As George Bush serves up his State of the Union address, his presidency is in virtual collapse. None of this will be apparent on the TV screen. The address will be “interrupted” with numerous standing ovations. The pundits will be respectful. The Democratic response will seem muted. But beneath the bunting and the applause, this president is in trouble. And the list of catastrophes keeps on growing.
Our military is near “snapping,” according to a report commissioned by the Pentagon. Iraq has become a training ground for international terrorists. The elections have produced a Shiite plurality, led by religious parties that have formed a mutual defense pact with Iran. The Iranian president has called for the destruction of Israel, and the Iraqi leaders that our soldiers are dying to defend stand by his side.
The reconstruction of Iraq is a joke, with literally billions wasted or stolen, while citizens still have no stable source of electricity. We can’t leave because a civil war, already started on the ground, will flare up. We can’t stay because our presence simply feeds the terror and destabilization. Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz now projects the actual cost of the Iraq war at $1 trillion.
U.S. is more despised across the Muslim world. Abu Ghraib, rendition of suspects to other countries for “interrogation,” secret prisons, the administration’s tortured defense of torture – all this has fueled anger and hatred.
At home, it’s the same sorry record of catastrophic failure. The administration’s trade policies are hollowing out our manufacturing and high-tech sectors. Bush has run up the largest trade deficits in the history of man.
The administration’s top end tax cuts have failed to produce. Take away the jobs produced by government at all levels and by the military buildup, and the U.S. has lost an estimated 1 million private sector jobs since Bush came into office. Yet those same tax cuts have helped rack up record deficits and staggering national debt.
The administration’s unrelenting war on seniors continues apace. The prescription drug program confounds seniors and will end up costing many of them more for drugs, even as it prohibits Medicare from negotiating a better price and shovels billions to HMOs
The administration does nothing to help labor under corporate assault, even as wages stagnate. African-Americans and Latinos suffer disproportionately, even as the administration retreats from the commitment to equal opportunity.
A college education is being priced out of reach for more and more working families. The administration and the Republican Congress are about to raise interest rates on student loans, adding to burdens that are already a stretch for most families.
And on homeland security, the independent and bipartisan 9/11 commission gives the administration failing grades in area after area. Were the administration a student, it would lose its government grant money for that performance.