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Frymer |
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in the Oval Ofice
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Bush has a Midas touch,
of TheColumnists.com
Man, I’d love to be feeling how George W. Bush is feeling these days.
There are all kinds of highs--the money high, the sex high, the drug high. But what President George W. has is something higher. It’s the high when everything goes right, when even your enemies are offering grudging admiration, when the whole world seems willing to follow wherever you want to lead. I’d like to look in the mirror and see what George W. is seeing right now.
“They called me a dumb ass,” he can gloat. “Up yours, world.”
Of course, it might not last and that has to be the only queasy feeling to interrupt the pleasure. Somebody might notice that even with another half-point drop in interest rates, the stock market keeps falling. It was falling precipitously as George W. was making his speech to tell the world that Saddam better do as he says or else.
Unemployment, if there was a way of viewing it graphically like the stock market, would also be seen as rising precipitously. The companies keep announcing layoffs. New jobs are impossible to find.
Yet when the voters went to the polls, they saw none of this. It was Saddam in the horse-hairs and bin Laden and there was George W., on his white horse, the only man in sight who could save us. That’s what they saw. The Democrats were blabbering about the environment, but the collapse of the World Trade Center is the only environmental story that voters can picture.
The Democrats warned that the tax cut was mainly for the rich. Democrats have been talking that way for years. So what? The Al Qaeda want us DEAD. We’ll worry about who’s getting rich later.
Bush not only saw his fellow Republicans win big, but he had the distinct pleasure of knowing that it was HIS campaign appearances that proved a major factor. Even God seemed on the Republican team. The campaign plane of Paul Wellstone, one of Bush’s few direct opponents, crashed on election eve. There was something symbolic in the tragedy. And so venerable a Minnesotan as Walter Mondale took a drubbing as Wellstone’s replacement. Imagine! A life-long Minnesota hero lost to a guy with a Brooklyn accent. Bush can take credit for that, too
Bush told his aides not to gloat, but the joy coming out of the White House was palpable. It doesn’t get any better than this. Bush vs. the Democrats: total victory. Bush vs. the United Nations: Swish. Bush vs. Saddam-wham bam.
Of course, there are some future contests, currently not on the public’s screen. For example, Bush vs. the Economy. That has been a big loss so far, in case anybody wants to bring up that carping. The one-time healthy national budget has, overnight, gone into considerable deficit. Health costs are skyrocketing and health plans cannot keep up.
Never mind. I am not going to fall into the trap of repeating issues that nobody was interested in before. We can worry about all that later.
The problem is that the downfall of Saddam Hussein is unlikely to provide anybody with health care or a job. It is just possible that Hussein will go down in flames and the economy will still be in the tank.
So today’s feel-good mood in the White House may be based on false images. Eventually, EVENTUALLY, the voters might get itchy for the good times of the 90s when the scandals involved OJ and Monica, neither of which cost the public a dime, rather than Enron (Bush’s biggest backer ) and World Com, which cost investors billions.
Maybe the Democrats didn’t do a very good job in bringing this up, but I doubt that it would have done much good. “It’s the Economy, stupid,” a rallying call of past elections became “It’s the Muslims, stupid.” In this election, fear was everything.
So George W. has had a week of triumph that I can only assume is the mother of all highs. He won everything. He is king of the hill.
I am not going to kvetch the issue further. But, this being America, they have already scheduled another election in two years. Anger is rampant in the Muslim world. More Wall Street scandals are lining up to be announced regularly. Your health insurance will grow ever more onerous. All the jobs are moving to China.
And the winner is: George W. Bush.
©
2002 by Murry Frymer. The
Frymer caricature is © 2000 by Jim Hummel. The other illustration
is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd.
E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. The photo is from the White
House website.
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