all opponents of the American Empire's global reach rejoice that Bush has sown confusion in the alliance? Would not the world be a safer and conceivably a better place if the allies saw separate paths as the sounder option? Gabriel Kolko, that great historian of American Empire, has been arguing powerfully (most recently in our CounterPunch newsletter) to this effect, and I agree with him.

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