Bush to America: Suck Me
To defend the Bush administration today, it seems to me you’d have to be the kind of lobotomized, eyes-gouged-out partisan who could’ve defended Bill Clinton’s blow job — not his policies, not his efficacy as president in spite of the blow job, but the act of the blow job itself.
I think Bill Clinton is great, and I’ve certainly got nothing against blow jobs, but even I couldn’t go that far. However thrilling it may have been for him and Monica, that particular blow job was reckless, thoughtless, and it put the entire country at risk while the impeachment extravaganza played itself out.
The same is true of Bush’s systematic dismantling of governmental checks and balances and the Republican Congress’ astonishing complicity with him, even to the derogation of its own Constitutional powers.
The so-called “liberal” media are already bending over backwards to make excuses for Bush based largely on rationales coming from Karl Rove’s office and Ken Mehlman’s motor mouth. We should be used to that by now, but it helps to keep this in mind: To defend Bush’s lies, his incompetence, and his imperial grab for power, you have to be the kind of person who could defend the blow job.
April 13th, 2006 at 8:06 PM
Bill Cliton was probably the last, great strategist left of the Democrats. The others are all pandering to private interests and just don’t have a real clue about getting the country back in the direction Clinton did.
And as you point out, the BJ ended it all. It also opened the door to the fact that the rest of the Democratic party really had nothing cohesive to get voters to actually believe. No agenda. They haven’t had a real agenda for the last eight years, other than attacking Republican corruption (which doesn’t make any positive impressions).
So, it’s pretty easy for the Republicans to consolidate power. The liberal agendas can easily be turned negative with simple marketing techniques. The problem is that they aren’t just using SIMPLE marketing; its grass roots and closed-door. Its extensive and well-organized.
Hey, we’re talking about an America that has employers firing their workers for having Democrat’s bumper stickers on their cars. We’re talking about an America that thinks that “Intelligent Design” SHOULD be taught to kids and a “blue” America that believes things have gotten too liberal and is willing to allow an extremist government to “take back.”
The “red” states are just that – RED. “Better dead than red.” Red doesn’t just mean socialist anymore. It means “out-of-touch” with the voters.
The Republicans have figured out how to get the women and minority voters with moderate-to-conservative views that used to vote otherwise, and they can easily play to their values. That doesn’t leave a whole hell of a lot of voters left for the Democrats.
April 13th, 2006 at 8:53 PM
You know, honestly, if Bush wanted to receive blowjobs up and down the halls of the West Wing I wouldn’t have a problem with that. Instead of his wanting to fundamentally transform American society and government into something well, un-American.
Clinton was dumb for letting his dick play into the hands of his enemies. (And I’m going to ignore how awkward and funny that last sentence is.)But it’s not as if he was the only president who had affairs. Hell, JFK was at least as reckless as Clinton. But back then politics wasn’t bloodsport–at least not until he was killed!–and there was a general consensus that the private lives of public figures should stay private.
The current crop of Democrats expect victories this election season, but there’s no guarantee they’ll pull it off. Especially since they seem to be quite craven and unable to mount a decent challenge at a time when the GOP is as weak as it’s ever been since 9/11. It may be time to go Green.
April 14th, 2006 at 12:24 AM
Here’s something for Bill Clinton’s Cheerleading Squad: those harmless blow jobs seem to have distracted him from the al-Qaeda threat for eight years. They bombed the World Trade Center, they bombed American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (he retaliated by sending expensive missiles into deserted camps), they bombed the USS Cole, and they used the United States as a training ground for terrorism right under his nose, which lead to 9/11. That’s Bill’s legacy — but he plays the saxophone, so I guess he’s cool.
April 14th, 2006 at 5:09 AM
Here’s a simple grassroots campaign: fake Republican bumper stickers!
Jesus ain’t a Democrat
Democrats are afraid of DEMOCRACY!
Democrats are just Rats who crave POWER!
Democrats are not on YOUR Team, Americans!
April 14th, 2006 at 5:51 AM
My only angle here is the misappropriation of the English language for propogandist ends: the creepy B-side to PC linguistics..
More “faux” bumpers:
WAR keeps America Secure!
A good President controls Your TERROR!
Democrats dont add up.
Democrat votes are Worthless votes!
Democrats dont CARE!
Guraranteed to make you new friends and enemies at the Mall!
April 14th, 2006 at 6:09 AM
The thing is, it’s EASY being conservative. It doesn’t require too much.
Free thinking requires abstraction and emotion and is hard to generalize to a public consensus.
That makes it hard to swallow for the mostly uneducated or those driven by religious or financial goals.
Tom’s bumper stickers are spot-on with the ease and complexity that Repulicans have with their marketing.
April 14th, 2006 at 6:42 AM
I also think that the sleeping masses tend to read US English in “robot” style, especially sales material or slogans. Hopefully I just wrote some funny and deconstructive ones – you’ll either get the joke, or you wont..
April 14th, 2006 at 8:29 AM
The blind sheik and his cronies were all in jail six months later. Where’s Osama?
April 14th, 2006 at 8:38 AM
Haha.. another bumper sticker, Forrest
GOOD Americans DONT profit from Osama!
April 14th, 2006 at 8:56 AM
Richard, I guess Bush got a great blow job because 9/11 happened on his watch.
The first world trade center bombing happened a MONTH after he took office. I don’t recall people blaming H.W. Bush for that.
In ’98, Clinton ordered an attack on Osama Bin Laden but missed him by a few hours. The right said he only did that to draw attention away from the Lewinsky matter.
He signed executive orders to stop efforts to fund terrorism.
He ordered new threat assessments against every federal facility in every country.
The USS Cole wouldn’t have been prevented by anything Clinton could have done.
Terrorist attacks have DRASTICALLY risen since Bush took office and since 9/11. Clinton and his staff warned Bush and his staff that Bin Laden was the most dangerous threat they’d face while in office. Was anything done? Bush only held ONE anti-terrorism meeting in the first nine months after taking office.
And don’t pretend that Republicans were the ones who were up in arms to fight terrorism before 9/11. They received the same intelligence Clinton had, and you didn’t hear them in an uproar.
April 14th, 2006 at 11:03 AM
Richard: “Here’s something for Bill Clinton’s Cheerleading Squad” …
Wow.
I’m impressed with your grasp of the Rove/Luntz rhetorical and marketing technique. It takes real skill to, first, morph a blog post that was mostly *critical* of Clinton into a defense of him, then launch a spirited critique of the non-existent defense to change the subject from Bush’s shortcomings back to Clinton’s, er, comings.
I mean the foregoing to be complimentary, not ironic, by the way. The Republicans’ mastery at setting the parameters and controlling the language of the national debate is among the reasons I’m highly skeptical that the Democrats will make any important gains this fall. You guys are good at this — *really* good.
April 14th, 2006 at 11:42 AM
I sometimes wonder what “denazification” really meant after WWII.. I mean is it like healing a mental illness, some schism of consciousness, that allows for the old EVIL, BE THOU MY GOOD maxim to coexist?
If the USA (or Israel!) got “nazified” overnight by some cruel hand of Fate, how would it feel next morning…?
April 14th, 2006 at 12:09 PM
I think what Bush has done and is doing is the proper thing to do. I happen to think Clinton was decent president, too.
If the blame has to be laid at anyone’s feet , I would pick three groups: Congress, the FBI and the CIA.
Presidents don’t have enough power granted to them to take the blame of so much that is placed upon them. Most of those elected to Congress have been in office for years, sitting through many presidental administrations. The same with the CIA and FBI.
April 14th, 2006 at 1:16 PM
Steve: You give my rhetoric too much credit if you perceive a Clinton defense in there.
“You guys are good at this — really good.” My mastery of disingenuous speech aside, I must disabuse you of the notion that I’m a Republican. I’m not even American. I have no political bias or affiliations. I do have opinions on certain issues and vote accordingly (if at all). I was responding to the part where you said “I think Bill Clinton is great…” One should never allow himself to be spellbound by a politician’s charisma.
What gets me in trouble sometimes is that I never add “lol” after some of the things I say. I refuse to provide a laugh track.
Brian: Thanks for the response. Touche on your first point.
April 14th, 2006 at 1:22 PM
Steve, maybe the Rovians wouldn’t control the parameters of the debate if the Dems had an agenda that spoke to the majority of the people’s aspirations and spirit of community, and had the courage to communicate this, instead of simply standing back and waiting for the administration to shoot itself in the foot. They used to, back when they fought for social justice and workers’ rights, instead of for their corporate interests (just like the GOP).
Being reactive is simply not enough. The fact that the Democratic leadership basically teamed up with the Rovians to destroy Howard Dean in 2004 shows that they really aren’t interested in speaking truth to power, which is the only thing that can make them win.
April 15th, 2006 at 2:57 AM
Richard: “I was responding to the part where you said ‘I think Bill Clinton is great…’ One should never allow himself to be spellbound by a politician’s charisma.”
Now that’s interesting. I’m hardly spellbound by Clinton. I just think he’s among the smartest (and funniest) men who’ve ever held the U.S. presidency. He’s also just about the only political genius the Democrats have left. And, yeah, I happen to agree with him about 80% of the time, which is as close as I come to unanimity with *any* politician.
(By the way, the obverse is true, too. I disagree with Bush about 95% of the time, but, if pressed, I could think of at least a couple of issues where my own opinion *almost* coincides with the administration’s stated position — usually for entirely different reasons, however.)
Anyway, I meant “great” about Clinton in the sense of “a hoot”, not in the sense of “right up there with Lincoln”. “Terrific” might have been a better choice of words.
April 15th, 2006 at 3:19 AM
A.L.: “…maybe the Rovians wouldn’t control the parameters of the debate if the Dems had an agenda that spoke to the majority of the people’s aspirations and spirit of community, and had the courage to communicate this”
Gee, I hope I didn’t lend the impression that I find most of the Democrats anything less than appalling.
“They used to, back when they fought for social justice and workers’ rights, instead of for their corporate interests (just like the GOP).”
No argument from me.
“Being reactive is simply not enough. The fact that the Democratic leadership basically teamed up with the Rovians to destroy Howard Dean in 2004 shows that they really aren’t interested in speaking truth to power, which is the only thing that can make them win.”
What they did to keep Paul Hackett out of Ohio’s senate race this year is an entire order of magnitude *more* revolting.
I don’t agree, though, that speaking truth to power is the way to win elections in this country. It may be the way to win you or me over, but not the majority of voters. The Republicans win consistently by appealing to self-interest, divisiveness, exclusionism, and fear in the *guise* of community values — and at least a small plurality of Americans seem to love ’em for it.
April 15th, 2006 at 1:51 PM
Steve: yeah, I figured you’d agree, but I like to belabor the obvious.
I heard about Hackett. Completely shameful, that they drove a man of integrity out of politics.
And of course, you’re right. Unfortunately, fear trumps hope. All of the current protest activism concerning immigrant so-called “reform” plays right into Rove’s hands, because it just ascerbates the reactionaries’ fears of a horde of brown people wanting to transform American (ie. white) culture. It’s this year’s gay marriage. I expect a bunch of repressive state initiatives to appear on the ballots this fall, just to give the far-right base of the Republicans a reason to vote this year.
April 15th, 2006 at 2:13 PM
And that’s why the Republicans win; they mobilize their base, while the Dems constantly alienate their leftist base in a futile grab for the middle, a strategy that probably only worked for Clinton due to the strength of his charisma. Speaking truth to power doesn’t guarantee wins for the Democrats, but it’s the only thing that gives them even a chance of victory.
April 18th, 2006 at 7:17 PM
The Americans desparately need a first rate President. Unfortunately, in the last two elections, we got a bunch of second raters. I just wish that the 2000 election was McCain vs. Bradley; at least we would have chosen between two first-raters.
The next election does not promise to be any better. Anybody who can run the country will be knocked out in the primaries by the extremists. Maybe Mitt Romney (God help us all if Giuliani or Clinton get elected). I’m hoping that the Democrats find a first-rater who is wiling to step forward.