brainrow

At a press conference about the election and his second term, George W. Bush said, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.”

Actually, George, you’ve already spent your political capital. You lost the election of 2000, yet you acted as if you had a mandate for a radical political agenda.

The Senate was divided 50-50, so you used the vice-president’s tie-breaking vote to prevent any kind of power-sharing with Democratic senators. You pushed your agenda with such little regard for bipartisan cooperation that Republican Senator Jim Jeffords quit your party in disgust, became an Independent, and started voting with the Democrats.

When the attacks of 9/11 united all Americans—all the world—you immediately started looking for ways to turn that tragedy into a partisan bonanza. The day after the attacks, Secretary Rumsfeld argued against striking Al Qaeda, using the tragedy instead as the pretense for an attack on Iraq, even though they’d had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks.

You’ve spent your political capital, George. You’ve blown through it just like you blew through the budget surplus you inherited from the Clinton Administration.

You’ve got a deep deficit, George. You owe us.

On Tuesday, we had the highest voter turnout since 1968. The American people came out to speak loud and clear. I’m still having these little “aw, crap” moments, when I get a new perspective on what Tuesday’s election means:

• George Herbert Walker Bush, the grown-up, the World War II fighter pilot, couldn’t get a second term. It’s his son—who ducked out of his National Guard obligations, who turned surpluses into deficits in Texas and in Washington, and whose Doctrine of Infallibility makes him incapable of learning from experience—he’s the one who gets the second term.
• On September 12, 2001, the entire world was united against the terrorists. Today, the entire world is united against the Americans. And the voters have said, “That’s the way (uh-huh uh-huh) we liiiiike it (uh-huh uh-huh).”
• In eleven states, voters amended their state constitutions explicitly to deny certain American citizens their inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. Once, the American ideal was to extend freedom to more and more people. Those days are gone.