The "MS" President

by Dan Jacoby

A couple of years ago, on the television series "The West Wing", the fictional President Bartlet revealed that he had MS, or multiple sclerosis. Today, in real life, we must deal with the fact that the actual President has another type of "MS" - Microsoft Syndrome.

Microsoft is a company that wants to have control of everything, just like the Bush administration. Microsoft refuses to admit they've ever done anything wrong, just like the Bush administration. They're despised by anyone who really comes to understand what they're doing, just like you know who. They're loathed in Europe, just like, well, you know. They're arrogant and conceited, just like...

Is it any wonder that the moment George W. Bush took office, the court case against Microsoft began to fade away?

If George W. Bush wins a second term, his arrogance, his ineptitude, his unshakeable belief in his own infallibility, his view that he and his presidency are ordained by God - all of these traits will form an administration that America simply can't afford.

Here are some examples of what a second "Dubya" administration, bolstered by a Republican Congress, will be like, based on the statements he has made during this campaign, combined with the facts that this President refuses to face:

  1. He will cut taxes, mostly for the wealthiest people, and allow the deficit to get out of control.
  2. He will continue to increase spending at a record rate, exacerbating the deficit issue even more.
  3. He will choke off money that could be used to create new businesses and new jobs, thus creating another recession - or possibly even a depression.
  4. He will almost certainly invade another country or two in a series of "preemptive attacks" on threats that either don't exist or don't require military action.
  5. He will institute a draft in order to build the armed force he needs to further his militaristic ways.
  6. He will destroy Social Security by setting up private accounts, thus pulling two trillion dollars out of the trust fund, and causing many poor people to lose what little they have through uninformed investments.
  7. He will probably appoint as many as four new Supreme Court justices, using as a litmus test whether they will allow him to continue shredding the Bill of Rights.

Don't believe me? Let's take these claims one at a time:

  1. His tax bills to date have given huge windfalls to the richest Americans, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which is currently run by one of his appointees. His "new" plans consist not only of making the current changes permanent, but also creating new tax cuts that are even more biased toward helping those who are so rich they don't need help.
  2. He has never proposed a single spending cut of any significance. Under his "leadership", and with a Republican Congress, discretionary spending has increased at a record rate, and pork-barrel projects abound.
  3. New business creation is at a long-term low, because the venture capital just isn't available. Larger deficits, combined with a foreign policy that will choke off foreign investment in our deficit (mostly from China, and also from Saudi Arabia - two countries to whom we really don't want to owe anything). Only by creating new businesses can we create new American jobs. The best George W. Bush can claim on job creation is worse than Bill Clinton's lowest job performance, and all signs point to a slowdown in job creation.
  4. He has insisted that his policy of preemptive attacks is absolutely right, despite all the evidence to the contrary. With both Iran and North Korea either possessing nuclear weapons or close to it, what choice will George W. Bush have? Actually, he will have many choices, but past performance shows he won't pay any attention to them.
  5. Our armed forces are already overstretched. New military action is absolutely impossible unless we build up our forces, and the all-volunteer system just won't accomplish that. The only alternative is a draft, which will be defended as necessary in the "continuing crisis".
  6. He has never shown how he will pay for the $2 trillion he wants to take out of the Social Security Trust Fund in his rush to privatization. Nor has he shown how his plan will result in anything other than disaster.
  7. Justices Rehnquist and O'Connor will almost certainly retire if George W. Bush gets a second term. Between age and declining health, Justices Stevens and Ginsburg may not last another four years on bench. George W. Bush's statements this year alone regarding: school prayer; affirmative action; abortion; indefinite imprisonment without benefit of lawyer, trial or even formal charges; the confidentiality of medical records; the right to privacy from both government and business intrusion; are all indicators of what type of judges he will appoint.

It's quite clear what kind of America a second Bush term will leave behind, one filled with destruction and despair. Whatever you might think of the alternatives, they are obviously better than what we have. Remember, MS is a degenerative disease; four more years of it might not be fatal, but it will certainly be disastrous.

 

Copyright 2004, Dan Jacoby

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