David Broder's Article in Seattle Times
Read Broder's article in the Times this morning, and I thought he was really being too kind to Bush. I just lost my rant since I didn't apparently save it, but I'll try to summarize below.
Bush's quote, "In the election of 2004, large issues were set before our country. They were discussed every day on the campaign. With the campaign over, Americans are expecting a bipartisan effort — and results.", is ridiculous. Half of us are expecting and hoping for one result, and the other half the opposite. Any bipartisanship on the part of the Democrats is considered by most of my friends as treason. And furthermore, the most important issues were not discussed at all during the campaign, as far as I'm concerned. Social Security, tort reform, federal court changes -- these issues are not very relevant to the vast majority of young people in the U.S., and Broder's discussion of these issues as "breathtakingly bold agenda" items seems to me to be off the mark.
Broder's concluding paragraph strikes me as scary. He states, "Bush has defied precedent before. When he entered office four years ago, many expected he would have to trim his policy ambitions to fit his exceptionally narrow and controversial victory. Instead, he went for and accomplished major changes in both foreign and domestic policy." Missing from this statement is 9/11, and how that changed everything about the presidency and policy since. Though Bush did try to follow his conservative agenda (which was not emphasized at all during the 2000 campaign) at the beginning of his first term, he was largely unsuccessful and ineffective, until 9/11. That Broder, a liberal (I thought!) pundit of long standing, would write a paragraph like this, revising history so recently after the fact, is unfathomable.
Bush's quote, "In the election of 2004, large issues were set before our country. They were discussed every day on the campaign. With the campaign over, Americans are expecting a bipartisan effort — and results.", is ridiculous. Half of us are expecting and hoping for one result, and the other half the opposite. Any bipartisanship on the part of the Democrats is considered by most of my friends as treason. And furthermore, the most important issues were not discussed at all during the campaign, as far as I'm concerned. Social Security, tort reform, federal court changes -- these issues are not very relevant to the vast majority of young people in the U.S., and Broder's discussion of these issues as "breathtakingly bold agenda" items seems to me to be off the mark.
Broder's concluding paragraph strikes me as scary. He states, "Bush has defied precedent before. When he entered office four years ago, many expected he would have to trim his policy ambitions to fit his exceptionally narrow and controversial victory. Instead, he went for and accomplished major changes in both foreign and domestic policy." Missing from this statement is 9/11, and how that changed everything about the presidency and policy since. Though Bush did try to follow his conservative agenda (which was not emphasized at all during the 2000 campaign) at the beginning of his first term, he was largely unsuccessful and ineffective, until 9/11. That Broder, a liberal (I thought!) pundit of long standing, would write a paragraph like this, revising history so recently after the fact, is unfathomable.
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