From Pastor Bob
Sent via Flaming arrow this morning.
Apocalypse now and then
by David Batstone
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As the 2004 election campaign winds down, it's time to select my favorite bumper sticker of the season:
Bush/Cheney '04: Because you don't change horsemen mid-apocalypse.
Though I appreciate the humor, on a deeper level the message signals how troubled many Democrats (and other anti-Bush voters) would be if George W. Bush were to win a second term. They commonly paint the consequences in near-apocalyptic hues. Left-leaning author Norman Lear suggests (surely somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that the price of real estate in New Zealand is due to rise dramatically if Bush were to win.
Many of my Republican friends likewise threaten to flee the country if John Kerry wins. Consider the e-mail I received last week from a worried friend: "It now looks like Kerry has a good chance to take over the White House. If that happens, good riddance to this country. I don't plan to stay around and watch him drag our nation into a cesspool."
This election is being pitted as a winner-takes-all-the-spoils contest. In reality, however, whoever wins the presidential election next week will govern a bitterly divided body politic. Close to half of the voters will have cast their ballot to keep the winner out of the White House, and in most cases they will have done so with strong conviction.
Does it really need to be said that this scenario bodes ill for the democratic process in the United States? In such a divisive climate, political policy ceases to be evaluated on the basis of merit; rather, it becomes a litmus test for ideological purity.
We do not know if a President Kerry would cross partisan lines to build a broad consensus on critical matters of foreign policy, health care, and judicial appointments. Promises "to unite" the nation flow with ease in a stump speech. The fact that Kerry most likely would face a Republican majority in Congress means that he would be woefully ineffective if he failed to build bipartisan compromise.
We can predict, however, how a second Bush term would unfold. Four years ago, following a controversial intervention of the Supreme Court to decide an election in favor of the candidate who lost the popular vote, George W. Bush took office as if he had a mandate. Bush's first treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, provides a revealing snapshot of this attitude of political entitlement in The Price of Loyalty (written with Ron Suskind). O'Neill, an ardent Republican, could not find one strong argument to support a massive income tax cut that would make the federal deficit balloon. Finally, exasperated with O'Neill's repeated queries for justification during a high-level meeting reviewing economic policy, Vice President Cheney turned to O'Neill and told him bluntly, "We deserve it." Why? Because we won the election.
Last month President Bush spoke off the record to more than 100 of his most generous financial supporters - known as the Republican National Party Regents - at the White House. In his remarks (leaked by those in attendance), Bush announced his plans during the first two years of his second term to jam his agenda - for privatizing Social Security, continued tax cuts, drilling for oil in Alaska, and completing the mission in Iraq regardless of the costs - into being. In short, he will interpret an election victory as a mandate to finish what he started during his first term.
The political opposition, of course, would mobilize in fervent resistance to these initiatives, and the polarization will deepen. At least half the country will believe that the country is moving in the wrong direction, and animosity will prevail over cooperation.
Truth is, the pressing challenges facing the U.S. and the globe sorely call out for cooperation. Speaking with my business hat on, I am terribly concerned about the precarious heights to which the federal deficit has grown. Its resolution goes beyond left-right rhetoric, as does a needed re-structuring of Social Security. Facilitating an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, enabling a transition to sovereignty in Iraq, stemming the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and reversing the greenhouse effect all cry out for reasoned, bipartisan initiatives as well. And it is likely that the next president will select up to three, or maybe even four, new Supreme Court justices. If the Supreme Court is to maintain the respect of the entire nation, the judges must be chosen on the basis of their proven discernment and experience, not their judicial rating from the Christian Coalition or the ACLU.
Enough fighting already. To risk exhausting a tired political slogan, we have met the enemy, and it is us. A nation deeply divided will falter, for it cannot exert the strength of moral will that our times require. Without a vision that can transcend the flames of parochial interest, the people will perish.
Apocalypse now and then
by David Batstone
advertisement
As the 2004 election campaign winds down, it's time to select my favorite bumper sticker of the season:
Bush/Cheney '04: Because you don't change horsemen mid-apocalypse.
Though I appreciate the humor, on a deeper level the message signals how troubled many Democrats (and other anti-Bush voters) would be if George W. Bush were to win a second term. They commonly paint the consequences in near-apocalyptic hues. Left-leaning author Norman Lear suggests (surely somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that the price of real estate in New Zealand is due to rise dramatically if Bush were to win.
Many of my Republican friends likewise threaten to flee the country if John Kerry wins. Consider the e-mail I received last week from a worried friend: "It now looks like Kerry has a good chance to take over the White House. If that happens, good riddance to this country. I don't plan to stay around and watch him drag our nation into a cesspool."
This election is being pitted as a winner-takes-all-the-spoils contest. In reality, however, whoever wins the presidential election next week will govern a bitterly divided body politic. Close to half of the voters will have cast their ballot to keep the winner out of the White House, and in most cases they will have done so with strong conviction.
Does it really need to be said that this scenario bodes ill for the democratic process in the United States? In such a divisive climate, political policy ceases to be evaluated on the basis of merit; rather, it becomes a litmus test for ideological purity.
We do not know if a President Kerry would cross partisan lines to build a broad consensus on critical matters of foreign policy, health care, and judicial appointments. Promises "to unite" the nation flow with ease in a stump speech. The fact that Kerry most likely would face a Republican majority in Congress means that he would be woefully ineffective if he failed to build bipartisan compromise.
We can predict, however, how a second Bush term would unfold. Four years ago, following a controversial intervention of the Supreme Court to decide an election in favor of the candidate who lost the popular vote, George W. Bush took office as if he had a mandate. Bush's first treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, provides a revealing snapshot of this attitude of political entitlement in The Price of Loyalty (written with Ron Suskind). O'Neill, an ardent Republican, could not find one strong argument to support a massive income tax cut that would make the federal deficit balloon. Finally, exasperated with O'Neill's repeated queries for justification during a high-level meeting reviewing economic policy, Vice President Cheney turned to O'Neill and told him bluntly, "We deserve it." Why? Because we won the election.
Last month President Bush spoke off the record to more than 100 of his most generous financial supporters - known as the Republican National Party Regents - at the White House. In his remarks (leaked by those in attendance), Bush announced his plans during the first two years of his second term to jam his agenda - for privatizing Social Security, continued tax cuts, drilling for oil in Alaska, and completing the mission in Iraq regardless of the costs - into being. In short, he will interpret an election victory as a mandate to finish what he started during his first term.
The political opposition, of course, would mobilize in fervent resistance to these initiatives, and the polarization will deepen. At least half the country will believe that the country is moving in the wrong direction, and animosity will prevail over cooperation.
Truth is, the pressing challenges facing the U.S. and the globe sorely call out for cooperation. Speaking with my business hat on, I am terribly concerned about the precarious heights to which the federal deficit has grown. Its resolution goes beyond left-right rhetoric, as does a needed re-structuring of Social Security. Facilitating an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, enabling a transition to sovereignty in Iraq, stemming the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and reversing the greenhouse effect all cry out for reasoned, bipartisan initiatives as well. And it is likely that the next president will select up to three, or maybe even four, new Supreme Court justices. If the Supreme Court is to maintain the respect of the entire nation, the judges must be chosen on the basis of their proven discernment and experience, not their judicial rating from the Christian Coalition or the ACLU.
Enough fighting already. To risk exhausting a tired political slogan, we have met the enemy, and it is us. A nation deeply divided will falter, for it cannot exert the strength of moral will that our times require. Without a vision that can transcend the flames of parochial interest, the people will perish.
posted by John Q. Public esq. at 6:16 AM
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