[Dialogue] End of the Bush Era

[Ed Reames]

Submitted without comment.

Below, I have copied and pasted an E. J. Dionne Jr. editorial from The 
Washington Post.

Regards,

Ed Reames
La Rivera de Belén
Heredia, Costa Rica
0600 Central American Time 02 Oct 05
19C/67/F
Partly Cloudy
Humidity 94%
Wind is Calm
Pressure is 1011hPa/29.85 in
Visibility is 6K/4M
UV 0 out of 16
Scattered Clouds 750M/2450F & 3000M/9850F


	

	

	

	

	

	

	

	

	 **


WASHINGTON POST


End of the Bush Era

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005; A27

The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize
that, the better for them -- and the country.

Recent months, and especially the past two weeks, have brought
home to a steadily growing majority of Americans the truth that
President Bush's government doesn't work. His policies are failing,
his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way
of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public
square. We dare not go on like this.

The Bush Era did not begin when he took office, or even with the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It began on Sept. 14, 2001, when
Bush declared at the World Trade Center site: "I can hear you. The
rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these
buildings down will hear all of us soon." Bush was, indeed, skilled
in identifying enemies and rallying a nation already disposed to
action. He failed to realize after Sept. 11 that it was not we who
were lucky to have him as a leader, but he who was lucky to be
president of a great country that understood the importance of
standing together in the face of a grave foreign threat. Very nearly
all of us rallied behind him.

If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national
unity, as he seemed to shortly after Sept. 11, the country would
never have become so polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to
the service of narrowly ideological policies and an extreme
partisanship. He pushed for more tax cuts for his wealthiest
supporters and shamelessly used relatively modest details in the
bill creating a Department of Homeland Security as partisan
cudgels in the 2002 elections.

He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a
war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the
United States would need many more troops and careful planning
to see the job through. The president assumed things would turn
out fine, on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful
policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your
approach are not his administration's strong suits.

And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush
first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina. There
was no magic moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal
 relief efforts had by then penetrated the country's consciousness.
Yesterday's resignation of FEMA Director Michael Brown put an
exclamation point on the failure.

The source of Bush's political success was his claim that he could
protect Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush's
calling cards. Over the past two weeks, they were lost in the
surging waters of New Orleans.

But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months
ago. The president's post-election fixation on privatizing part of
Social Security showed how out of touch he was. The more Bush
discussed this boutique idea cooked up in conservative think tanks
 and Wall Street imaginations, the less the public liked it. The
situation in Iraq deteriorated. The glorious economy Bush kept
touting turned out not to be glorious for many Americans. The
Census Bureau's annual economic report, released in the midst of
the Gulf disaster, found that an additional 4.1 million Americans
had slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004.

The breaking of the Bush spell opens the way for leaders of both
parties to declare their independence from the recent past. It gives
forces outside the White House the opportunity to shape a more
appropriate national agenda -- for competence and innovation in
rebuilding the Katrina region and for new approaches to the
problems created over the past 4 1/2 years.

The federal budget, already a mess before Katrina, is now a
laughable document. Those who call for yet more tax cuts risk
sounding like robots droning automated talking points
programmed inside them long ago. Katrina has forced the issue of
 deep poverty back onto the national agenda after a long absence.
Finding a way forward in -- and eventually out of -- Iraq will
require creativity from those not implicated in the
administration's mistakes. And if ever the phrase "reinventing
government" had relevance, it is now that we have observed the
performance of a government that allows political hacks to push
aside the professionals.

And what of Bush, who has more than three years left in his term?
Paradoxically, his best hope lies in recognizing that the Bush Era,
as he and we have known it, really is gone. He can decide to help
us in the transition to what comes next. Or he can cling stubbornly
to his past and thereby doom himself to frustrating irrelevance.