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http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/archives/00000771.html
Bush declares himself unfit to serve;
Economist agrees
10/29/2004 -
Although stopping short of withdrawing from the race, George W. Bush on Wednesday declared himself unfit to serve as president.
"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as commander-in-chief," the president said.
Some analysts interpreted the remarks as a dig at John Kerry for the latter's assault on the administration's now-documented failure to secure several hundred tons of very high explosives, RDX and HMX, under UN seal at Al Qa Qaa in Iraq.
Other observers noted that the president has seemed more pensive and introspective in recent days, possibly as a result of an unrelenting barrage of negative news afflicting the reality-based community adjacent to the White House, and speculated that he may simply be so overwhelmed by events and confetti that he's ready to call it a day, in which case his supporters may feel obligated to put him out to pasture before he collapses entirely.
The Economist piles on
If so, the president isn't alone in wishing he could just go away. The Economist, a highly conservative London-based magazine with nearly a half-million U.S. subscribers, yesterday endorsed John Kerry in an editorial entitled "The incompetent or the incoherent?"
By having far too few soldiers to provide security and by failing to pay Saddam's remnant army, a task that was always going to be long and hard has been made much, much harder. Such incompetence is no mere detail: thousands of Iraqis have died as a result and hundreds of American soldiers. The eventual success of the mission, while still possible, has been put in unnecessary jeopardy. So has America's reputation in the Islamic world, both for effectiveness and for moral probity.
If Mr Bush had meanwhile been making progress elsewhere in the Middle East, such mistakes might have been neutralised. But he hasn't. Israel and Palestine remain in their bitter conflict, with America readily accusable of bias. In Iran the conservatives have become stronger and the country has moved closer to making nuclear weapons. Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia have not turned hostile, but neither have they been terribly supportive nor reform-minded. Libya's renunciation of WMD is the sole clear piece of progress.
This only makes the longer-term project more important, not less. To succeed, however, America needs a president capable of admitting to mistakes and of learning from them. Mr Bush has steadfastly refused to admit to anything: even after Abu Ghraib, when he had a perfect opportunity to dismiss Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and declare a new start, he chose not to. Instead, he treated the abuses as if they were a low-level, disciplinary issue. Can he learn from mistakes? The current approach in Iraq, of training Iraqi security forces and preparing for elections to establish an Iraqi government with popular support, certainly represents an improvement, although America still has too few troops. And no one knows, for example, whether Mr Rumsfeld will stay in his job, or go. In the end, one can do no more than guess about whether in a second term Mr Bush would prove more competent.
Bob Smith piles on
Elsewhere, former US senator Bob Smith, a very conservative New Hampshire Republican, joined the lengthening parade of Republicans endorsing John Kerry for president. Although Smith's counterpart on the Republican "left" (as if there's such a thing), Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island, didn't actually endorse Kerry-he just said he couldn't vote for Bush-the two Republicans and all those in between who've abandoned him, represent the entire spectrum of the GOP absent the messianic wing.
Deep in Al Qa Qaa: the missing explosives pile on
The Pentagon, meanwhile, in a bizarre piece of performance art that may well prove to have been a Democratic dirty trick, produced a witness who told reporters that while he definitely blew up something near Al Qa Qaa, it wasn't the 370 tons of very high explosives that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had warned the U.S. was in storage at the facility and that an embedded television news crew taped as U.S. soldiers broke the IAEA seals and walked off leaving the doors unlocked.
"I'm Osama bin Laden and I approve this message"
It seems like a year ago that the primary topic of discussion was why the U.S. didn't go after bin Laden more forcefully when he was trapped at Tora Bora (click here for a handy Tora Bora timeline), but it's only been a few days. Apparently disconcerted by his sudden disappearance from the headlines, bin Laden surfaced today in a new videotape strongly critical of George Bush, leaving undecided voters to figure out whether he really wants them to vote against Bush or, sophisticated propagandist that he is, just wants them to think he wants them to vote against Bush so they'll vote for him. "I know that you know that I know ..."
The timing is awkward for the Bush campaign regardless bin Laden's machinations, if only because it reminds people that three years on the guy is still at large, looking well rested, with enough time on his hands to put together a campaign video and enough clout to command several million dollars worth of free air time, while we're jammed up in Iraq with nowhere to go.
"I'm Marshall Mathers and I approve this message"
Marshall Mathers, better known as rap superstar Eminem, has joined with the Guerilla News Network to produce a stunning anti-Bush campaign video/chart-topping rap hit.
Mathers, who can be as lyrically misogynistic and violent as anyone in the rap universe, has turned his considerable talent toward creating a musical polemic the match of anything produced in the last century, and it's aimed at a multicolor demographic the Bush campaign would rather not see turning out in droves on election day.
I'm Weldon Berger and I approve this message
What's striking about the events of the last few days is how graphically they illustrate some of the administration's myriad failings. "Not enough troops on the ground" was transformed from an abstraction into a series of moving images by the video of a bunker full of unsecured explosives. "Outsourcing the hunt for bin Laden" went the same route, from a verbal tennis match between the campaigns to the man himself delivering an election-eve message to the country. George Bush as a polarizing figure is brought to vivid life by Bob Smith's Kerry endorsement and Lincoln Chaffee's lack of one.
Unfortunately lost in the commotion have been a series of news items relating to GOP attempts to suppress voter turnout by whatever means seem most workable. Examples pop up like fireflies on a summer evening, and disappear just as quickly. Oliver Willis comments on a particularly egregious effort, and Jeff Hitt has a radio piece with a more comprehensive overview (requires RealAudio player).
The genesis of all these attempts to disenfranchise people or simply to get them to stay home is the fact that low turnout historically plays to the advantage of Republicans. When the turnout is high, they can't win: the demographics just aren't there.
So vote.
Stupid Pundit Tricks
I'm not a pundit, but I play one in my mind. John Kerry will win the popular vote by a margin of 7 million, and the electoral vote by a smaller but still comfortable margin if everyone who wants to vote, gets to.
This assumes that districts using electronic voting machines don't go universally for Bush.
Go vote, on paper if you can.
Replies: 1 Comment
If only the public were liable to pay attention to all of this but you know better don't you? Strap on your helmet and body armor. There's no telling where this is going.
