Jeff Koopersmith

The long term outlook for George W. Bush?
Humiliation and Defeat
By Jeff Koopersmith

March 10, 2003 -- WASHINGTON (apj.us) -- I'm actually beginning to feel sorrow for President George W. Bush.

It started while I was watching his eighth press conference in 25 months last week.

The President looked so small walking up that ridiculously majestic red carpet that leads to the East Room of the White House. He seemed to be so lonely. This was not the lonesomeness normally attributed to a president of the United States -- that brand one might also see in a melancholic but world-class athlete. This was the loneliness of a drunk-under-the-influence teenager, whose family and friends had forsaken him, finally, this having been his third conviction.

Even as the President smirked during what might be the most vital discourse he's ever given, he appeared trampled, overwhelmed by the sheer number of universally respected political, academic and theological leaders who had taken the unusual course of revolting against him and his myopic team of colonialist cabinet members -- men and women who had abandoned this son of another failed President's quest for impressiveness, and instead pursued personal, weary, and hackneyed strategies that had died long ago on the killing grounds of Korea and Vietnam. Their theory? -- That the United States could export its brand of government, religion and law to the rest of the world.

The president's performance was humiliating.

President Bush was trying to convince the world that his "Iraq Attack" was legitimate, well-founded, and defensible.

He failed miserably.

And what is the evidence for this public relations catastrophe? A reinvigorated opposition to his schemes from the United Nations Security Council -- almost gnashing their teeth at his reckless impudence -- including a looming "Non, Amerique" vote from France.

The bells are pealing for George W. Bush, and each reverberation tolls yet another of his failures as a leader and a President who might have any chance of being reelected next year.

George W. Bush underestimated (as all neoconservatives continue to underestimate) the cleverness of the average American. He, like all nascent nationalists, believed he could rely on The Big Lie not just about Iraq, for that was the best, the most believable of his lies -- but the lies about nearly anything he has promised, stated as fact, or used to make his case about everything from health care to education.

The Big Lie theory, promulgated most notably by Hitler, posits that if you tell the masses -- who are, according to the theory, undereducated and too busy working to feed themselves -- a big enough lie, over and over for a long enough period of time, they'll buy it.

This line of attack on the American voter has worked well for neo-fascists before.

It worked wonders for now-humiliated former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, most conspicuously with his "Contract for America" -- each and every section of which Gingrich criminally breached, and with malice aforethought.

Yet Gingrich was far wiser than President Bush's obtuse mentor, Karl Rove.

Gingrich's promises and directives were obscure and relied on long-term public attention to those assurances. The American public does not have an extensive attention span, so few noticed his infringements.

President Bush, conversely, promised America his brand of "Compassionate Conservatism."

What does he deliver? "Insensitive Speculation."

Even to the undereducated, overworked, debt-burdened American family, this kind of unfeeling guesswork does not go over well. The reasons for the dismal failure of President Bush's Administration thus far are countless, but they are deep-seated, at their root, in the election of 2000.

You can see it on the President's face -- and you could see it from the day he swore his oath of office. Even this President doesn't believe he is in his rightful place at the White House, and he knows that Americans feel this as well -- in the pits of their stomachs, gnawing.

This is, of course, the primary explanation for the now-famous "W" smirk. It's the same smirk that Eddie Haskell would demonstrate to June and Ward Cleaver when he was caught in some television monkey business. It's the same smirk a high-school cheat shows when he gets away with using a crib sheet in a well-proctored physics exam for which he's unprepared.

George W. Bush, a world-class Eddie Haskell, has been caught red-handed in so much sober mischief that it's remarkable he is still able to rise from his bed each morning and face the day.

The fact is that George W. Bush was not elected to the presidency -- not under the law, and not by the people. He was appointed by a Supreme Court too packed with his father's allies -- and too frightened of what it might mean to call a fraud a fraud -- that it bowed to power and permitted young George to take his seat in the Oval Office. He was anointed by a press corps so blithely oblivious of -- or, worse yet, contemptuous of -- its own ethics and mission that it did not do its duty and find the truth.

The fact is that George W. Bush and his team of neoconservative mannequins have made a tragedy out of the US economy. Unemployment is close to 6% -- so tragically high when compared to its all-time low at the close of President Clinton's last term in office.

The fact is that George W. Bush has recklessly, and without mercy, crashed into our nation to damage our environment -- first with foolhardy, lavishly groping legislation, and finally, in frustration, by voracious and lavish executive order.

The fact is that while promising to "leave no child behind" George W Bush and his cronies are kicking those left-out children in the behind.

The fact is that our markets, and the marketplaces of the world under the new world economy of George W. Bush, are perishing or stagnating, with the Dow and the NASDAQ in near-unparalleled decline and adrift, while he plots to have our children invest their Social Security in companies run by his friends -- criminal CEOs.

The fact is that our health care systems are in a shambles, while George W. Bush pits physicians against trial lawyers but not the real culprits -- HMOs and insurance companies, who threw their full financial support behind him -- toward this end -- all while he attempts to lure our senior citizens into private health maintenance organization more famous for killing people than curing them.

The fact is that we are facing trillions of dollars of national debt despite the fact that George W. Bush inherited huge surpluses -- all while he bribes the downtrodden American worker with spurious tax cuts that will suborn the wealthy far more than the assembly line worker.

The fact is that George W. Bush is about to unleash 300,000 naive and Pentagonian brainwashed American boys and girls on a beaten and tired tyrant who couldn't deliver a pizza let alone a missile filled with bioterrorist cocktails to United States territory.

The fact is that George W. Bush has succeeded somehow in corrupting even Colin Powell, who lied straight-faced to the world at the United Nations and praised our only marionette, Great Britain, for her own perjured testimony during the same meeting. One need only read the academic criticisms of Powell's address to see the proof.

The fact is that George W. Bush, although he tries, is a putative Man of God. Men of God do not seek first to go to war, and later to have that quest rubber stamped through bribery and coercion. True men of God have told him publicly and privately, one after the other, that what he is doing in the Middle East is wrong, is evil, and smacks of the devil.

The fact is that George W. Bush began his life riding on his granddaddy's and daddy's coattails and never quite frankly liked it much.

George W. Bush was rebellious, not conservative. He was uncontrollable, and free to do as he pleased. His entire history testifies to this.

Now, he believes that America will buy his late-life conversion to Jesus while he practices some caricature of Christian thought.

The truth is that Iraq and his plans to obliterate it are not the reason for his loss of confidence and esteem in the world community, and among 175 million Americans.

The truth is that George W. Bush has come to the realization that he's been found out, and unmasked as a mediocre man with a mean-spirited mediocre mind now controlled almost in total by his own Axis of Evil -- corporate neoconservatives and their minions.

Had Bill Clinton proposed such a war, he would have gotten off scot-free with it, because Americans trusted him.

Even George W's father, and Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon got away with things of this sort -- because Americans felt that most other things they did were fair, just or acceptable and that they did not have such a huge private agenda as to get in the way of what America is supposed to be.

George W. Bush will be hard-pressed to point to much that is fair, just or acceptable in 2004.

George W. Bush and, more importantly, those around him have taken the trust of the American people and smashed it in contempt. They have used our grief over the attacks of September 11th, 2001. They have abused our fear, our patriotic spirit, even our charitable nature and in doing so mocked the very foundation of our democracy.

Frankly, George W. Bush is not clever enough to have planned any of this on this own.

He has been led to drink from the River Styx by an assembly of the nastiest men and women, including some felons, ever to have populated a presidential round table as Knights of Imperialistic and Inflexible Swagger.

Earlier, I wrote that President Bush should wake up and rid himself of these mischievous sprites. At that time he had the chance to dodge long-term humiliation and defeat.

Today I write that it is too late.