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Bush on the campaign trail Pulling Out All the StopsBy Rick Horowitz
You can call it shrill -- even desperate -- if you want to. Me? I prefer to call it humble. I'm talking about the latest salvo from President Bush, who's spending this last week before Election Day crisscrossing the country -- the parts of the country where Republican candidates are still willing to be seen with him, that is. That's a much smaller map than anyone could have imagined even a few months ago, but that's what happens when your approval ratings keep bumping along in the 30s; it's every pol for himself. And for most of them, when the White House offers to send the president in, it's "Gee, I'd love to, but I have to wash my hair that night."
Which is how the president came to be spending some of these critical pre-election hours in Texas. In Sugar Land, Texas, to be precise, a Republican stronghold which until recently was represented in Congress by someone named Tom DeLay. DeLay left Capitol Hill just ahead of the posse -- but with his name still sitting there on the ballot. Now DeLay's fellow Republicans are struggling to hang onto his seat with a write-in candidate. So who came riding to the rescue? Who else? Dubya the Dembuster! The president was in typical end-of-campaign form -- high in volume, if not in substance. And among the shots he took at the other party was this one on a certain long-running war in the Middle East: "However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses." The terrorists win and America loses. Just when you thought the level of campaign rhetoric couldn't possibly sink any lower... But there's another way of looking at it. I mean, it's easy to hear George Bush say something outrageous like that and decide that he sounds really angry, and really defensive. Not me, though. I hear George Bush say something like that and I decide he's being modest. Too modest. Because if "the terrorists win and America loses" in Iraq, it's George Bush who deserves most of the credit. Not a "Democrat approach" -- the Dubya approach. The Iraq debacle -- and a debacle it surely is, as even our commanders on the ground are increasingly willing to admit -- is a Bush & Co. production right from the start: the wrong war, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. And if all that wasn't enough to do America some serious damage, it was also a war that was ineptly planned, and insufficiently staffed, and inadequately equipped. And that's even before you get to the Abu Ghraibs and the Guantanamos, to the thousands of missing weapons and the billions in cost overruns by the likes of Halliburton. And to the funerals. All those flag-draped funerals. It's generous of the president to try to share the limelight, but as Richard Nixon once said, "It would be wrong." It's George Bush's face on this war, and Dick Cheney's, and Donald Rumsfeld's -- and it will be for as long as this war goes on, and however it ends, and for decades to come. They were the ones who wanted it; they were the ones who pushed for it. They were the ones who blew off the warnings and ran through the caution signs. Who ignored history and shortchanged diplomacy. Who took their eye off Osama bin Laden to settle old scores with Saddam Hussein. Is al-Qaeda's recruiting on the upswing? Thank George Bush. Are there even more people out there intent on doing us harm? Thank George Bush. Is the United States less respected in the world? Thank George Bush. Are our people more vulnerable at home and abroad? Thank George Bush. In too many ways to count, the terrorists have already won. In too many ways to count, America has already lost. No need for false modesty, Mr. President. This mess is yours. Posted 10/31/06.
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Rick Horowitz
