The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them -- and the country.
Recent months, and especially the past two weeks, have brought home to a steadily growing majority of Americans the truth that President Bush's government doesn't work. His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this.
True but irrelevant. The first mistake Dionne makes is in nomenclature: "The Bush Era" is technically correct but wrong in that the forces behind Bush have been at it for decades before his "presidency". The Neocons have been traced as far back as the 1960's with roots even in the Teddy Roosevelt era.
Their principal belief system advocates American hegemony as a way of enabling the business interests in which they're invested. While Bush is inextricably tied into many of those interests he is no more in control of the agenda than headlights control a car. Dionne even touches on this while not recognizing it when he points out the "boutique idea cooked up in conservative think tanks and Wall Street imaginations".
Dionne is right in pointing out that "Those who call for yet more tax cuts risk sounding like robots droning automated talking points programmed inside them long ago." but that's the point -the talking points were programmed inside them long ago, and that "risk" is ignored by all but the political mouthpieces of the agenda, and they only appear to care as a means of staying elected. The agenda itself is larger than any one of its components. In a way that's the "genius" of it, it's literally like a cancer -killing off several cells won't stop its progress. All of the rhetoric of the "true believers" in the social issues is just smoke and mirrors to cover the sociopathic business agenda and keep the money flowing. Perhaps that's the ultimate irony -that while they yack about "Christian" idiology they ignore one of its premier tenets: "[one] cannot serve both God and [money]". (Matthew 6:24)
Joe Conason has written a book that he's currently on the chat circuit about called "The Raw Deal" (which I haven't read and am relying on his comments on the radio) which details the plot to destroy Social Security, where he says that just because they've lost this round doesn't mean that they won't bring it up again. Quite the contrary -the fact that they control 2 (soon to be 3) branches of government continues to rally them to their cause, and it is a mistake to assume as Dionne does that the war is won on the result of a few battles.
Agreed, the people are beginning to see the utter selfishness of the neocon agenda as the aftermath of Katrina unfolds, and I hope that this is the beginning of their rejection of it wholesale -but even if that is the case the end of the "Bush Era" will only drive it underground. It will never be completely anihilated, but it could be tamed and marginalized if the "real" Republicans were to force it out of their party and into a party of its own. That's their fight though, and like the friends/family of addicts (and I think the GOP are addicted to the Neocon fundraising apparatus) the only thing we can do is encourage their forsaking it, be there when they bottom-out, and support their recovery.
(yikes, too many similes metaphors and analogies for one piece, but whatever!)
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