Grinding It Out

Bush's poll numbers are up, if only for the economy. But they're up and that's a triumph for the most awesome publicity machine in this country. Harold Pinter offered a blistering critique in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech about America's incomparable knack for creative disinformation. Say one thing while doing another. Repeat ad nauseum.

Bush's brain trust does Pinter proud. They grind it out until they've worn down the country, including their supporters down. Al Gore would have been President if he had had the guts and the grit to stand up to the Bush Machine. But he didn't. Neither did Kerry. Karl Rove understands that persistence, even in the face of ridicule, pays off. The message, be it on the war, the economy, the Katrina debacle, becomes a hum after awhile. People neither tune it out nor pay attention to it. But its relentlessness never stops working you over, sapping your energy to raise objections.

Taking Your Medicine

Tonight, Paul Martin's Liberal government will fall in a no-confidence vote in Canadian parliament. Even though he's a uninspiring multi-millionaire and lodged deep in the viens of the sclerotic Liberal party, I admire the man (just as I do Tony Blair) for his ability to take unrelenting abuse during Question Period. Martin has no defense for all the parochial swindles in which his party has engaged yet he's there, day after day, taking the heat. Tonight will surely come as a relief. He can now go on the campaign trail for 50 days and try to win an outright majority. Doubtful but why not give it a shot? The competition is pretty bleak, especially the New Democrats, who haven't had a new idea since Lenin started rotting in his tomb.

The Canadian parliamentary system has two distinct allures. First, the election season is very short. Campaigns are sprints. There's no time for demagogery and hucksterism. Secondly, elected leaders and their cronies must face the music of their colleagues. And when Question Period ends, the press lies in wait out in the halls for a nasty scrum which demands either a velvet tongue or a clean conscience. Choreographed speeches loaded with red meat for the base or micro-managed press conferences are unthinkable. Imagine Bush and Cheney in the well of the Senate or the House, taking all manner of incoming from the opposition. After an afternoon of that kind of punishment, the West Wing bunker would feel like Fisher Island.

I love it. In such a system, you could never get away with backhanding questions about accountability and responsibility as a petty "blame game". Bush and his team know how to play the gaps in the structure of the American political system to their advantage. If his critics accuse Mr. Bush of being in a bubble, the logic cuts both ways: the bubble gives him the distance for his people to project their manufactured reality into the waiting, trembling souls of many Americans.

Out of the Gate

Friends,

Welcome to my blog, my political blog.

I am writing from Detroit - a rusty, poor black city surrounded by some of the most affluent and white suburbs and exurbs in the country. It is, I think, a pretty interesting place from which to survey and suss out America. My lens is neither red nor blue. As a left-leaning libertarian, I tend to see things in shades of grey.

The title of this blog comes from President Bush's now infamous compliment to the former director of FEMA, a vainglorious nincompoop who was more worried about his shirt than the broken levees of New Orleans. It's easy enough to say that Bush was merely putting lipstick on a pig he knew he would have to roast when the cameras weren't looking. But that's assuming Bush was purposefully acting in "bad faith."

Bush is many things but disingenuous is not one of them. Bush believes in what he says and what he does. That authenticity is the cathode ray tube of the alternative reality that his administration has thrown up and presented to the American public as reality itself.

In today's NYTimes, Thomas Friedman suggests that Bush governs as if he is still running against John McCain in the South Carolina primary of 2000, pushing whatever divisive retrograde rubbish necessary to get 50.1% of the vote.

I disagree. Bush convinces voters about his alternative reality because he's convinced himself about it. Karl Rove may be toiling over a hot calculator but not George W. He preaches his gospel.

This blog, then, watches truth running on parallel tracks.