Nation Topics - Bush | The Nation

The article reports that it was not necessarily homophobia that swung more African-American votes for Bush in the 2004 election. Though Bush did specifically target Black church groups with an anti-gay marriage message, the response was not uniform over all the states. African American voters should draw from a tradition of tolerance and openness to support Democrats in spite of concerns over gay marriage.

Reviews three books about Saudi Arabia. "House of Bush, House of Saud," by Craig Unger; "Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership With Saudi Arabia," by Thomas W. Lippman; "Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis," by John R. Bradley.

Presents the poem "On President Bush's Recess Appointment Of John Bolton As Ambassador To The United Nations," by Calvin Trillin. First line: The job's too vital. Bush has said; Last line: So let's get started. Time's a-wasting.

Presents the poem "Debate On Democracy," by Calvin Trillin. First Line: Democracy in Russia now, Bush said, Last Line: Which couldn't happen here. Well, not exactly.

The article looks at the impact of the resignation of U.S. Federal Communications Chairman Michael Powell. On the long list of resignations of Cabinet members, agency heads and political appointees that has accompanied the launch of the second Bush term, no member of the Administration's team left under quite so dark a cloud as Michael Powell. The decision of the chair of the Federal Communications Commission to step down was met with near-universal sighs of relief--from the citizen activists and members of Congress who had battled his ham-handed efforts to allow Big Media to get even bigger, of course. As Representative Maurice Hinchey, the New York Democrat who was in the forefront of the fight against Powell's rule changes, notes, a bad turn has been avoided, but "we still have a long way to go toward achieving honest and balanced reporting" and toward the development of regulatory structures that "provide greater rights to smaller media outlets who too often are silenced by the media giants." Bush will definitely have an opportunity to appoint a new chair, and if, as some predict, former wireless industry lobbyist Kathleen Abernathy also leaves, he could radically reshape the commission. There is no way that Bush is going to put a champion of the public interest in charge of the FCC.

Discusses the failure of the Democratic Party to challenge American right-wingers with a platform that working people can relate to in the 2004 presidential election. Examples of mistakes made by Democratic leaders; Effort of the Democratic Party's corporate faction to regain control; Mention of new groups such as MoveOn.org, Wellstone Action and Progressive Majority; The issue of electoral reform in Ohio; Views that President Bush has a reactionary agenda and Republican corruption needs to be exposed; How the proposal to privatize Social Security can negatively impact the Republican Party; Suggestions for progressives to promote positive reform ideas and a "blue-state strategy".

The author comments on the nomination of White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to Attorney General in the United States. A review of Alberto Gonzales' record suggests that he has not shown any particular fealty to the rule of law, and has, in fact, been at the forefront of Administration efforts to subvert it. Start with the internal Administration debates over how to try terrorists. According to a detailed behind-the-scenes account by Tim Golden for the New York Times, John Ashcroft advocated trying terrorists in the criminal justice system and warned that the procedures for military tribunals would be seen as "draconian". Gonzales urged military tribunals, disfavored any civilian participation and even opposed giving defendants a presumption of innocence. In January 2002 Gonzales wrote a memo to the President arguing that Geneva Convention protections should not extend to the prisoners at Guantánamo. The reasons to question Gonzales's commitment to the rule of law do not stop at his role in combating terror. Gonzales previously served as counsel to then-Governor Bush in Texas, and in that capacity had the unenviable task of advising the governor on whether to exercise his pardon power with respect to upcoming executions. Alan Berlow obtained and reviewed Gonzales's memos, which served as the basis for Bush's decisions, and wrote for The Atlantic Monthly that they "repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence." Much as he did during the formulation of the tribunal policy, Gonzales screened out dissenting views.

The article comments on the need for examination, reform, and oversight of the national voting complex, and concern of irregularities in the November 2 vote. Two minor presidential candidates, David Cobb of the Green Party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party, requested a recount in Ohio. E-voting--particularly with machines made by Diebold, a firm headed by a GOP fundraiser that refuses to disclose its source code--stir skepticism. But suspicion needs reality checks. Stolen election proponents point to Warren County, Ohio, where Bush bagged a net gain of 41,000 votes and where local officials barred reporters from the counting room on election night, claiming the Feds had warned of a terrorist attack. Steven Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania wrote a paper claiming that discrepancies between the media consortium exit polls and the vote count in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania were a "250 million to one" shot. But "systematic fraud or mistabulation," he wrote, "is a premature conclusion." He urged investigation. On the other hand, pollster John Zogby says his exit polls had Bush leading in Ohio and Florida. A recount in Ohio is well and good. But it probably won't change the results, and it surely won't fix the deep flaws of a system that does provoke justifiable suspicion.

The author focuses on what the Republican victory in the presidential election means. The Kerry campaign leaves nothing, not a single creative idea, only grim advisories like not running any nominee from the Northeast in 2008, and we all know the probable life span of that piece of useful advice. Before the election a profile of Kerry's manager, Bob Shrum, disclosed that he stood to make $5 million out of the 2004 presidential campaign, win or lose. Here's what my colleague at The Nation Justin Taylor tells me, re the much-ballyhooed youth vote: The consensus now seems to be that the youth vote spiked upward about 9 percent, a considerable lift from one election to another. The neocons are holding on, probably aware that if they quit government they'll live like hunted things, fleeing lawsuits down the years. They'll cling on and then hope Bush will pardon them on his way out of Dodge in 2008, same as his dad did Weinberger and his CIA buddies. Falluja has now supposedly been "won." For how long? Sometimes the parallels drawn between Iraq and Vietnam have seemed a bit theatrical. Not anymore. No hearts and minds have been won in Falluja any more than they were won in the Vietnamese countryside around My Lai. The city has been destroyed in order to save it for democracy. The language of the US military commanders, and of the journalists who relay their press releases, echoes with eerie and horrible fidelity those press releases from US military HQ in Saigon thirty-five years ago. LBJ handed the quagmire on to Nixon. It's Bush's poisoned chalice, bestowed by his first to his second term, the cup he'll be hoisting on Inauguration Day.

This article discusses the presidential election campaign of Senator John Kerry. In its hour of need the Kerry campaign brings on board John Sasso, breathlessly described in one news story as" canny and ruthless," but mostly known to the world as one of the men who ran the Dukakis campaign in 1988, which was about as far from" canny and ruthless" as you can go. When historians come to dissect the Kerry campaign they will surely marvel at the rich platter of issues handed the Democratic candidate, which he has thrust from him with shudders of distaste and instead turned back, like Mencken's Bryan, to swat at flies. Read the report of the 9/11 Commission, as Kerry and his "strategists" have surely done, and there are mounds of fragrant dung to hurl at Bush and Cheney: the warnings from the FBI and CIA ignored by the White House, the obvious lies about Cheney getting Bush's go-ahead to issue the shoot-down orders that never reached the Air Force pilots. You'd think the Kerry campaign would have put together a group of 9/11 widows and, along the lines of the Swift Boat vets, had them trail Bush, denouncing him as the man who slept through the warnings of imminent attack by Al Qaeda. It's all there on the plate, but Kerry has spurned it; 9/11 is off the table. Read the US Senate report on the manipulation of intelligence to concoct the bogus WMDs, used as the rationale for the Iraq invasion. It's replete with detailed stories of Cheney's eight visits to CIA HQ at Langley to browbeat the analysts, plus scores of kindred jimmying of the data. Kerry could have said he voted war-making powers to the President because he and his colleagues were served up lies. But no, Kerry hops around on the issue all summer and then loses it at the Grand Canyon, saying that even knowing what he does now about the lack of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq, he still would have voted to authorize the war.