President Bush: Clueless or principled?

Friday, January 2, 2004

I recently received an email from an old high school buddy of mine, James Rhodes, quoting a Molly Ivins article on MotherJones.com. Ms. Ivins apparently has been acquainted with President Bush for many years. Not closely, but they go back as far as high school, and she states she studied him closely while he served as Governor of Texas. If you haven't read her article yet, take the time to click on the link and read what she has to say. Even if you want to argue with her, or phone her up to talk some sense into her (or maybe congratulate her on her insightful analysis), wait until you've read the whole thing. This window will still be sitting here, waiting for your return.
 

Okay, you've read the Ivins article, right? Good. As I said at the start of this missive, James, who is, shall we say, a bit less conservative than I am, sent me a copy of the Mother Jones article, and after reading it, I had to write him back with my reactions. What follows is a copy of the email I sent him (I've taken the liberty of a bit of editing, but nothing major). Be forewarned: I don't pull any punches, at least not when it comes to those I find contemptible. There are many folks in this world, of all political stripes, I find worthy of my contempt.
 

Well, you're right James, you're not going to change my view of President Bush with Ms. Ivins' invective. Unlike many Conservatives, who, like their Liberal counterparts, love to fool themselves into believing all sorts of wildly unrealistic things, I don't think President Bush comes anywhere close to perfect. To begin with, he's a politician. Any accusations of lying generate responses of, "Yeah, so?" They're all liars, or they'd never have gotten elected to their respective offices. That's just the sad truth of our political system.
 

One of the areas where George Bush has taken the most heat (apart from anything related to 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq or the War on Terror) is his humongous tax cuts, which grossly favored the wealthy. Yes, I agree, they did. So, what's your point? He wanted to have a meaningful tax cut, and any tax cut that doesn't touch those who contribute the vast, vast, vast majority of the taxes is meaningless. Those who don't pay much in taxes didn't get much of a tax cut. Sorry, can't have it any other way. If you don't pay much in taxes, you can't expect to get much from a tax cut. I haven't heard and just can't imagine any counter-argument that isn't laced with pie-in-the-sky, fuzzy illogic. Of course, I'm a Conservative Texan, so I'm surely wearing those blinders that Molly speaks about. On the other hand, I spent 20 years as an enlisted sailor, lived in several different countries, and even lived where there is no country (at sea, if you can't make the connection), and I've also lived on both coasts of our own country, in both liberal and conservative enclaves. While I haven't seen it all, I've certainly seen a lot of it.
 

Ms. Ivins suffers from a prejudice in her writings. I do, too. The difference is, I admit the influence my prejudices play in my opinions, and stand ready to change those opinions when confronted with good reason to do so. Molly gives short shrift to the dependency caused by the intoxicating, addictive influence of government handouts. Makes me wonder what world she's been looking at over the years. I suspect that she's one of those liberals who finds a few anecdotal pieces about someone pulling themselves up out of the mire because of welfare or some other version of the governmental teat, and says that these programs work. I look at the overwhelming evidence of their failure over the decades, and surmise that those who manage to extricate themselves from the muck probably would have done it on their own without wasting billions and billions (and billions) of dollars on the huge numbers of people who spend their lives wondering what the government is going to do for them next.
 

One of the hardest jobs I have as a father is making my children appropriately independent. It's not easy to know how much independence is the right amount (and that changes over time, and isn't constant among children), but I have to do my best to figure out how independent each child has to be at the time. To make matters worse, it's painful to execute the plan once it's established. Everyone knows many tales about holding back on independence, such as a 14-year-old wanting to go on a date, or a 16-year-old wanting to drive the car. To another state. For a week. With their significant other. Or whatever. But I believe that one of a parent's biggest jobs can be pushing the child that likes having things done for them, to do it themselves. I have to do that a lot, especially with one of my children. But he's all the better for my efforts. We have to break the cycle of dependency for folks to have a chance to stand on their own two feet.
 

I started digressing here, so I've backed up, deleted a buncha stuff, and I'll try to get myself back on track.
 

At any rate, George Bush is far from perfect, I'll grant you that. There are many things he does which cause me to smack myself in the forehead and ask, "What was he thinking?" but undoubtedly for different reasons from you and your Liberal brethren, James. Why do I support George Bush, then?
 

I'll be succinct.
 

Al Gore.
 

...and Howard Dean, and John Kerry, and Dick Gephardt, and Wesley Clark, and Kucinich and Sharpton. Liars all, just like George Bush. But they would also lead this country in a direction I don't want it to go in. While I don't completely agree with Bush's path, it's much closer aligned to mine than theirs.
 

I'm exhausted. I guess that's why I don't write for a living.
 

~ Boyd