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Doug's apology AN APOLOGY FROM A BUSH VOTER By Doug McIntyre Host, McIntyre in the Morning Talk Radio 790 KABC Theres nothing harder in public life than admitting youre wrong. By the way, admitting youre wrong can be even tougher in private life. If you dont believe me, just ask Bill Clinton or Charlie Sheen. But when you go out on the limb in public, its out there where everyone can see it, or in my case, hear it. So, Im saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. I also believe a case can be made that hes the worst President, period. He had name recognition and a lot of money behind him, but other than that? Still, I was sick of all the Clinton shenanigans and the thought of President Gore was unthinkable. For the first few months he was just flubbing along like most new Presidents, no great shakes, but no disasters either. September 11^th changed everything for me, like it did for so many of you. After September 11^th, all the intramural idiocy of American politics stopped being funny. We had been attacked by a vicious and determined enemy and it was time for all of us to row in the same direction. I believed the President when he said we were going to hunt down Bin Laden and all those responsible for the 9-11 murders. I believed President Bush when he said we would go after the terrorists and the nations that harbored them. I supported the President when he sent our troops into Afghanistan, after all, thats where the Taliban was, thats where al-Qaida trained the killers, thats where Bin Laden was. And I cheered when we quickly toppled the Taliban government, but winced when we let Bin Laden escape from Tora-Bora. But Colin Powell impressed me at the UN, and Tony Blair was in, and after all, he was a Clinton guy, not a Bush guy, so I thought the case had to be strong. I was worried though, because I had read the Wolfowitz paper, The Project for the New American Century. Its been around since 92, and it raised alarm bells because it was based on a theory, Democratizing the Middle East and I prefer pragmatism over theory. I was worried because Iraq was being justified on a radical new basis, pre-emptive war. Any time we do something without historical precedent I get nervous. But the President shifted the argument to WMDs and the urgent threat of Iraq getting atomic weapons. The debate turned to Saddam passing nukes on to terror groups. As the President said, The next smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud. I grew up in New York and watched them build the World Trade Center. I worked with a guy, Frank OBrien, who put the elevators in both towers. If we had to take out Iraq to make sure something like that, or worse, never happened again, so be it. But in the months and years since shock and awe I have been shocked repeatedly by a consistent litany of excuses, alibis, double-talk, inaccuracies, bogus predictions, and flat out lies. I have watched as the President and his administration changed the goals, redefined the reasons for going into Iraq, and fumbled the good will of the world and the focus necessary to catch the real killers of September 11^th. I have watched the President say the commanders on the ground will make the battlefield decisions, and the war wont be run from Washington. Yet, politics has consistently determined what the troops can and cant do on the ground and any commander who did not go along with the administration was sacked, and in some cases, maligned. I watched and tried to justify the looting in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. I watched and tried to justify the dismantling of the entire Iraqi army. I tired to explain the complexities of building a functional new Iraqi army. Then the Vice President told us we were in the waning days of the insurgency. The President says we have to stay the course but what if its the wrong course? Were about to slink home with our tail between our legs, leaving civil war in Iraq and a nuclear armed Iran in our wake. The liberal media didnt create this reality, bad policy did. Most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a reasonably accurate take on a Presidents place in history. So, maybe 50 years from now Iraq will be a peaceful member of the brotherhood of nations and George W Bush will be celebrated as a visionary genius. We have to live with the consequences of the votes we cast and the leaders we chose now. After five years of carefully watching George W Bush Ive reached the conclusion hes either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Jimmy Carter, Warren Harding- the competition is fierce for the worst of the worst. It will take decades to undo, and thats assuming we do everything right from now on. His mistakes have global implications, while the other failed Presidents mostly authored domestic embarrassments. And speaking of domestic embarrassments, lets talk for a minute about President Bushs domestic record. But tax cuts combined with reckless spending and borrowing is criminal mismanagement of the publics money. Were drunk at the mall with our great grandchildrens credit cards. Whatever happened to the party of fiscal responsibility? Bush created a giant new entitlement, the prescription drug plan. It helps nobody except the multinationals that lobbied for it. In fact, virtually every tentacle of government has grown exponentially under Bush. Unless, of course, it was an agency to look after the public interest, or environmental protection, and/or workers rights. Ive talked so often about the border issue, I wont bore you with a rehash. Its enough to say this President has been a catastrophe for the wages of working people; He doesnt believe in the sovereign borders of the country hes sworn to protect and defend. And his devotion to cheap labor for his corporate benefactors, along with his worship of multinational trade deals, makes an utter mockery of homeland security in a post 9-11 world. The Presidents January 7^th, 2004 speech on immigration, his first trial balloon on his guest worker scheme, was a deal breaker for me. Katrina, Harriet Myers, The Dubai Port Deal, skyrocketing gas prices, shrinking wages for working people, staggering debt, astronomical foreign debt, outsourcing, open borders, contempt for the opinion of the American people, the war on science, media manipulation, faith based initives, a cavalier attitude toward fundamental freedoms-- this President has run the most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in my lifetime, perhaps, in any Americans lifetime. You can make a case that Abraham Lincoln did what he had to do, the public be damned. If you roll the dice on your gut and youre right, history remembers you well. But, when your gut led you from one business failure to another, when your gut told you to trade Sammy Sosa to the Cubs, and you use the same gut to send our sons and daughters to fight and die in a distraction from the real war on terror, then history will and should be unapologetic in its condemnation. None of this, by the way, should be interpreted as an endorsement of the opposition party. Again, historically speaking, its times like these when America needs a vibrant opposition to check the power of a run-amuck majority party. Like the high and low tides keep the oceans alive, a healthy, positive opposition offers a path back to the center where all healthy societies live. Tragically, the Democrats have allowed crackpots, leftists and demagogic cowards to snipe from the sidelines while taking no responsibility for anything. In fairness, I dont believe a Democrat president would have gone into Iraq. Unfortunately, I dont know if President Gore would have gone into Afghanistan. The two party system has always been clumsy and imperfect, but it has only collapsed once, in the 1850s, and the result was civil war. I believe, as I have said countless times, the two party system is on the brink of a second collapsed. Its currently running on spin, anger, revenge, and pots and pots a...
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