This backup copy is to be used only if the original site on the Web is not accessible. It is meant to preserve the document for teaching purposes, when sometimes the URLS are changed when sites are updated, or sites are eliminated. Please be certain to give credit if you refer to this to the original URL: http://www.weeklyholiday.net/2004/300704/front.html#5. Original URL, consuslted: October 14, 2004.

Weekly Holiday Net out of Bangladesh.

Why Bush will lose

Mumtaz Iqbal
July 30, 2004

Most US polls show Bush and Kerry running neck to neck, with the election a toss-up. There’s a contrary view that holds Bush will lose. The reasons follow.

Sorry, we can’t reveal our sources. But trust us, we know, just like the ex-Halliburtonian hack Cheney who spouts about the Iraq/al-Qaeda connection and the less than Tony post-Butler Blair who pontificates about Nigerian uranium.

US voters are a discerning lot. They like their presidents to have brains and brawn (preferably sexual, secondarily muscular), a combination known as the ‘Oomph Factor’ or personal magnetism.

Those with only brains or brawn rarely win. Most candidates have brains and brawn in varying permutations and combinations. The winner is the one who uses this asset most constructively to wage a good fight against tough opposition.

Adlai Stevenson, possibly the smartest of all post-1945 Democratic presidential hopefuls (Republicans are more gunslingers than professors), was always the bridesmaid, never the bride. He lost in 1952 and 1956 to Eisenhower, whose war record, sunny disposition and irresistible slogan (I like Ike) proved unbeatable.

Stevenson, so to speak, was above and a little beyond most ordinary Americans. Some of his own party men thought him indecisive. The classic canard against Adlai was his soliloquy — “Do I want to go the bathroom?” — after his staff repeatedly assured him that he had time to wash his hands before his turn came to speak at a rally.

Gerald Ford was a professional footballer before he was a lawyer, entered politics and became President in 1974 following Nixon’s post-Watergate resignation.

Upon hearing that Ford as House Minority Leader was withdrawing his support for the Vietnam War (circa 1967), Johnson, pointing to his head more in sorrow than anger, said that football injuries had made Gerry soft up there!

Ford probably had more brawn than brains but was no dummy. He was a decent man who soothed the traumatised post-Nixon US. But he lost to nuclear submariner and researcher and successful peanut farmer turned governor Jimmy Carter in 1976.

His victory was as much a blowback from high inflation and Watergate as that the US public wanted their president to have some brains, more than what Ford seemed to have.

But the brainy Carter, probably the least amoral of post-war presidents, was humbled by the intellectually modest but charmingly effervescent Reagan by a landslide in 1980. The Iran hostage crisis undermined Carter. Reagan was re-elected in 1984 against Mondale, brainier than Reagan but ineffective against a popular incumbent.

Earlier in 1960, there was a titanic battle between debonair Kennedy and scowling Nixon, both intelligent. Kennedy won by a whisker.

He was a tomcat with a penchant for Hollywood starlets. This didn’t diminish JFK’s electoral appeal. The media then was more tolerant of presidential indiscretions.

Californian Nixon staged a dramatic comeback in 1968 when he toppled the Minnesota liberal senator and Johnson’s VP Hubert Humphrey. In the campaign, Nixon displayed robust qualities of chicanery that earned him the sobriquet of Tricky Dick.

In 1968, while the US was negotiating with North Vietnam in Paris, Nixon’s people privately assured the South Vietnamese military rulers through Kissinger — then an advisor to the US delegation — that an incoming Republican regime would offer them a better deal than a Democratic one.

Nixon won. Kissinger became world famous. When the US finally signed a peace treaty with Hanoi in 1973 negotiated by Kissinger, 20,000 GIs and countless Vietnamese were dead, a stiff price to pay for presidential ambitions and professorial narcissism.

Nixon’s Vietnam stratagem and Watergate show Republicans are less scrupulous about using dirty tricks than Democrats. In 1988, Bush senior used Willie Horton to demolish Dukakis.

But despite victory in Kuwait in 1991, a sagging economy and skirmisher Ross Perot saw Bush lose to Clinton in 1992 despite the latter’s philandering (e.g. Gennifer Flowers before election) that lingered into his presidency (e.g. Monica after election) and fuelled an impeachment.

But brainy Bill managed to outwit his brawny Republican werewolves, though at a price. Unlike Kennedy’s, Clinton’s sexual exploits became titillating public fodder —the media, especially right-wingers, were less accommodating of presidential peccadilloes in the 1990s than in the sexually liberated 1960s.

Again, unlike JFK who liked cosmopolitan and glamorous paramours, Clinton was less finicky, partaking of whatever damsel was around and available! The differences in their patrician and plebeian family circumstances and upbringing may explain this divergence in sexual preference.

Clinton’s immense post-retirement popularity, e.g. his best-selling autobiography, suggests the US public likes brainy presidents who deliver and is forgiving of their libidinous proclivities.

Incumbent Bush and challenger Kerry have nominally exemplary private and family lives.

Kerry’s IQ is higher than Bush’s. However, the latter’s folksy homilies resonate better with the public than the former’s perceived patrician aloofness. Besides, like all Republicans, Bush is the better gutter fighter (e.g. McCain bashing after New Hampshire; Florida recount).

Kerry has burnished his image’s brawny side by choosing the photogenic, charismatic and rags-to-riches John Edwards as running mate.

Thus, the Kerry/Edwards ticket is more “Oomphy” than the staid and dowdy Bush/Cheney pair, a valuable asset for Democrats.

Dynastic check

The US is a republic, founded in opposition to rule by European royalty. Thus, Americans are not necessarily comfortable with the notion of a political dynasty.

In recent times, the closest thing to such a dynasty in America is the Bush family, which has been in the portals and citadel of US power for some years.

Prescott Bush, Bush senior’s father, was Connecticut senator from 1952-1963. Bush Sr. held a number of top official jobs before becoming Reagan’s VP (1980-88) and then becoming a one-term president (1988-92). His son George (Dubya) is the sitting president.

Another son John is Florida’s governor and potential presidential hopeful in 2008 or 2012, when another Bush/Clinton contest is conceivable!

Called Jeb — after Confederate cavalry General James Ewell Brown (Jeb) Stuart, unconventional warfare expert — John lived up to his nickname by guerrilla raids in 2000 on Florida’s voter list (eliminating blacks, especially felons) and recount (hanging, butterfly chads, etc).

Two Bush presidents in less than a decade came close enough in the US Republic to dynastic rule, especially with another Bush waiting in the wings.

One way to scotch the emergence of a largely corporate-financed Bush dynasty and for the US elector to reclaim his republican credentials is to boot out Bush junior.

What’s in a name?

Of the 43 US presidents, only three have been named George: the first president Washington (1789-97) and the two Bushes. Thus, almost 200 years separate the election of two presidents with George as their first names. Bush elder holds a record unlikely to be emulated.

By contrast, there have been ten US presidents with the first name of John or variants (James/ Jimmy). Statistically, therefore, a John has three times of winning the presidency than a George.

This statistic isn’t lost on Bush’s political commissar Karl Rove. He’s already prepared the papers for George to add John to his name. As John George W. Bush, he’ll significantly improve the reelection statistical odds. This change will be announced at the Republican National Convention in New York next September.

If this happens, then the US elections will be a contest between three sprightly Johns and an aging Dick!

Linguistic butchery

Americans quietly exult in their nuclear arsenal that can destroy the world many times over. In return, they expect the US president to pronounce “nuclear” correctly.

Unfortunately George Bush fails this seismic semantic test. Instead of pronouncing nuclear as “nyu-kle-er’, he mangles it to “noo-kill-year.” (Bush also mutilates the English language but that’s irrelevant for this article).

This verbal butchery has alarmed the Pentagon. For if the C-in-C can’t properly pronounce the name of America’s dreaded deterrent, how can rogue states be expected to take the US nuclear threat seriously?

Bush has received lessons to improve his pronunciation without success. Faced with an incorrigible performer, the military-industrial complex, taking no chances, will switch some of its long-standing traditional, almost automatic, support of Republicans to Democrats covertly.

Kerry and Edwards passed this pronunciation test with flying colours. The Boston Brahmin twang and the Carolingian drawl has won good vibes from a cross-section of GIs, especially those upset by the casualties in Iraq and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib that has sullied the army’s reputation.

Some Gis — normally Republican supporters — may desert the Texas linguistic butcher and born-again evangelist for the lanky Yankee aristocrat and pragmatic Catholic.

Why Bush must go

The above four factors weigh heavily against Bush. There are others. These suggest to some observers that it’s time for Bush to go.

Bush’s handling of the economy has been less than stellar. During his presidency, about a million jobs have vanished so far, the first net employment loss since Hoover’s regime (1929-33). Despite a robust economy in the past year, job growth is slow and fitful.

Tax cuts, mainly benefiting the rich, transformed the Clinton budget surplus into a $500 billion deficit. Medicare and prescription drugs for seniors remain intractable. The no-child-left-behind education policy is wobbly.

Homeland security is producing unappetising fallouts: a melange of public reaction ranging from paranoia, angst, resignation to apathy; tomes on restructuring intelligence and erosion of civil liberties (Patriot Act) and human rights (Guantanamo).

A neocon unilateralist preemptive foreign policy has put unprecedented strain on the international security system.

The Iraq war has divided Americans; divorced the US from its friends and allies; made anti-Americanism a hot global commodity; and destroyed the Iraqi state under fraudulent pretenses that distress many decent Americans.

Iraq’s been a dry hole for oilman Bush (unsurprising considering his lacklustre performance at Harkin Energy). The charade of Occupation and “sovereignty transfer” has caused public trust and confidence in his powers of judgment and management to dip.

Bush’s positions on abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research and so-called family values have polarised the US into warring red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) states that speak past and at but not with one another.

In this poisonous environment, Democrats, resurrecting the catchy Cold War slogan of “better red than dead” by amending it to “better dead than red”, are adamant that Bush must go.

The Boston Democratic National Convention (25-29 July), despite being largely a son et lumiere (sound and light show) of anointing King Kerry, was an impressive display of party unity and positivism (focus on manifesto, less on Bush bashing) that must surely hearten his supporters while giving little comfort to the Bushies.

Bush’s time to roll the drums, display the troops and bash Kerry and company will come next September at the Republican National Convention. Republicans are equally determined to beat the Democrats till they are black and blue.

Despite the occasional circus, carnival and opera-comique characteristics and overtones of the horribly expensive and unduly long US presidential campaigns, they are nevertheless a striking manifestation of democracy in action, albeit American-style.

The current campaign, relentlessly and inexorably shifting gears to accelerate toward the finishing line, is emerging as a cliff-hanging clash over basic issues and values on how to run America and what should be its relationship with the world.

One hopes the hyper-power will emerge mellower from this seminal struggle.

---

---

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Individual copyrights by other authors may apply.