Monday, March 15, 2004

Missteps Worry Bush Supporters:

It seems that each week comes with a new blunder for the president and each one is weighing him down. the White House's chief economist says job "outsourcing" is a good idea when millions are unemployed, a new Manufacturing Czar is to be named and then we find he's been moving his own business's jobs to Red China, and reports that he threatened to fire Economists if they told anyone he was knowingly using budget numbers that were hundreds of billions of dollars off in order to sell it. Furthermore, THAT's just the economic mis-steps.

Many of these items may be small potatoes on their own, but the fact that they keep piling on is making some real trouble for the supporters who really like the guy, even though they may not drink the Kook-Aid, if you know what i mean. Personally, i Feel this is the President's M.O. catching up with him. you can only pander to the politically expedient for so long. you can only act without real justification for a certain length of time before someone starts to catch on...and decides they don't like it.

FOR EXAMPLE, TAX CUTS: in 2000 it was what we 'deserved' because 'its your money' and the govenment had 'over collected' (nevermind the debt we weren't paying off). after 9/11 the same cuts were to boost the sagging economy. when that didn't happen and we fell into the worst recession since the Great depression, we heard "whew! think how bad it would've been if we didn't have these tax cuts!"

I'm not against tax cuts, per se...what i am against is the revolving rationale to do things that might just be irresponsible. you keep that up and you're going to be doing something for the wrong reason, inevitably. For the sake of staying on message, the White House has gutted itself of its (arguably) bright minds, or made them powerless (Powell, Whitman, etc). this has made for a cohesive administration, but also one devoid of real analysis and creative problem solving. It is as if someone thought reading a political flier over and over was somehow a subsitute for actually governing.

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