Opinion - Sex, lies, and the fate of a nation

Opinion - Sex, lies, and the fate of a nation

Tuesday, June 10, 2003
MICHAEL ZUZEL Columbian staff writer, e-mail address: [email protected]


It seems increasingly likely that the Bush administration exaggerated the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction as an excuse to launch a war against Saddam Hussein. So far that war has cost the lives of more than 215 American soldiers and an estimated 10,000 Iraqi civilians.

On the other hand, this president didn't lie about sex.

The White House has just pushed through the third-largest tax cut in our nation's history. This despite the fact that most mainstream economists not to mention George W. Bush's own Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan have said repeatedly that this tax cut will generate zero jobs and provide no boost to the economy whatsoever. Just like the tax cuts Bush gave us two years ago.

Then again, this president never lied about sex.

At the same time he's cutting revenues, Bush is pushing for increased spending not just in national defense, but in virtually every category, from agriculture to welfare. The conservative Cato Institute has tagged Bush as "the biggest-spending president in decades"; in his first three years in office, nondefense discretionary outlays have risen 18 percent. (In Bill Clinton's first term, those outlays decreased 0.7 percent.)

Bush and the GOP Congress have managed to erase almost $6 trillion in surpluses and left the nation headed toward $4 trillion in debt. What better way to get rid of Medicare, Medicaid, other social and welfare programs, and the whole Department of Education, than to bankrupt the government?

But hey, at least this president didn't lie about sex.

Unemployment hit 6.1 percent nationally in May, the highest in almost a decade. What a perfect time for Bush's Labor Department to propose new rules that would deny overtime pay to hundreds of thousands of workers who hold a "position of responsibility" and earn at least $10.63 an hour. Congratulations, you're all executives!

Consider this, however: This president hasn't lied about sex.

Under the guise of terrorism prevention, the Bush administration has presided over an appalling rollback of our civil liberties. The government can now detain any American indefinitely without even charging him or her with a crime; it can search our personal belongings and seize our property without probable cause; it can spy on churches and civic groups at will, and can jail librarians for telling anyone that a patron's records have been subpoenaed. And you thought the KGB was history.

Oh, but that lying-about-sex thing? Not this president.

The Bush team is gleefully gutting environmental protections left and right: suspending protection of our air and drinking water, opening up vast public lands to taxpayer-subsidized logging and mining, boosting government support for big-polluting power sources such as coal and petroleum while ignoring 21st century energy solutions.

True. But lie about sex? Never!

On-the-job malpractice

For a lot of Bush supporters, it seems, that's all there is to the argument. No matter how muddle-headed or deceitful his current policies, the reasoning goes, at least he's a good guy. Let him send U.S. sons and daughters to their deaths on the flimsiest of pretenses; let him run up the red ink and sell our quality of life to his corporate cronies. Just don't let him embarrass us with his zipper.

And it's an either/or argument: Either you are for this president, or you are for the last one. As if a critic of George Bush's on-the-job actions couldn't also have despised Bill Clinton for his abhorrent off-hours misbehavior.

Maybe Americans are starting to reject such simplistic thinking. Bush's approval rating has plummeted 10 percentage points just since the fall of Baghdad. Perhaps we've begun to see that, behind the aw-shucks persona, this president is doing some serious damage to our nation.

And that maybe there are worse things than lying about sex, after all.

It seems increasingly likely that the Bush administration exaggerated the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction as an excuse to launch a war against Saddam Hussein. So far that war has cost the lives of more than 215 American soldiers and an estimated 10,000 Iraqi civilians.

The White House has just pushed through the third-largest tax cut in our nation's history. This despite the fact that most mainstream economists not to mention George W. Bush's own Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan have said repeatedly that this tax cut will generate zero jobs and provide no boost to the economy whatsoever. Just like the tax cuts Bush gave us two years ago.

"There are powerful reasons to suspect that the elimination of the double taxation of dividends and cuts in marginal rates will elevate long-term productivity," he said.
Sir Alan bites the hand