[discuss-dan] the view from london

[Mark Cohen <buildingbridges@mindspring.com>]

Published on Sunday, January 21, 2001 in the Observer of London 
Beware Bush's American Dream
This President is Not to Be Trusted
 
Editorial 
  
George W. Bush delivered his inaugural speech as the United States President
who collected 537,000 fewer votes than his opponent. Without the
intervention of a partisan, right-wing Supreme Court to ensure the election
of a Republican, Mr Bush would now be a forgotten loser. The Observer
considers his election an affront to the democratic principle with
incalculable consequences for America and the world. 
Mr Bush's inaugural attempt to assert his brand of one-nation, compassionate
conservatism is bluster and hogwash. He has acted from the moment Al Gore
conceded as if he had won a wholehearted mandate. 

But the Bush cabinet is neither centrist nor compassionate. In home affairs,
it is brutalist and reactionary - for tax cuts overtly biased towards the
rich, against the protection of consumers, workers and the environment. In
overseas affairs, Mr Bush has appointed Cold War warriors from his father's
era who do not appreciate the nuances of a transformed international
environment. 

The departing President Clinton was in office during a record-breaking
economic boom. However, a more accurate assessment of his legacy is that he
has bestowed on the US the first Republican President and
Republican-controlled Congress since 1952. For a President who supposedly
made the Democrats respectable again, this is a bequest the world could have
done without. 

For all his cleverness and tactical political skills, Mr Clinton could not
even deliver the limited Third Way philosophy developed in the late 1980s.
He simply bought, as he acknowledged, essentially conservative policies with
one or two small-scale, liberal micro-interventions. 

As a result, the Republicans retained control of the political, intellectual
and cultural agenda and plotted their return to power. Their success is
embodied in the nomination of John Ashcroft as attorney-general. Mr Ashcroft
is a southern-based, anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-gay religious
fundamentalist peddling a reactionary brand of free market economics and
American unilateralism. He epitomises the new centre of gravity in American
politics. 

Britain and Europe will find doing business with this administration tense,
oppositional and unproductive. It would be difficult enough had Mr Bush won
a mandate. Without it, we are in for a very rough ride indeed. 

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 

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