To be a fly on the wall...

Ahh, so now we see George W. Bush sitting like a bump on a log, as terrified FEMA people and meteorologists warn him about the impending Katrina catastrophe... using his patented curiosity to ask absolutely no questions... and then assuring everyone that the federal government had things well in hand...

If there were tapes of the entire Bush administration, I am utterly convinced we would find...

• George W. Bush specifically authorized, encouraged, or joked about torture

We already know that when he was told a captured terrorist had been given pain medication for his life-threatening injuries, Bush asked, “who ordered that?” We also know that George W. Bush’s very first appearance in The New York Times, way back in 1967, shows him defending torture:

“as former president of the Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter at Yale, Bush defended the fraternity's practice of branding its pledges with a red-hot coat hanger... deserves more national attention. ...In a Yale Daily News story the next day, Bush is quoted calling the branding “insignificant.” He said he did not understand how the News “can assume Yale has to be so haughty not to allow this type of pledging to go on.”

• George W. Bush knew perfectly well from early on that Karl Rove leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame, at a time when he was denying knowledge and allowing special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to run himself ragged trying to figure it out...

We have the New York Daily News report that...

An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair... But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger. A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President...

And, of course...

• George W. Bush was explicitly warned about the danger of attack by Osama Bin Laden in August 2001

Of course, we already have the famous PDB document that states:

“...FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York...”

That’s just a taste of what we’d find. No wonder George W. Bush has made it such a priority to change the laws so Presidential actions and papers stay secret far into the future. He doesn’t dare that we ever know how he’s been running this country.

Ignorant and free

Ben Franklin, asked what kind of government the 1787 U.S. Constitutional Convention was creating, famously said: “A Republic, if you can keep it.” 219 years later, this morning’s papers tell us:

...only about one in four Americans (28 percent) are able to name more than one of the five fundamental freedoms granted to them by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution... almost twice as many Americans (52 percent) can name at least two members of “The Simpsons” cartoon family. More than four in 10 Americans (41 percent) could name two of the three “American Idol” judges and one in four could name all three. Unfortunately, just 8 percent of Americans could name at least three of their First Amendment freedoms.

Just for the record, they are:

• Freedom of Speech


• Freedom of Religion


• Freedom of the Press


• Freedom of Assembly


• Freedom to Petition for Redress of Grievances

OK, to be fair, one or two of those don’t get a whole lot of media attention. (Though, in an ideal America, folks would memorize the First Amendment in elementary school the way they used to memorize the Gettysburg Address). But any sentient American ought to know at least three of these. Meanwhile...

“About one in five Americans (21 percent) agreed that the First Amendment granted them the right to own and raise pets...”

Step back and consider the understanding of law that would lead to that answer...

One in five also believe that the right to drive is guaranteed by the First Amendment, although the car was not invented for another 100 years...”

Doubtless this follows from a careful analysis of all that dreaded “living constitution” judicial activism, huh?

I suppose one could try to defend this level of ignorance by saying that Americans understand the “substance” of their freedoms, even if they don’t know the specific words of the First Amendment. I see little evidence for that proposition.

Findings like these would be appalling if they were in the least surprising. No wonder we have the elected officials we do. In my darker moments, I can’t help suspecting that they’re even slightly better than we deserve. Thomas Jefferson, as is so often the case, has earned the last word on this:

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

From far enough away, it will look like irony

Decades from now, historians somewhere (but probably not in America) will find it a delicious irony that George Bush was elected based on the perception that he would protect America’s freedom and independence, when instead, his policies led to their destruction. The Washington Post’s David Ignatius cuts to the chase:

...Congress doesn't seem to realize that an Arab-owned company's management of America's ports is just a taste of what is coming. Greater foreign ownership of U.S. assets is an inevitable consequence of the reckless tax-cutting, deficit-ballooning fiscal policies that Congress and the White House have pursued. By encouraging the United States to consume more than it produces, these fiscal policies have sucked in imports so fast that the nation is nearing a trillion-dollar annual trade deficit. Those are IOUs on America's future, issued by a spendthrift Congress.

[NYU Professor Nouriel Roubini] notes that with the U.S. current account deficit running at about $900 billion in 2006, “in a matter of a few years foreigners may end up owning most of the U.S. capital stocks: ports, factories, corporations, land, real estate and even our national parks.” Until recently, he writes, the United States has been financing its trade deficit through debt -- namely, by selling U.S. Treasury securities to foreign central banks. That's scary enough -- as it has given big T-bill holders such as China and Saudi Arabia the ability to punish the U.S. dollar if they decide to unload their reserves.

But as Roubini says, foreigners may decide they would rather hold their dollars in equity investments than in U.S. Treasury debt. “If we continue with our current patterns of spending above our incomes, by 2013 the U.S. foreign liabilities could be as high as 75 percent of GDP and an increasing fraction of such liabilities will be in the form of equity," he explains. "So, let us stop whining about the dangers of unfriendly foreigners owning our firms and assets and get used to it.”

Here's how bad it is: The worst thing that could happen to the United States, paradoxically, would be for Arab and other foreign investors to take us at our xenophobic word and decide that America doesn't really want foreign investment. If they pulled out their money, U.S. financial markets would plummet in a crash that might make 1929 look like a sleigh ride.

Figures of speech

This morning, I’ve come across two figures of speech just too delicious not to share...

Matthew Yglesias, courtesy of Crooked Timber:

...the alert citizen will have learned not to trust the administration to make S’mores without plunging half the nation into a sticky-sweet inferno of death.

Steve Gilliard:

What Bode Miller is to Olympic triumph, George Bush is to Presidential history, flopping off the slick course of national politics like James Buchanan in Team USA spandex.

Which do you like better? Tough call.