Last week, Bush joined other notable members of the GOP, such as John McCain, in bashing Kerry over a botched joke that inadvertently linked intellectual laziness and lack of education to getting stuck in Iraq. Kerry had meant to lambaste Bush, but his slip struck fertile soil. Many soldiers do join up because they lack education, or health insurance, for that matter, and risking a tour in Iraq is the price they pay for these benefits. Attacking Kerry for a remark he didn't mean about a predicament exacerbated by the GOP's own failure to address gross economic disparities in this country is sickening in its perversity.
It is also a tactic: Deflect the truth.
Two weeks ago, Bush signed an enormous military authorization bill, which contained an obscure provision to terminate his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Republican who has worked courageously to expose corruption and incompetence in the Iraq reconstruction effort.
Tactic #2: Suppress the truth.
On Friday, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon was reorganizing its public affairs operation "in an attempt to influence news coverage." Assistant Secretary of Defense Dorrance Smith describes a mission to "more aggressively challenge articles and broadcasts deemed inaccurate and make better use of podcasts, blogs and other new outlets." With 103 American casualties this last month, the Pentagon focuses on its marketing department.
Tactic #3: Spin the truth.
The election this Tuesday is not just a referendum on Iraq. The strategy of Deflect, Suppress and Spin that got us into this war and keeps us in it has been the president's approach, if you can call it that, to all manner of problems, from torture to Medicare to Katrina.
Bush has a character problem.
By this I do not mean a moral or sexual weakness but a psychological defect that is dangerous to America. Bush does not like oversight, neither internally in the form of self-reflection, nor externally in the form of a questioning branch of government. His solution is to control the flow of information, both to his own brain and to the world. Deflect, Suppress and Spin are tactics to support this dangerous habit of mind.
Luckily we have a legislative branch of government designed to provide oversight. Unfortunately, the Republican rubber-stamp congress has functioned as an extension of Bush, deflecting, suppressing and spinning its way through one of the most corrupt legislative tenures in this country's history.
The result: a president and a congress who are one. In short, a deluded government.
November 7th is about restoring checks and balances. You don't have to be a liberal to vote Democrat in this election. Thoughtful hawks should not tolerate an administration that goes to war in a state of
denial. It is not good for the war. Fiscal conservatives should not support a president who can tuck a 900 billion dollar deficit in some never-to-be-peeled-back fold of his brain. It isn't good for the economy.
We live in an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable world. We need our president to take reality into consideration before he acts, and if he can't review the truth, we need congress to do it for him -- something the current congress has steadfastly refused to do.
This election is about Bush's character problem and the urgent need for oversight.