Carpe Datum

Vast Right-Wing Incompetence

Paul Krugman (ok, I'm avoiding the NYT registration-required link) writes today about how the Boy King has managed to cover all the bases of incompetence, which would make it easy for critical voices to make their arguments. If the corporate media would let them:

The campaign against Social Security is going so badly that longtime critics of President Bush, accustomed to seeing their efforts to point out flaws in administration initiatives brushed aside, are pinching themselves. But they shouldn't relax: if the past is any guide, the Bush administration will soon change the subject back to national security.

I don't know about this. I think they are still fighting the social security battle, just beneath the radar. For example, Josh Marshall continues to cover the various ConservaBorg tactics. The latest is to try to use the same kind of Swift Boat campaign (even the same people) to discredit the AARP, which is so ham-handed that it is actually pretty embarrassing (no guarantee it will fail, though, because you cannot overestimate the stupidity of the Moron American). Another tactic for representatives who are feeling the heat from their constituents is to pretend they oppose Bush plan using word games (e.g. "I support personal accounts and strengthening social security, but I oppose privatization schemes." when both are actually the same thing, just called different things by Republicans and the fear-of-looking-biased media).

They'll talk a good game so they can get out of town-hall meetings alive, but then they'll reliably vote for Bush's plan, explaining with a heavy heart to their constituents that they just didn't have a choice because, you see, it was in a crisis and Democrats just wouldn't propose any reasonable alternatives (because Republicans wouldn't let anything out of committee and the media wouldn't report on Democratic proposals which had no chance anyway because of Republican tactics.) No, destroying Social Security is a scheme that is far from dead.

And make no mistake. Destroying (not saving) Social Security is what this is all about. It won't be over until Democrats are back in charge.

The political landscape today reminds me of the spring of 2002, after the big revelations of corporate fraud. Then as now, the administration was on the defensive, and Democrats expected to do well in midterm elections.

Then, suddenly, it was all Iraq, all the time, and Harken Energy and Halliburton vanished from the headlines.

Someone forgot to tell the "liberal media" to keep the heat on the Bush administration, apparently. Suddenly, they all became war cheerleaders and patriotically correct Bush-supporting shills. You can really only get a sense of the absurdity of the media's behavior with regular viewing of Jon Stewart.

I don't know which foreign threat the administration will start playing up this time, but Bush critics should be prepared for the shift. They must curb their natural inclination to focus almost exclusively on domestic issues, and challenge the administration on national security policy, too.

I say this even though many critics, myself included, would prefer to stick with the domestic issues. After all, domestic issues, particularly Social Security, are very comfortable ground for moderates and liberals. The relevant facts are all in the public domain, voters clearly oppose the administration's hard-right agenda, and Mr. Bush's attack on Social Security stumbled badly out of the gate. It's understandable, then, that critiques of the administration's national security policy have faded into the background in recent months.

But a president can always change the subject to national security if he wants to - and Mr. Bush has repeatedly shown himself willing to play the terrorism card when he is losing the debate on other issues. So it's important to point out that Mr. Bush, for all his posturing, has done a very bad job of protecting the nation - and to make that point now, rather than in the heat of the next foreign crisis.

The media is even more reluctant to report Bush's disasters in foreign policy, because it carries with it the double-whammy of criticism of the Frat Boy Who Can Do No Wrong along with an undertone of "America screwed up". The media has a tough time separating the failures of American leadership from the failures of America as a country, so the best thing to do is ignore it and talk about Brad and Jen.

The fact is that Mr. Bush, while willing to go to war on weak evidence, hasn't taken the task of protecting America from terrorists at all seriously.

Consider, for example, the case of chemical plants.

Just days after 9/11, many analysts identified sites that store toxic chemicals as a major terror risk, and called for new safety rules. But as The New York Times reported last fall, "after the oil and chemical industries met with Karl Rove ... the White House quietly blocked those efforts."

Nearly three and a half years after 9/11, those chemical plants are still unprotected.

If a chemical plant or some other vulnerable point in our infrastructure were attacked today, there is no a shred of doubt in my mind that the blame would fall squarely on the shoulders of the Democrats. It truly is Bizarro World.

Other major risks identified within days of the attack included the possibility of terrorist attacks on major ports or nuclear plants. But in the months after 9/11, the administration flatly refused to allocate the sums that members of the House and Senate from both parties thought necessary to secure these sites.

And when the administration does spend money protecting possible terrorist targets, politics, not national security, dictates where the money goes. Remember the "first responders" program that ended up spending seven times as much protecting each resident of Wyoming as it spent protecting each resident of New York?

Well, it's still happening. An audit of the Homeland Security Department's (greatly inadequate) program to protect ports found that much of the money went to unlikely locations, including six sites in landlocked Arkansas, where the department's recently resigned chief of border and transportation security is reported to be considering a run for governor.

Nor are Mr. Bush's national security failures limited to nonmilitary policy. The administration appears to be in a state of denial over the effects of the endless war in Iraq on U.S. military readiness, particularly the strains on the reserves and the National Guard.

The ultimate demonstration of Mr. Bush's true priorities was his attempt to appoint Bernard Kerik as homeland security director. Either the administration didn't bother to do even the most basic background checks, or it regarded protecting the nation from terrorists as a matter of so little importance that it didn't matter who was in charge.

My point is that Mr. Bush's critics are falling into an unnecessary trap if they focus only on domestic policies, and allow Mr. Bush to keep his undeserved reputation as someone who keeps Americans safe. National security policy should not be a refuge to which Mr. Bush can flee when his domestic agenda falls apart.

The stuff about Homeland Security being loaded with pork: that doesn't bother me, really. I mean, yes, it is wrong, but Democrats are equally guilty of this nonsense. That level of corruption/incompetence in government is not going to be fixed anytime soon by either party. But for Democrats, it is a stupid line of attack, because it is one of the few where the media can genuinely say with a straight face that both sides are equally bad. Put together enough stories like that, and people stop listening, assuming that both sides are equally bad about everything.

No, for Democrats to win at this point, they need to emphasize their distinct differences with Republicans. That's why I continue to think Dean is a good choice because he was one of the few brave enough early on to make a public stand against the Iraq War. Once it started, of course, he knows we need to finish it, work out all the problems, etc. But Dean is unconventional. He's not "Republican light" or what Republicans stood for 20 years ago before lurching violently to the right. He's a genuine moderate, even liberal on some issues.

Americans have liberal viewpoints on a whole lot of issues, as Michael Moore has pointed out repeatedly (i.e. a majority favor expansion of the social safety net, more progressive taxation, less "preemptive strike" foreign policy, etc). Democrats need to make it clear that they wholeheartedly endorse the liberal positions on these issues, and they need a media that will play fair and provide them equal time to make their case.

That's not going to happen any time soon, of course, but it's nice to have goals.

Posted by Observer at February 22, 2005 12:04 PM