One big point Bush made at his press conference was that he had gained political capital and he planned to spend it.
If you wonder why he led with that point, you have to go back to the first Iraq War. When America won that war, his father’s popularity broke 90%.
As a moderate, Bush Senior tried to keep everybody happy. He didn’t use all that political capital to pursue any “divisive” issues. As a moderate, all he wanted was to get reelected.
I could tolerate moderates if their strategy of “going for the center” ever WORKED. But their strategy of selling out principles for votes is not just immoral. As a political professional I am not exactly a pillar of morality.
What really upsets me about moderates is that they are not just immoral, they are STUPID.
So when his popularity hit 91%, Bush Senior didn’t use that political capital to pursue ANYTHING. His popularity dribbled away. Buchanan took him on in the primary.
Reagan had gone hard right in 1980 and won a smashing victory. Reagan did the same thing in 1984. Bush ran as Reagan’s successor in 1988 and won on Reagan’s coattails.
But Bush Senior could have lost in 1988 if he had not had the hard right campaign of Lee Atwater.
By 1992, Bush was one more moderate Republican. He lost.
In 1994, Gingrich led the Republicans to the right with his Contract With America. They smashed the Democrats.
Again.
All the theories say that you have to be in the middle of the road to win. But if you look at congresssional voting records, you will find that simply is not true. Those who get elected are on the left or the right.
Moderate Republicans lost. Bush Senior lost.
So Bush Junior is saying he just won an election and the first thing he says is that he is going to USE it.
No one else remembers any of this, so The Man With a Memory will bring it up here.
Meanwhile Bush Junior is dribbling back to the center. He doesn’t matter to me at all, but I have to give it to him personally that at least he’s TRYING to learn something from his father’s mistakes.
#1 by Elizabeth on 11/04/2004 - 6:31 pm
One thing about our current President being a son of a prior President is that we have some exposure to his parents.
George W. (son) isn’t as much like George H.W. (father) as he’s like his mother, and Barbara (mother) has always struck me as being much tougher and much more of a realist than George H.W. George H.W. is a gentleman, but he got contaminated early on with all that Northeastern liberalism.
At least George W. lived in Texas from infancy until age 13, and went to Texas public schools until his parents shipped him north to prep school.
#2 by Anonymous on 11/04/2004 - 9:13 pm
Well, Bob, we have to get Bush Jr. alone and talk to him. He has a golden opportunity to really change the country for the better. I don’t think Bush Sr. even knows what political philosophy is and was a political anomaly. He was elected to continue the Reagan Presidency and he almost immediately acted different from the Atwater campaign that won him the job. He just had a tin ear politically and his great contribution was keeping Dukakis out of the White House.
#3 by Peter on 11/05/2004 - 1:45 am
Bob: you’re the expert.
You really ought to explain WHY people don’t want to hear truth.
People don’t want to look at the Lancet report showing that 100,000 more people died under Bush than under Saddam.
People don’t want to see the order that Bush gave blanket approval for torture at Abu Ghraib.
People don’t want to hear that a retired senior US diplomat say that the torture bore all the earmarks of the Israeli Mossad.
People don’t want to see the memo telling Bush that Muslims were about to attack the US — by plane.
People don’t care that there were never any WMDs.
People don’t care that there was no connection between Iraq and terrorism.
People don’t care whether or not the war was fought for Israel or oil or whatever.
People don’t care if you can show them in black and white that they were lied to over and over again.
People don’t care about how many murders are committed in their name.
People believe that Bush is for moral values. But they don’t want to see his letter to two gays in San Francisco thanking them for the mulit-million donation and congratulating them for their marriage.
People don’t care that Bush did not really lift a finger against affirmative action in Michigan.
People don’t care that Bush chose to “defend traditional marriage” by choosing a remedy that had no possibility of working.
People don’t care that Bush’s gay policy in the military is the same as Clinton’s.
People don’t care that Bush failed to do anything at all for moral values.
In Vietnam, one could argue that the war was to fight the spread of Communism, but the war was still unpopular. Now, everyone knows the Israeli wars are wrong, but they don’t care.
And the few Liberals who pretend they care, voted for Kerry — who vowed to do all the same things.
Bob, tell us WHY.
Then maybe somebody somewhere can begin a war of words.