Trying to Make Failure Seem Like Success

It is no small wonder that much of the public is so confused. The rhetorical flights of fancy that find expression in most media outlets do little to help ordinary people understand a complex world. Often, in the interest of providing a forum for all opinions, no matter how absurd, the mainstream media ensures that the public is less well served and more confused than ever.

And so, in recent days former Bush advocates, members of the administration and true believers have been making regular appearances on talk shows and in print, notably former Vice President Cheney, press secretaries Dana Perino and Ari Fleischer and, of course the ubiquitous Fox News contributor, Karl Rove. One favorite talking point is that we should all be grateful Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. That is meant to justify invading Iraq and is said to be the special gift George Bush left for President Obama.

Cheney went much further suggesting that the country is less safe because the president has changed some Bush policies - - a particularly treacherous point of view. Still fulminating about criticism of his former agenda, he insists on reconstituting points long since debunked. Obama and the rest of us should be glad, he says, that Iraq is not ‘returning' to the production of WMDs and ‘supporting terrorism'.

The administration's goals were realized he would have us believe. That's if one were to ignore the terrible loss of life in Iraq, its ruined infrastructure, the millions of refugees who fled ethnically cleansed neighborhoods and now add to stressful conditions in Syria and Jordan. One must also overlook the fact that no WMDs were ever found, Al Qaeda was not present in Iraq before the invasion, our policy strengthened Iran's hand in the region and cost us dearly in human terms while creating enormous deficits as a result of tax cut in a time of war.

Apparently, though, we shouldn't blame the former administration for our economic turmoil. After all, Ms. Perino said Bush faced similar issues when the dot.com bubble burst at the beginning of his presidency, and didn't he take action for the current problems just prior to leaving office? Does anyone actually think the financial disruption in two thousand was of the same nature and degree as what we are facing now or that Bush and his team and the Republicans in Congress acted with the vision required to head off the disaster that was brewing?

Still, in the convoluted world of many familiar spokesmen on the right, there is no need to develop a new agenda. Basically, for them the path is clear; do more of what demonstrably didn't work in the past and do it more emphatically - - more tax cuts, less regulation, freer markets and smaller government. That's why Newt Gingrich still says government shouldn't be telling private companies what they can pay people even when some of them have been gifted with huge bailouts.

And it's why Edward M. Liddy, appointed by the government to take charge at A.I.G., responded to the public outrage over bonuses the company is prepared to pay, after receiving bailout money, that "We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent ... if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury", NY Times, 3/15/09. The wonder always is how the best and the brightest missed the signs of impending doom for so long.

Tax-cutting evangelist, Grover Norquist, keeps beating the drum for lower marginal tax rates, lower business taxes, maybe even no taxes at all for a year or so. He says the stock market is in distress because investors are in a quandary about what will happen in 2010 when the Bush tax cuts expire and  that current policies are simply politicians' way of ‘giving money to their friends'. Just give the money to "the people", he says, because they know how to spend it better than government does. And, he adds, every time Obama speaks the market goes down, except when it goes up that is; however in both cases, the market seems to be reacting to bank statements more than political ones.

Perhaps lower taxes, smaller governments and a completely unregulated investor class will have ordinary folks tarring small patches of road in front of their homes, delivering the mail in privately-owned vehicles and controlling traffic at our airports. That may be carrying the vision of the political right to an extreme, but then again someone would have to pick up the slack.