Wednesday, November 05, 2003
The Irresponsibility Era
Atrios draws attention to the craven, unrecorded vote on the $87B for Iraq, which, we will recall, is opposed by roughly 2/3 of the public. Of Democrats, who mostly shared Republican strategy of abdicating responsibility, Harold Meyerson observes:
This is the talent for failure that the Bush Family in general, and Shirk in particular, have raised to an art form. Not only do you and your cronies make the public bear the financial costs of your own incompetence and greed, you make your enemies bear the political costs of the fallout as well. (As did Clinton, the next Democratic President will again face the thankless task of fixing our looted fiscal and public infrastructure.)
Of course this wouldn't work if the press would stop pretending that any policy statement too nuanced for a brain-damaged bonobo to grasp is evidence of waffling or shiftiness (ask Wesley Clark). Instead, Democrats can now expect to be pilloried no matter that they do.
Funny:
Homer Simpson [having bankrupted the family by buying a pony for Lisa over Marge's objections]: Jeesh Marge! First you didn't want me to get the pony, now you want me to take it back. Make up your mind!"
Not funny:
SEELYE: Right after [Clark’s] health care speech, the general introduced some new confusion into his stance on the administration's request for $87 billion in emergency spending on Iraq and Afghanistan. He has said that he opposes the request, and he repeated that position on Tuesday. But he told one woman who asked him what he would do about Iraq, "We broke the dishes, we’re going to pay for them."
[I]t's not hard to understand why. The administration's handling of both the war and occupation has been so deeply flawed that it has created a situation to which not only its own policy but all the existing alternatives are clearly inadequate. Bush and his neos have given us a kind of Gothic horror version of Goldilocks, in which the policy alternatives are either too big or too small, while their own is just wrong.
This is the talent for failure that the Bush Family in general, and Shirk in particular, have raised to an art form. Not only do you and your cronies make the public bear the financial costs of your own incompetence and greed, you make your enemies bear the political costs of the fallout as well. (As did Clinton, the next Democratic President will again face the thankless task of fixing our looted fiscal and public infrastructure.)
Of course this wouldn't work if the press would stop pretending that any policy statement too nuanced for a brain-damaged bonobo to grasp is evidence of waffling or shiftiness (ask Wesley Clark). Instead, Democrats can now expect to be pilloried no matter that they do.
Funny:
Homer Simpson [having bankrupted the family by buying a pony for Lisa over Marge's objections]: Jeesh Marge! First you didn't want me to get the pony, now you want me to take it back. Make up your mind!"
Not funny:
SEELYE: Right after [Clark’s] health care speech, the general introduced some new confusion into his stance on the administration's request for $87 billion in emergency spending on Iraq and Afghanistan. He has said that he opposes the request, and he repeated that position on Tuesday. But he told one woman who asked him what he would do about Iraq, "We broke the dishes, we’re going to pay for them."
