POLITICS - Who Will Protect Us?

Here's another little bit from the Sullivan article. It was originally in the preceding entry, but I pulled it out for a separate post.

Sullivan says:

September 11 made a critical difference as well. It turned a sensibility into something a little more urgent.

Urgent? Sensibility? Is anybody really willing to use these two words to describe the Bush Administration's reaction to the threat of terror attacks? Even after capturing Saddam, the threat level in the US didn't decrease, it increased. Ditto for our current activity in Afghanistan. There seems to be very little sensibility to the Bush Administration's actions here, only reactionism and the cold calculation to exploit the nation's damaged psyche and steamroll Patriot Acts and an unnecessary invasion into national policy. For the people whose beliefs (or morals or generational peer groups) led them to support the Bush Doctrine, the current lack of sensibility could be a huge liability to the Bush 2004 Campaign.

Up to this point, the Bush Administration has been able to take advantage of the natural swing back toward the right. 9/11 catalyzed this movement, but the true threat of terror attacks could drag it back down. What happens if nothing resembles a democratic government in Iraq by next summer? What happens if US troops are still dying weekly in Iraq and Afghanistan? What happens if terrorists pull off another major attack in the United States? If Bush can't follow through and match his tough talk with measurable results, the youth's embrace of Bush will be shortlived. They'll be ready for "the next thing", which won't be the incumbent, and the next shift towards the left will begin a tad earlier than expected.

Sullivan pulls up a quote from Dennis Miller, another barometer of the national swing toward the Right.

Comedian Dennis Miller, a graduate of the US television comedy show Saturday Night Live and a loud-mouthed, libertarian rebel, exemplifies the change in sensibility. Nobody can think of him as a typical conservative. His four-letter words alone keep him a few thousand miles away from the religious Right.

But in an interview with Time magazine he summed up his politics: "I'm Left on a lot of things. If two gay guys want to get married, I couldn't care less. If a nutcase from overseas wants to blow up their wedding, that's when I'm Right. (September 11) was a big thing for me. I was saying to liberal America, 'Well, what are you offering?' And they said, 'Well, we're not going to protect you, and we want some more money.' That didn't interest me."

I'll be interested in hearing what Miller has to say about the 9/11 Commission laying the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Bush Administration for not protecting us (and still wanting more money). I'll be interested to hear what the Valerie Plame Investigation says about the Bush Administration's disrespect toward the men and women who dedicate their lives to protect us (and still wanting more money). Dennis still feels hurt by Clinton's fellatio deception... I wonder how he feels about the missing WMD? Even if we can't find them, I'm sure Bush wouldn't mind more money!