When Bush won his second term in 2004, he abandoned all pretense that he was a uniter, not a divider. He ditched any cabinet members who even paid lip service to bipartisanship. He quit even pretending to listen to the opposition in Congress. The results have been self-evident.
His approval levels with the public have been lower, longer, than any other Chief Executive. Two years after winning re-election, the Democrats were given back control of both houses of Congress. More people than ever disapprove of the war even though his covert policy of re-baathification has quelled, to some extent, the insurgency in Iraq. A decrease in consumer confidence has brought the economy to a standstill. GDP is down. Unemployment is up. The dollar is inflating out of control, even as the administration lies about it. There is an explosion of home mortgage foreclosures as hundreds of billions in home equity continue to leak out of the pockets of American homeowners. Retail sales stagnate and the prospects for improvement don't look rosy as Americans contemplate their upcoming tax bills in April, despite promised stimulus checks.
Bush is betting that in November, nine months from now, when Americans go to the polls, everything will have straightened out. He's betting that the Federal Reserve Banks aggressive policy of rate cuts and unlimited infusions of freshly printed cash into the financial sector will have turned the economy around, inflation be damned. He's betting that the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan will have stabilized and that US casualty rates will have subsided to levels acceptable to the public. He's betting that nobody will look too closely at the trillion dollar plus cost of the war, financed entirely on the cuff, to be paid long after he has left office. This is a huge gamble. He's not only betting his legacy, which is worthless anyway, he's betting the political futures of every Republican politician in the nation.
If he is successful, he could win big. For all of our sakes, I hope he is right. I have no confidence that his wager will be rewarded. I think the situation has gone beyond a question of odds.
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