The Junkmen Cometh

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

George W. Bush didn’t do much for his party. His financial policies should have been suspect early, considering their proximity to the Enron debacle, but Bush never paid a price for that; nor did most of the Enron perpetrators, for that matter. Eventually, both of Bush’s wars turned toxic, pushing the electorate to the left, but it took a long time to clear the air. For years, the nation remained unaware of the flow of money to the top one percent or overseas by the plane-load in foreign misadventure; for years we were unaware of how close the muck of failed capitalism came to the brim of the glass. When it eventually spilled over, taking housing and jobs with it, the Republicans were (temporarily) delighted to turn the keys of the kingdom over to anyone — even that black guy.

What did the Dub accomplish for his party? He made them what they are today. George W. Bush and his neocon friends radicalized politics, making wingnuttery legitimate. Dressed in nationalism and flag pins, the American template for international imperialism and plutocracy took shape before our wondering eyes, forcing us to pick a side and dividing the country as it had not been divided in over a hundred years.

I doubt that Bush had a clue how, simply by being his own obnoxious self, he added the final bit of poison to the well of political discourse. But it changed everything, giving historians fodder for their texts and causing mortified citizens to hide their eyes as Bush stripped the last veneer of statesmanship from the role of executive.

Bush’s tenure left the Republican field so decimated, and expectations so low, that in 2008 the party went with crusty old John McCain, who sniffed the wind and, at loose ends, selected as running mate the only person who could make George Bush look studious. When Sarah Palin took the podium, even the pretense of intellect flew out the window.

What we lost during the first decade of this century is still being assessed and is likely immeasurable. Obama, a man who apparently wastes no energy on battles he thinks he can’t win, inherited a country intentionally broken, and yet has passed through more progressive legislation than the nation has seen in 40 years, mostly without the approval of progressives. I wish Obama and his leftie base could come to the table now. It’s the worst possible timing for a feud, as we consider strategy for another Democratic term, up against frightening economic statistics. All that’s been accomplished, while battling a wall of Republican obstruction, is only a drop in the bucket of what is needed to stabilize the economic free-fall that threatens us from within.

Even as lefties whine about slower-than-molasses policy change and a gaping black hole of need, the GOP has only filled it with junk. Since 2008, we’ve been introduced to Tea Baggers, old white folks dressed in tri-cornered hats, fussing about entitlement spending as if they weren’t active recipients. Republicans have studied at the feet of professor Glenn Beck, who has fabricated a new brand of paranoid hate-speak with racial and religious overtones, attracting a shock-jock following. They’ve encouraged a renaissance of Ayn Randism by embracing the heady freedom of selfishness and arrogance practiced by Republican leadership, including Libertarians Ron and Rand Paul, and Pub wunderkind, Paul Ryan.

We’ve watched a disciplined Pub minority turn their back on real solutions to our many emergencies while digging the hole deeper in the sand with systemic obstructionism. Flying banners of virtue and political purity, the right has stood firm as city after city goes down the rabbit hole, taking American families with them. With great pride Republicans tell these unlucky ones that they will have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps because they’re not going to get one thin dime from the House of Representatives. Now the GOP obstructs even the national budget, threatening fiscal default. Translate that to, “Bootstraps, dime, redux — gotta get rid of this president even if the planet reels and America never recovers from the blow.”

None of that will win them votes, and again, thank George Bush. The motivations of the GOP could not have become so visible if Dubby hadn’t punched through the wall of limited expectation created by thirty-odd years of deliberate anti-intellectualism. Reflecting a good bit of the fundy mindset, Dub welcomed Jesus into the White House (if not the board room) and tossed the godless scientists out. He upped the ante on PR until we couldn’t tell a lie from an innuendo and threw his weight behind a ‘news channel’ that functioned as a propaganda machine for the Grand Old Party. He welcomed lobbyists if the cash was right and disagreed with Poppy, George H. W., who called Reagonomics voo-doo because there was no reason for it to work (it didn’t and doesn’t.) And the part that amazes me now, looking back, is that up against the talking points of a Michelle Bachmann or even boring-unto-coma Tim Pawlenty, Dubby now seems almost rational.

Take a moment to appreciate that, because another election year looms and the candidates could take everything up a notch, Emeril-like: BAM! They will likely include one Rick Perry, Governor of Texas and a GW-clone if I ever saw one. Perhaps, like me, you will feel your stomach lurch when you hear that accent once again. Maybe his loose talk of Texas seceding or his plan to create a statewide prayer rally to ask Jesus to intercede in the state’s problems will make you roll your eyes and sneer.

Maybe watching an animated Michelle Bachmann — ex-IRS lawyer and Tea Party Caucus leader — lay out her plans for Obama as a one-term president seems laughable at the moment, but not so fast. These people are as serious as a heart attack, and the left has purity problems of its own. Not keeping faith with the vote in 2010 dealt the left a body blow from which it has yet to recover. Did we learn that lesson? I’m not sure we did.

The Republican candidates are gathering now, getting their message together, separating their ideologues from their pragmatists, their Christocrats from their CEOs, lining up their lobbyists and their big donors — and the policy they’re betting on selling the nation is all junk.

Rick Santorum thinks early childhood education is “brainwashing” for little socialists and that doctors providing abortions to rape/incest victims should be charged as criminals. Newcomer Pawlenty wants to do away with the 14th Amendment, chiding the Supreme Court for standing by the Constitution’s clear and unambiguous language on citizenship, while Ron Paul wants to do away with just about everything.

Michelle Bachmann? Now that she’s given up birtherism, she “won’t rest until Obamacare is repealed.” Nobody is sure where old horse-trader Newt will come down next, while the frontrunner, Mitt Romney, is too left for the right-wing, just as Obama is now considered too right for the left-wing. It’s all junk, junk for sale — everything used and tattered, pulled from the political attic of a party bereft of new ideas.

That’s what George W. Bush did for his party. He took them to the edge of the cliff and watched them jump. Then, staring down a moment, he shrugged, retired to the suburbs in Texas and kept to himself. Makes me wonder if the Fates selected him for the job, and his replacement as well. And it makes me think we need to stare into that void space where normal politics used to be for just a while longer before we commit ourselves to a plan of action.

As much as I’m tempted to join Netroots Nation in censuring the president for not pushing hard enough on all things progressive, I’m not ready to do so, and here’s why: I’m not sure what I’m looking at. This time frame, this turning of consciousness, this shift of understanding has its own momentum, and it isn’t dependent on our making things happen. They’re happening without us. Believe it.

The change we believe in regarding civil liberties and political freedom, for instance, is happening now in the Middle East. I don’t think it could have happened as it has without Obama in place, kick-starting the hopefulness he brought with him. Those pieces of the global puzzle, half-way around the world, change the whole game-board. Changes in how we perceive money and livelihood are bubbling right now, with our brothers and sisters in Wisconsin carrying the standard for decent wages and benefits. There’s new awareness of the part the press plays in the important stories of our lives, such as the inane Weiner chronicles, embellished and embroidered for profit and ratings by a press gone tabloid. Old notions of national security are being examined again, with even some Republicans joining the call to exit Afghanistan. The anti-war movement has restarted itself without peaceniks leading the way.

We have a new election season ahead of us — the silly season, they call it — and one in which passions always flare brightly. The crazies that Bush let loose are gathering to provide us a 2012 side-show, and our choices have seldom been so clear. Unless we decide to shoot ourselves in our own foot or give in to sensationalism, the next weeks and months need not turn into political madness. We can own the calm, if that is our choice, and take a clue from the guy in the Oval Office.

Besides, it isn’t what we see that needs updating, so much as HOW we see. That’s the gift Bush gave all of us. Before Barbara Bush’s firstborn occupied the White House, very few of us valued our role as United States citizens or stayed in touch with political matters, concerned for our nation or her policies. We’re playing catch-up, doing what we should have done all along. Change comes when it can no longer be put off, and these changes are past due.

When the junkmen cometh this time, let’s make sure everybody knows we’ve got no room for old crap that no longer works. Who we’ve always been isn’t who we are any longer, now that we’re no longer asleep at the switch. We’re ready to think outside the box and find new ideas and solutions because, clearly, we won’t be building the 21st century with junk from a past we’re anxious to put behind us. The politics of yesterday has no place in the tomorrow we’re building today.