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Today, President Bush published his New Year’s resolution in the Wall Street Journal opinion pages. In a nutshell, his resolution was a note to Congress suggesting they do exactly what he tells them to do. (On a personal note, I’ve been trying to get into the WSJ Op-Ed pages for years, and now I find out they will print just about anybody.)
Together, we have a chance to serve the American people by solving the complex problems that many don't expect us to tackle, let alone solve, in the partisan environment of today's Washington. To do that, however, we can't play politics as usual.
"Politics as usual" being pitcher and batter working for the same team. This essay has cleared up a few things for me. For one, evidently, the whole message from us—the voter—in this last midterm election was *not* our displeasure with his administration’s handling of the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, global warming, Hurricane Katrina, a pedophile-friendly Republican congress, and other cats-and-dogs scandals dating back to our national love affair with Haliburton. It was about Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff. Those lobby-loving bastards.
I believe that when America is willing to use her influence abroad, the American people are safer and the world is more secure.
In a similar way, a disgruntled, intellectually-challenged, socially-insecure postal worker will take a semi-automatic weapon into his workplace for the purpose of getting a little respect.
I believe that wealth does not come from government.
No—he's right—it goes to government.
Our priorities begin with defeating the terrorists who killed thousands of innocent Americans on September 11, 2001--and who are working hard to attack us again. These terrorists are part of a broader extremist movement that is now doing everything it can to defeat us in Iraq.
Those “extremists†who’ve taken over the country of Iraq and brought it to civil war purely for the purpose of slapping us in the face, which they had already done on Sept 11th and are “working hard†on another attack somewhere well outside the borders of Iraq, where all of our resources are engaged.
But, perhaps, I appreciated most of all the fourth grade lesson on American politics. Bush was kind enough to explain the difference between the executive and legislative branches in Schoolhouse Rock language we can all understand:
The majority party in Congress gets to pass the bills it wants. The minority party, especially where the margins are close, has a strong say in the form bills take. And the Constitution leaves it to the president to use his judgment whether they should be signed into law.
Oh, it’s the Congress who makes law, is it? The Constitution has gone all topsy-turvy over the last few years, so it’s hard to keep up with who’s pushing what these days.
The fact that Mr. Bush finds himself in a position to give Congress moral guidance is disturbing, as though the “secret processes†he admonishes were not the very same ones he depended on to achieve his own goals during his first six years in office.
Bush's opinion piece is a well-scripted message in a vacuum from the ultimate boy in the bubble. It offers nothing. It admits nothing. And it takes no responsibility. It might well have been labeled “What America Can Do for Me.â€
