Who Let the Dogs In? Read Free

Washington, D.C. I like to pretend it’s easy for me to say, “Aw, kiss my ass.” What is in fact terrifying to me is how often I accept “what everybody else says.”
•  Huey Long observed: “If totalitarianism comes to this country, it will surely do so in the guise of 100 percent Americanism.”
•  I’ve had encounters with sexism that range from infuriating to depressing to hilarious, but my favorite is still the Texas lawmaker who said in all sincere admiration, “Young lady, you got huevos.”
•  There are 148,000 people in prison in Texas; 72,000 of them are there for nonviolent crimes.
•  “News is something someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising.” —Lord Northcote
•  “The character issue is driving all the characters out of politics.” —Jan Reid
•  “Racism is not the KKK; it’s when there’s serious inequity and not a passion to do something about it.” —Pat Hayes, president, St. Edward’s University
•  “Many conservatives despise government and perhaps for that reason disregard civilities suited to its functioning. People who despise government should not be entrusted with it. Important kinds of public spiritedness are foreign to them.” —George Will
•  “I wouldn’t ask a plumber how he treated his wife and children before letting him loose on the leaking toilet.” —P. D. James

    So here we are in the glorious election year of 2004, with a boring stiff in one corner and stupefying incompetence in the other.
Now
they all ask: “Who knew Dubya Bush would be this bad? I realize there is nothing more annoying than someone who says, “I told you so.” But dammit, the next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be in the White House, would you
please
pay attention? I knew him, but even I hadn’t counted on what fear would do to him. Fear makes people do terrible things. I also think Bush is badly advised, chiefly by Dick Cheney and also by that whole nest of neo-cons in the Defense Department. One of the most elementary mistakes you can make in politics is to listen only to people who agree with you. How could they be so stupid? Karl?
    Reading Douglas Brinkley’s book
Tour of Duty
is enough to give one hope for John Kerry, but it also leaves one wondering, “So what the hell happened to the guy?” His career since then is not a profile in courage. The record isn’t bad, but he seems to suffer from extreme political caution. Of course, every criticism of Kerry can be countered with the unanswerable argument “Compared to Bush?”
    Not an inspiring speaker? Compared to Bush? (My favorite is still the time the president informed us we had enjoyed an enduring 150-year alliance with Japan.)
    Flip-flops? Compared to the man who opposed the 9/11 Commission, the Intelligence Review Board, the Department of Homeland Security, nation-building, McCain-Feingold, the Middle East peace process, summits, free trade, the corporate reform law, consulting the UN about Iraq, consulting Congress about Iraq, letting Condi Rice testify, etc.? Hell-o-o?
    What more can be said about the mess in Iraq? The consequences of ignorance in power are disastrous. We knew Bush didn’t know anything about foreign affairs, and the great tragedy of his presidency is that the mother of all foreign policy crises occurred on his watch. But he was supposed to be surrounded by people who knew more. Paul Wolfowitz, architect of the Iraq invasion, assured Congress before the war, “There is no history of ethnic strife in Iraq.”
    While Iraq is clearly hubris carried to the point of insanity—it’s damn hard to convince people you’re killing them for their own good—there is a quieter and creepier agenda as well: the steady erosion of freedom, the contempt for legal process, the secrecy, and the unleashing of corporate greed on the environment. Through good times and bad, through terror attacks and wars, Bush has remained consistent about one thing: cutting