Bush Gets Lucky

The Republicans and their allies in the media are congratulating Mr Bush and more or less crowning him president for a second term. All this, at least a month prior to the first presidential primaries. The issue is, of course, to what extent the capture of Saddam Hussein is going to propel the president into his second term. Nobody really knows, but the rightist pundits are all ready weighing in. George F. Will of the Washington Post tells us that the capture of Hussein was a “trifecta” for Mr Bush. The other two elements being Mr Gore’s support of Dr Dean and the Dow going over 10,000. William Safire of the New York Times tells us today in the NY Times that Saddam Hussein was a bad person. This is something most people already knew and by implication tells us that Mr Bush is so good, that in capturing Hussein, Bush deserves another four years in office. David Frum of the National Review says that the “odds of President Bush’s re-election have just shot up from good to almost overwhelming.” Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard probably agrees with Frum, but says that while Bush is helped by the capture of the Iraqi dictator Dean is hurt and is happy not only to bash Howard Dean, but record the other Democratic primary candidates bashing Dr Dean in the bargain.

And that’s just a few of them.

Others are already getting their word-processors warmed up.  In the coming days we’ll read tons more of the same sort of reactionary garbage repeating the mantra about how this capture of Saddam Hussein really, really shows what a wonderful president George Bush is, and that he really, really deserves another four years in office.

Not to be outdone in all this, you have the normal gaggle of GOP politicians, most of whom, not missing a beat tell,  us on the weekend talk shows what a great jobs the troops are doing by capturing the Iraqi dictator. Of the two, the rightist pundits and the GOP politicians, the politicians are, in my book, the worst. Listening to them, one gets the idea that the senators and congressmen yakking it up  on This Week, or Meet the Press, were actually in on the field operation and right their lending a hand to pull Saddam Hussein out of his underground hideout.

All this, just because a reeking denizen of some Iraqi skid-row was captured without a fight.

So. How will the Great Capture of 2003 work out politically?

There’s no doubt that Mr Bush will get a short-term bounce in the polls. He’ll have approval ratings in the 90s before long;--just like his father did in 1992. But his approval rating will drop substantially as more and more people realize that the capture of Saddam Hussein; a man who resembled and acted the persona of a homeless man you might see on any downtown skid-row in any American city, really isn’t the coup that the right thinks it is. It will not , of itself give Mr Bush any long term poll numbers, because, although the US might have captured the former ruler of Iraq, that alone is not going to make the US/UK occupation any easier. US troops are probably going to be killed at the rate of one or two a day, for as long as the US remains in Iraq.

There’s nothing like a casualty list to put the damper on this national giddiness over the capture of someone who  is powerless.

The stock market might get bumped a little, but at the end of the day we are still stuck in the quagmire of Iraq. (Yes, it is a quagmire.) Because, basically we’re stuck there and we can’t get out. Domestically, people are still being thrown out of work by downsizing companies,   especially those that downsize by the simple expedient of moving American jobs to areas of the world where people are paid wages  a more than that necessary to keep body and soul together. Meantime more Americans find themselves  without health insurance.  And the relentless struggle led by the right to either gut the social safety network , or reduce it as far as possible, continues  unabated.

Oh, and the war on terror. Well, it just keeps rolling along. At the rate of one or two  US casualties  a day. 

Euphoria, as rule   doesn’t last and it's no substitute for good policy. Howard Dean was right on the mark the other day when he stated that while it is always a good thing to get rid of a dictator, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the US has some sort of manifest destiny to go ‘round the world getting rid of them. What we are doing is not just dictator-removal; it's  imperialism.

The only difference between the Bush brand of imperialism and older 19th Century versions, is that the US  is not now directly exploiting the native population.

Punditwalla--