What would a 3rd Bush term have looked like? You're living it.
It sounds like the plot for the latest summer horror movie. Imagine, for a moment, that George W Bush had been allowed a third term as president, had run and had won or stolen it, and that we were all now living (and dying) through it. With the Democrats in control of Congress but Bush still in the Oval Office, the media would certainly be talking endlessly about a mandate for bipartisanship and the importance of taking into account the concerns of Republicans. Can't you just picture it?
There's Dubya now, still rewriting laws via signing statements. Still creating and destroying laws with executive orders. And still violating laws at his whim. Imagine Bush continuing his policy of extraordinary rendition, sending prisoners off to other countries with grim interrogation reputations to be held and tortured. I can even picture him formalizing his policy of preventive detention, sprucing it up with some "due process" even as he permanently removes habeas corpus from our culture.
I picture this demonic president still swearing he doesn't torture, still insisting that he wants to close Guantanamo, but assuring his subordinates that the commander-in-chief has the power to torture "if needed", and maintaining a prison at Bagram air base in Afghanistan that makes Guantanamo look like summer camp. I can imagine him continuing to keep secret his warrantless spying programs while protecting the corporations and government officials involved.
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The White House and Justice Department would be crawling with corporate cronies, people like John Brennan, Greg Craig, James Jones and Eric Holder. Most of the top prosecutors hired at the Department of Justice for political purposes would still be on the job. And political prisoners, like former Alabama governor Don Siegelman and former top Democratic donor Paul Minor would still be abandoned to their fate.
In addition, the bank bailouts Bush and his economic team initiated in his second term would still be rolling along - with a similar crowd of people running the show. Ben Bernanke, for instance, would certainly have been re-appointed to run the Fed. And Bush's third term would have guaranteed that there would be none of the monkeying around with the North American Free Trade Agreement that the Democrats proposed or promised in their losing presidential campaign. At this point in Bush's third term, no significant new effort would have begun to restore Katrina-decimated New Orleans either.
If the Democrats in Congress attempted to pass any set of needed reforms like, to take an example, new healthcare legislation, Bush, the third termer, would have held secret meetings in the White House with insurance and drug company executives to devise a means to turn such proposals to their advantage. And he would have refused to release the visitor logs so that the American public would have no way of knowing just whom he'd been talking to.
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Now, here's the funny part. This dark fantasy of a third Bush term is also an accurate portrait of President Barack Obama's first term to date. In following Bush, Obama was given the opportunity either to restore the rule of law and the balance of powers or to firmly establish in place what were otherwise aberrant abuses of power. Thus far, Obama has, in all the areas mentioned above, chosen the latter course. Everything described, from the continuation of crimes to the efforts to hide them away, from the corruption of corporate power to the assertion of the executive power to legislate, is Obama's presidency in its first seven months.
Link
There's Dubya now, still rewriting laws via signing statements. Still creating and destroying laws with executive orders. And still violating laws at his whim. Imagine Bush continuing his policy of extraordinary rendition, sending prisoners off to other countries with grim interrogation reputations to be held and tortured. I can even picture him formalizing his policy of preventive detention, sprucing it up with some "due process" even as he permanently removes habeas corpus from our culture.
I picture this demonic president still swearing he doesn't torture, still insisting that he wants to close Guantanamo, but assuring his subordinates that the commander-in-chief has the power to torture "if needed", and maintaining a prison at Bagram air base in Afghanistan that makes Guantanamo look like summer camp. I can imagine him continuing to keep secret his warrantless spying programs while protecting the corporations and government officials involved.
...
The White House and Justice Department would be crawling with corporate cronies, people like John Brennan, Greg Craig, James Jones and Eric Holder. Most of the top prosecutors hired at the Department of Justice for political purposes would still be on the job. And political prisoners, like former Alabama governor Don Siegelman and former top Democratic donor Paul Minor would still be abandoned to their fate.
In addition, the bank bailouts Bush and his economic team initiated in his second term would still be rolling along - with a similar crowd of people running the show. Ben Bernanke, for instance, would certainly have been re-appointed to run the Fed. And Bush's third term would have guaranteed that there would be none of the monkeying around with the North American Free Trade Agreement that the Democrats proposed or promised in their losing presidential campaign. At this point in Bush's third term, no significant new effort would have begun to restore Katrina-decimated New Orleans either.
If the Democrats in Congress attempted to pass any set of needed reforms like, to take an example, new healthcare legislation, Bush, the third termer, would have held secret meetings in the White House with insurance and drug company executives to devise a means to turn such proposals to their advantage. And he would have refused to release the visitor logs so that the American public would have no way of knowing just whom he'd been talking to.
...
Now, here's the funny part. This dark fantasy of a third Bush term is also an accurate portrait of President Barack Obama's first term to date. In following Bush, Obama was given the opportunity either to restore the rule of law and the balance of powers or to firmly establish in place what were otherwise aberrant abuses of power. Thus far, Obama has, in all the areas mentioned above, chosen the latter course. Everything described, from the continuation of crimes to the efforts to hide them away, from the corruption of corporate power to the assertion of the executive power to legislate, is Obama's presidency in its first seven months.
Link