Shut up and Color: Dubya's Politics of Bullying

[JoseCuervo]

A good read on what has become a pervasive pattern within Dubya's Adminstration that all of us Republicans should be fed up with.

Shut Up and Color: The Politics of Bullying


The best thing John Kerry did at the Democratic convention was to challenge the bullying. He talked of the flag belonging to all of us, and how "standing up to speak our minds is not a challenge to patriotism [but] the heart and soul of patriotism." By doing this, he drew the line against the pattern of intimidation that the Bush administration has used to wage war on democracy itself.

A former Air Force Colonel I know described the administration's attitude toward dissent as "shut up and color," as if we were unruly eight-year-olds. Whatever we may think of Bush's particular policies, the most dangerous thing he's done is to promote a culture that equates questioning with treason. This threatens the very dialogue that's at the core of our republic.

Think of the eve of the Iraq war, and the contempt heaped on those generals who dared to suggest that the war might take far more troops and money than the administration was suggesting. Think of the attacks on the reputations and motives of long-time Republicans who've recently dared to question, like national security advisor Richard Clarke, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, weapons inspector Scott Ritter, and Bush's own former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill. Think of the Republican TV ads, the 2000 Georgia Senate race, which paired Democratic Senator Max Cleland with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein—asserting that because Cleland opposed President Bush's Homeland Security bill, he lacked "the courage to lead."

In this last case, it didn't matter that Cleland had lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam, while the Republican who eventually defeated him had never worn a uniform. Nor that Republican strategists nearly defeated South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson in the same election, with similar ads, although Johnson was the only person in Congress whose child was actually serving with the U.S. military—and would see active duty in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's hard to talk about such intimidation without sounding partisan or shrill, but we need to make it a central issue, because if it succeeds, it becomes impossible to discuss any other issues. Remember after the 9/11 attacks, when Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly declared that anyone who disagreed with administration policy was an ally of terrorism. We were still stunned and reeling at that point. Yet Democrats and honorable Republicans should have had the courage to say that this definition was unacceptable. Instead they capitulated to the tactics of Republican strategists like Grover Norquist, who proudly quotes Lenin's motto, "Probe with bayonets, looking for weakness." And a message of intimidation has dominated since, amplified through the endless echo chamber of O'Reilly, Rush, Hannity, and Drudge.

Some who've embraced this approach believe they're on a divinely sanctioned Crusade. Others simply love the game—like Karl Rove, who got his start by destroying the reputation of a fellow contender to head the national Young Republicans, and helped Bush first take office by spreading rumors that then-Texas governor Ann Richards was a lesbian. My friend Egil Krogh, who worked in the Nixon administration, hired G Gordon Liddy, and went to prison for Watergate, did things he knew were morally wrong, wanting to be loyal. He watched Nixon's administration frame everything in terms of national security, then identify that security as whatever consolidated their power, while branding those who challenged them as traitors. Bush's administration, to Krogh, seems even more ruthless.

The resulting rule of intimidation and manipulation grinds into the dust traditional conservative ethics of honesty and fair play. In the 2000 election, while the Florida ballots were still being counted, a mob of a couple hundred people, pounding on doors and windows, succeeded in permanently stopping a count of 10,000 Miami-Dade County ballots that were expected to favor Al Gore. As The Wall Street Journal reported, this mob was made up largely of Republican Congressional aides, organized by future House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and flown in by the Bush campaign. In a tight 2002 race for the New Hampshire Senate seat that Republican John Sununu eventually won, a Virginia-based campaign consultant group, GOP Marketplace, hired an Idaho telemarketing firm to jam the phone lines of Democratic "get-out-the-vote" call centers. More recently, Michigan and Oregon Republicans have gone all out to get Ralph Nader on the ballot, to siphon off votes from John Kerry.

The United States is an experiment, whose outcome can be in doubt on any given day. But when our leaders embrace the ethics of Don Corleone, they undermine the very terms of our democracy. Go back to Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy," where he deliberately used racially polarizing language and images to lure White southerners into the Republican Party. Or the Willie Horton ads overseen by Karl Rove's mentor, Lee Atwater. Or the Iran-Contra scandal, when the first President Bush and key members of the current president's administration, then working for Reagan, crafted and enacted secret foreign policies that defied the will of Congress-while collaborating with dictators and terrorists. Or the illegitimate purging, in the 2000 election, of 94,000 largely poor and minority voters from the Florida rolls. Recently, the same five Supreme Court justices who installed Bush prevailed by a single vote in upholding Tom DeLay's midnight redistricting in Texas and Pennsylvania--where Republicans broke all conventional rules about redistricting only after a census, and instead gerrymandered as many Congressional seats as they could, just because they held the reins of power.

Whatever our party identifications or stands on particular issues, which of course will vary, we should be profoundly troubled by these developments. Since the United States was founded, neither major political party has exercised a monopoly on deceit, venality, or political abuse. Dead people voted in Chicago. Lyndon Johnson closed an air base in a Congressional district that dared to vote against him. No administration since the World War I Palmer Raids, however, has so systematically attempted to silence its critics.

But just as a culture of silence is contagious, so is one of courage. And citizens are beginning to stand up and question, from Republican conservationists questioning Bush's environmental policies, to career foreign service officers decrying the rift our unilateral actions are creating between us and the world, to cities across America challenging the Patriot Act.

The challenge now is to make the issue of bullying the central theme of the election, linking the intimidation of all questioners with the blind insularity that leads to debacles like Iraq. If we can do this, Bush will lose. As old-fashioned as it may sound, the demand that our political leaders play fair still resonates. And in a democracy, we should expect nothing less.

 

[Ithaca 37]

The Dubya administration hs turned everything into "us vs them". It's been the most devisive administration in history.

 

[Michaelr]

This relates to sportmens issues how?

 

[ELKCHSR]

"The best thing John Kerry did at the Democratic convention was to challenge the bullying."

This part of the quote, cept instead of John Kerry, it was the rest of the people in the SI section...

 

[A-con]

The point is well taken, but if you think Kerry is any better, just ask the Swift boaters !
And take a look at the last president. Clinton was famous for threats of personal destruction and even violance.
Don't pretend this is anything new, it has been going on since Kennedy.

 

[JoseCuervo]

A-Con,

I think it even became legalized with Dubya and the Patriot Act. If you question Dubya, you can be investigated. Farenheit 9/11 has some interesting scenes of retired coffeshop guys getting investigated by the FBI because they questioned some action of Bush while drinking coffee down at the corner.

But I think we can all agree that Dubya is not much of a "uniter"...

 

[A-con]

I agree, the "Patriot act" goes over the line, but presidents have useing the F.B.I. to investagate anyone they want since the F.B.I. was invented.
With all due respect, 95% of the negative things you post about Dubya sound like every other president.
After Clinton, Bush looks like a decent guy.
Do you REALLY think Kerry would be any better ?
( regarding abuse of presidental power issues )

 

[JoseCuervo]

A-Con
I would argue that 95% of the Anti-Hunting stuff that I post about Dubya is NOT similar to other Presidents. I don't think any other President was so committed to destroying out hunting and fishing as Dubya.

Look at the threads on him dredging the Columbia, drilling all over Wyoming, etc.. etc..

And as for other presdents and the FBI, at least with them, you still had consitituional rights. With Dubya you have the right to go to Guantanomo Bay and be held indefintitely without access to attorneys, no speedy trial, etc...

Here is some more on Dubya's divisiveness...

As Republicans gather to make their case for President Bush's re-election this week, they will do so against a backdrop as divisive as any since 1968, when Democrats needed the National Guard to preserve order outside their Chicago convention.

Unlike four years ago, when Bush's task was to introduce himself to the nation, the 58-year-old president is facing an electorate that seems to know him quite well; they just don't agree on what to think about him.

The country is divided over fundamental policy: how to proceed in Iraq, improve health care, improve schools and create new jobs, and whether to restrict stem-cell research, ban same-sex marriage and raise taxes. On the eve of the Republican convention, there also is an enormous emotional divide over the man seeking a second term.

Bush remains the darling of his party, with no rival in the primaries and hardly a peep of dissent over his candidacy among the GOP faithful. He has raised more money than any politician before him, and for a prolonged period following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush enjoyed the highest approval ratings of any president in history.

Yet in the four years since he first accepted his party's nomination, opposition to his policies have inspired new levels of political activism among opponents. Bush has also driven many detractors to the brink of rage, where the very sound of his voice or the sight of his face on television prompts an intense, gut-level reaction.

"There are occasionally politicians who are galling to a certain segment of the public,'' said Loyola Marymount Professor Michael Genovese, co-author of "Polls and Politics: The Dilemmas of Democracy."

"There is something about their personality, their style, their approach and what they are that brings out contempt in their opponents,'' Genovese said. "And more than any politician in my lifetime, George Bush elicits that sort of emotion in Democrats.''

The competing passions of the two parties will be on display this week.

Republicans from as far as Guam are descending on this Democratic city to show their devotion to the incumbent, as tens of thousands of demonstrators -- perhaps hundreds of thousands -- are gathered to protest his administration, the largest opposition force at a convention since 1968, if not ever. Television commercials accusing Democratic rival John Kerry of lying about his Vietnam record have made headlines, while Internet chatter accusing Bush of treachery, lies and mental instability grows louder each day.

At stores in New York and around the country, books ranging from "Bush Country: How Dubya Became a Great President While Driving Liberals Insane,'' to "The I Hate George W. Bush Reader: Why Dubya Is Wrong About Absolutely Everything,'' sit side-by-side on shelves.

Polls show the Bush-Kerry race essentially tied as the election heads into its final nine weeks, reflecting incredibly little movement from the 2000 election, in which Vice President Al Gore received about 550,000 more popular votes out of some 105 million cast. Bush captured the Electoral College, 271 to 266, with one District of Columbia elector abstaining. Strategists are sharply divided over which candidate is likely to pull ahead by November and win the 270 electoral votes needed for the presidency. Yet most analysts agree that the most intense emotions belong to those who have turned increasingly resentful over the Bush presidency.

Such emotions have been well chronicled as a unifying force for the Democrats. They also have implications for Bush's effort to win re-election.

"Bush hatred is a driving force, if not the driving force, of this election,'' said Jonathan Chait, an editor for the left-leaning New Republic, who wrote a story a year ago titled "Mad About You: The Case for Bush Hatred.'' The cover story criticized not only what Bush stood for, but how he talks, how he walks and even the jokes he tells.

The Bush hatred, according to numerous analysts, is rooted in several factors.

-- The 2000 election: Not only did Bush lose the popular vote, but it has become an article of faith for many Democrats that he stole the election in Florida.

-- Ideology. Even after winning the closest election in more than 100 years, Bush governed as if he had a strong mandate, pushing a record-sized tax cut, making conservative judicial nominations, rolling back environmental regulations and abandoning international treaties.

"By any fair analysis, this is the most conservative set of policies we've had since Ronald Reagan,'' said Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.

-- The war. The March 2003 attack on Iraq remains incredibly divisive. With nearly 1,000 Americans and thousands more Iraqis already dead, the anti-war sentiment in the U.S. grows stronger as a slew of books and movies accuse Bush of lying in order to justify the war.

"These are big issues at stake,'' Cain said. "Almost everything (Democrats) care about is under siege -- the environment, internationalism, social justice, abortion. I have not seen the Democratic Party so united against a single Republican since Nixon.''

It is the same sort of sort of contempt that marked Republican opposition to President Bill Clinton.

"This is something on a gut level. This is something that goes deep,'' Genovese said of the Bush detractors.

Most Republicans don't dispute the intensity of the Bush hatred. But many believe it will not be sufficient to allow Democrats to prevail.

"The sentiment is much more negative-anti-Bush than it is pro-Kerry,'' said Duf Sundheim, chairman of the California Republican Party. Though the race is now close, Sundheim said he could see it shifting more decisively toward the president "because there is no underlying reason for the Kerry campaign.''

Only a small fraction of Bush's detractors will be protesting in the streets, and while New York authorities are bracing for the potential clashes, no one knows what to expect from the demonstrators. Observers on both sides said violence or destruction of property could end up helping the Republicans, just as the scenes of bloodied heads in Chicago in 1968 helped the law-and-order candidacy of Richard Nixon.

"If it's people with nose rings and purple hair smashing things up ... it could quite possibly be a boon for Bush,'' Chait said.

Just as Bush has no plans to appeal to the protesters, strategists agreed that he may have little incentive to try to change the minds of the 45 percent or so of Americans who are already against him. His hopes for re-election rest on a good turnout among the 45 percent who already support him, and then trying to attract the small number of undecided voters in the middle.

"It probably makes sense to squeeze an extra two or three percentage points out of the base that is already committed to you, rather than waste millions of dollars on people who say they aren't going to pay attention until the final week of the election, and may be swayed by events out of control to the campaign,'' Cain said.

Some analysts see the steadiness of the Bush opposition as an explanation of why his campaign has run so many ads attacking his rival. It may be easier to convince swing voters that Kerry is not fit to be president than to convince them that Bush has done a good job. Yet ultimately, the outcome of the 2004 election, most everyone agrees, will come down to voters judgment not of Kerry, but of the man who has occupied the presidency for the past 31/2 years.

"This is an election between Bush and Bush,'' Genovese said