Oversold
January
14, 2004
By The Plaid Adder
In
a Christmas newsletter that I just could not bring myself
to spam my near and dear with, I began my description of 2003
in politics with the line, "I think I will always remember
2003 as the year when the gloves came off." Well, so far,
2004 looks like it's going to be the year when the wheels
come off.
The latest problem for the Bush administration is The
Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the
Education of Paul O'Neill, by Ron Suskind, published by
Simon & Schuster. You can order advance copies through Amazon
and Barnes & Noble; Simon & Schuster, who evidently are not
diverting a whole lot of money to their web department, are
still listing it on their site as "UNTITLED ON THE BUSH WHITE
HOUSE." It is also not featured on their front page or in
their "new releases" section, a mistake I hope they will soon
rectify. Because if the rest of the book is anything like
the tidbits we've been getting in O'Neill's interviews, it
is going to be one red-hot seller.
Apart from O'Neill's claim that Cheney responded to his
concerns about the growing budget deficit with "Reagan proved
that deficits don't matter" - because you get re-elected anyway,
and by the time everyone else has to pay the piper your 8
years are up? - and the 'revelation' that Bush, basically,
'ran' cabinet meetings like the overwhelmed and undercurious
figurehead we've always sort of assumed he was, the main thing
everyone has focused on is O'Neill's assertion that the plan
to invade Iraq substantially pre-dated the September 11 attacks,
and that essentially the Bush team was searching for an excuse
to go to war as soon as they got him into office. Can O'Neill
and Suskind make good on that claim? Who knows, the book isn't
out yet - and no doubt Cheney and his goons will be rushing
to their legal teams to try to get an injunction by any means
necessary. Meanwhile, however, something interesting is happening.
Bush is not denying this claim.
Instead, his line is to try to push the start date for the
Iraq campaign back even farther, to Clinton's administration.
Well, blaming Clinton has become a national pastime since
the economy headed toiletwards; but there is one thing we
can blame Clinton for, and that is for showing all
of America how much trouble a president can cause himself
by denying something he doesn't think is provable. Team Bush
may or may not know what kind of proof O'Neill and Suskind
have, but one thing they do know is that if Bush says O'Neill
is full of shit and it turns out someone has a tape of the
meeting at which this first came up, Bush has just bought
himself a one-way ticket to impeachment country.
Which leaves the rest of us, of course, with one conclusion:
O'Neill is telling the truth, and everyone on Team Bush knows
it.
But big as that is, it's not the only problem Bush has picked
up in January 2004. The much-ballyhooed economic 'recovery'
has turned out to be a bust in terms of job creation, which
is what most of his constituents (as opposed to his donors)
really care about. The capture of Saddam Hussein has failed
to stop attacks on American soldiers or to make piles of Weapons
of Mass Destruction magically appear in a compost heap outside
Tikrit. The Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute
- just from the name you can tell they're a bunch of
anarchist commie peaceniks - has published a paper calling
the Iraq war a distraction and a mistake, and making the not
unreasonable argument that "the United States may be able
to defeat Al-Qaeda, but it cannot rid the world of terrorism,
much less evil." What, you mean Bush isn't Superman, Jesus
Christ, God the Father and John Wayne rolled into one? The
horror! Nobody tell Pat Roberston, it'll kill him.
And then of course there are the more inexplicable things,
like Bush suddenly announcing that despite our already gigantic
deficit we need to spend billions of dollars to create a "permanent"
human presence on the moon and a manned mission to Mars -
what, have they run out of stuff to conquer on this
planet? - and the unveiling of the universally perplexing
"guest worker status" plan for undocumented immigrants, which
appeared to be guaranteed to piss off just about everyone.
Don't these people know a political liability when they see
it? What the hell is the matter with Karl Rove?
Well, no doubt a lot's going on, but in my mind it all comes
down to this. Bush has oversold his presidency, and the investors
are starting to realize they've been had.
Last year I found out that I could cheer myself up, when
the news got to be too much, by watching Mel Brooks's debut
film, The Producers. I never liked any of his other movies
that much - his incredibly immature use of women's bodies
gets harder to ignore with each effort - but The Producers
is not only hilarious from start to finish, it is a thousand
times more topical now than it was when it was made.
Max Bialystock, a washed-up Broadway producer played with
overwhelming and irresistible charisma by Zero Mostel, collaborates
with neurotic accountant Leo Bloom (the equally inspired Gene
Wilder) in what they think is the perfect con: they will find
the worst play in the world, raise a million dollars more
than they need to produce it, and then pocket the leftover
cash after the show fails. (The worst play in the world turns
out to be Springtime For Hitler, which only gets worse when
the worst director in the world decides to make it a musical.)
The scam will work if and only if the show bombs; as Bloom
points out, "once the show is a hit, you have to start paying
off the investors, and with so many backers there could never
be enough profits to go around." In one of my favorite scenes,
Bialystock sits at the table wearily signing investor contracts
as Bloom hands them to him, telling him what percentage of
the profits each investor owns. Finally, realizing that this
math is becoming surreal, Bialystock says, "Leo, how many
percent of a show can there be altogether?" "Max," says Leo,
"you can only sell 100% of anything." "And how much of Springtime
for Hitler have we sold?" "25,000 percent."
To me, that's a perfect description of the state of the
Bush presidency. As much as we hear about what a champion
fundraiser he is, nobody seems to point out what would seem
to be the obvious consequence, which is that each of those
chumps ponying up $2000 a plate to have lunch with their pet
President is essentially putting money down now for a share
of the profits later. A few hundred million dollars later,
Bush has too many backers, and there are not enough profits
to go around. He is beholden to so many different interest
groups that he cannot make them all happy at the same time,
and after patiently waiting for a couple of years for their
investment return, they are now starting to make noises about
lawyers and collection agencies.
Take the "guest workers" program, for instance. Doing anything
to ease the plight of illegal immigrants seemed so wildly
out of character for the Bush administration that the immediate
response was a collective and bipartisan "Wha...?" But in
fact it's not too hard to figure out what this is about. As
Bush and many of his backers have always known, the xenophobic
anti-immigrant rhetoric that fuels so many of the more extreme
right-wing elements in the Republican party masks the simple
fact that businesses in this country are always looking for
cheaper labor, and nobody comes cheaper than an undocumented
immigrant. This is especially true now that the service sector
is becoming dominant as the manufacturing sector wanes.
The difference between service jobs and manufacturing jobs
is that service jobs cannot be shipped overseas. If
you run a hotel or a restaurant or a housekeeping service
and you want to pay your workers Third World rates, you can't
ship your business to the Third World; you have to bring the
Third World to your business. The Republican party's dirty
little secret is not the racism that drives its anti-immigrant
rhetoric - all of that is pretty blatant - but the fact that
many of the donors in the corporate wing would like to see
more undocumented and exploitable immigrants coming
into this country.
Meanwhile, in the post 9/11 world, Bush now has to keep yet
a third constituency happy: the national-security nuts who,
if they could, would like to hermetically seal U.S. in plastic
and duct tape to keep anyone from going in or out. The "guest
worker" plan is an attempt to a) placate the corporate donors
by finally allowing them to exploit cheap immigrant labor
without being in the embarrassing position of violating immigration
laws and b) placate the national-security nuts by promising
to register and track every immigrant who comes into the country.
Left out in the cold are the racist anti-immigrant elements
of the party who simply can't stand the idea of any
'foreigner' sneaking into America and taking a job away from
a white man. Why, they might ask Bush, should we let immigrants
into this country at all? Well, he might reply, I'm afraid
we need them to grease the wheels of American megacapitalism,
and the fact is that the megacapitalists gave me more money
than the white supremacists this year. Sorry.
Similarly, there is a big fight brewing in the Big Tent
between proponents of classic "conservative" fiscal values
- balanced budgets and small government - and Bush's backers,
who apparently believe that shoving billions of government
dollars down the throats of their major corporate donors while
simultaneously cutting taxes again and again and again makes
fiscal sense. Finally, people are starting to do the math,
and realize that even if Bush's extravagant overspending isn't
going to those nasty social programs that do crazy things
like, you know, provide food, shelter, education and medical
care for actual human beings, it is still extravagant overspending.
And then of course there is the libertarian wing, which has
long been dissatisfied with the Big Brother antics of John
Ashcroft - but of course Bush can't do a damn thing about
Ashcroft without pissing off the religious fundamentalists
who believe he has come to deliver them from their Babylonian
captivity. And speaking of religious fundamentalists, the
drive to pass a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage
has now sparked an ad campaign in which prominent conservative
types - by and large figures that queers like me would cross
the street to avoid, and I'm sure the feeling is mutual -
explain to their followers that this amendment would be a
huge blow to the principle of states' rights and a major increase
in the intrusive power of the federal government. So now we
have a celebrity deathmatch shaping up between the American
Familiy Association and the Federalist Society. Hey, there's
a fund-raising idea - sell ringside tickets to that bout
on eBay.
And then of course there's the war in Iraq, which apparently
so far has disappointed and/or alarmed just about everybody
apart from Rumsfeld, Cheney, Halliburton, and Bechtel. Which
is how we know where Team Bush's priorities are, even if it
has taken some of his other investors a while to figure that
out.
So there it is. Bush can go out there and spin like he's
Sasha Cohen, but as Leo Bloom says, you can only sell 100%
of anything, and he hit the 25,000% mark a long time ago.
He has given out way too many IOUs, and unfortunately he has
distributed them to a bunch of people who are not liable to
offer debt forgiveness. If he's coming apart at the seams
now, it's simply because too many people have a piece of him.
Let this be a lesson to future Republican administrations
to try to keep the whoring within sustainable parameters.
Meanwhile, I will enjoy the infighting from a safe distance
while I eagerly await the arrival of my very own copy of The
Price of Loyalty.
The Plaid Adder's demented ravings have been delighting
an equally demented online audience since 1996. More of the
same can be found at the Adder's
Lair.
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