*AN APOLOGY FROM A BUSH VOTER*_
(long but good)
> *AN APOLOGY FROM A BUSH VOTER*_
>
> By Doug McIntyre
>
> Host, /McIntyre in the Morning/
>
> Talk Radio 790 KABC (Los Angeles, CA)
>
>
>
> There's nothing harder in public life than admitting you're wrong. By
> the way, admitting you're wrong can be even tougher in private life.
> If you don't believe me, just ask Bill Clinton or Charlie Sheen. But
> when you go out on the limb in public, it's out there where everyone
> can see it, or in my case, hear it.
>
> > historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the/ /worst two-term
> President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also
> believe a case can be made that/ /he's the worst President/, /period.'>
>
> In 2000, I was a McCain guy. I wasn't sure about the Texas Governor.
> He had name recognition and a lot of money behind him, but other than
> that? What? Still, I was sick of all the Clinton shenanigans and the
> thought of President Gore was unthinkable. So, GWB became my guy.
>
> For the first few months he was just flubbing along like most new
> Presidents, no great shakes, but no disasters either. He cut taxes and
> I like tax cuts*. *
>
> Then September 11^th happened. September 11^th changed everything for
> me, as it did for so many of you. After September 11^th , all the
> intramural idiocy of American politics stopped being funny. We had
> been attacked by a vicious and determined enemy and it was time for
> all of us to row in the same direction.
>
> And we did for the blink of an eye. I believed the President when he
> said we were going to hunt down Bin Laden and all those responsible
> for the 9-11 murders. I believed President Bush when he said we would
> go after the terrorists and the nations that harbored them.
>
> I supported the President when he sent our troops into Afghanistan,
> after all, that's where the Taliban was, that's where al-Qaida trained
> the killers, that's where Bin Laden was.
>
> And I cheered when we quickly toppled the Taliban government, but
> winced when we let Bin Laden escape from Tora-Bora.
>
> Then, the talk turned to Iraq and I winced again.
>
> I thought the connection to 9-11 was sketchy at best. But Colin Powell
> impressed me at the UN, and Tony Blair was in, and after all, he was a
> Clinton guy, not a Bush guy, so I thought the case had to be strong. I
> was worried though, because I had read the Wolfowitz paper, The
> Project for the New American Century. It's been around since '92, and
> it raised alarm bells because it was based on a theory, Democratizing
> the Middle East and I prefer pragmatism over theory. I was worried
> because Iraq was being justified on a radical new basis,pre-emptive
> war. Any time we do something without historical precedent I get
> nervous.
>
> But the President shifted the argument to WMDs and the urgent threat
> of Iraq getting atomic weapons. The debate turned to Saddam passing
> nukes on to terror groups. After 9-11, the risk was too great. As the
> President said, The next smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud. At
> least that's what I thought at the time.
>
> I grew up in New York and watched them build the World Trade Center. I
> worked with a guy, Frank O'Brien, who put the elevators in both
> towers. I lost a very close friend on September 11^th . 103 floor,
> tower one, Cantor Fitzgerald. Tim Coughlin was his name. If we had to
> take out Iraq to make sure something like that, or worse, never
> happened again, so be it. I knew the consequences. We have a soldier
> in our house. None of this was theoretical in my house.
>
> But in the months and years since shock and awe I have been shocked
> repeatedly by a consistent litany of excuses, alibis, double-talk,
> inaccuracies, bogus predictions, and flat out lies. I have watched as
> the President and his administration changed the goals, redefined the
> reasons for going into Iraq, and fumbled the good will of the world
> and the focus necessary to catch the real killers of September 11^th .
>
> I have watched the President say the commanders on the ground will
> make the battlefield decisions, and the war won't be run from
> Washington. Yet,politics has consistently determined what the troops
> can and can't do on the ground and any commander who did not go along
> with the administration was sacked and in some cases, maligned.
>
> I watched and tried to justify the looting in Iraq after the fall of
> Saddam. I watched and tried to justify the dismantling of the entire
> Iraqi army. I tired to explain the complexities of building a
> functional new Iraqi army. I urged patience when no WMDs were found.
> Then the Vice President told us we were in the waning days of the
> insurgency. And I started wincing again. The President says we have to
> stay the course but what if it's the wrong course?
>
> It was the wrong course. All of it was wrong. We are not on the road
> to victory. We're about to slink home with our tail between our legs,
> leaving civil war in Iraq and a nuclear armed Iran in our wake. Bali
> was bombed. Madrid was bombed. London was bombed. And Bin Laden is
> still making tapes. It's unspeakable. The liberal media didn't create
> this reality, bad policy did.
>
> Most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a
> reasonably accurate take on a President's place in history. So, maybe
> 50 years from now Iraq will be a peaceful member of the brotherhood of
> nations and George W. Bush will be celebrated as a visionary genius.
>
> But we don't live fifty years in the future. We live /now/. We have to
> make public policy decisions /now/. We have to live with the
> consequences of the votes we cast and the leaders we chose /now/.
>
> After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I've reached the
> conclusion he's either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a
> gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the
> world works. Or both.
>
> Presidential failures. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Jimmy Carter,
> Warren Harding - the competition is fierce for the /worst of the
> worst/. Still, the damage /this/ President has done is enormous. It
> will take decades to undo, and that's assuming we do everything right
> from now on. His mistakes have /global/ implications, while the other
> failed Presidents mostly authored domestic embarrassments.
>
> And speaking of domestic embarrassments, let's talk for a minute about
> President Bush's domestic record. Yes, he cut taxes. But tax cuts
> combined with reckless spending and borrowing is criminal
> mismanagement of the public's money. We're drunk at the mall with our
> great grandchildren's credit cards. Whatever happened to the party of
> fiscal responsibility?
>
> Bush created a giant new entitlement, the prescription drug plan. He
> lied to his own party to get it passed. He lied to the country about
> its true cost. It was written /by and for/ the pharmaceutical
> industry. It helps /nobody /except the multinationals that lobbied for
> it. So much for smaller government. In fact, virtually every tentacle
> of government has grown exponentially under Bush. Unless, of course,
> it was an agency to look after the public interest, or environmental
> protection, and/or worker's rights.
>
> I've talked so often about the border issue, I won't bore you with a
> rehash. It's enough to say this President has been a catastrophe for
> the wages of working people; he's debased the work ethic itself. Jobs
> Americans won't do! He doesn't believe in the sovereign borders of the
> country he's sworn to protect and defend. And his devotion to cheap
> labor for his corporate benefactors, along with his worship of
> multinational trade deals, makes an utter mockery of homeland security
> in a post 9-11 world. The President's January 7^th , 2004 speech on
> immigration, his first trial balloon on his guest worker scheme, was a
> deal breaker for me. I couldn't and didn't vote for him in 2004. And
> I'm glad I didn't.
>
> Katrina, Harriet Myers, The Dubai Port Deal, skyrocketing gas prices,
> shrinking wages for working people, staggering debt, astronomical
> foreign debt, outsourcing, open borders, contempt for the opinion of
> the American people, the war on science, media manipulation, faith
> based initives, a cavalier attitude toward fundamental freedoms-- this
> President has run the most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in
> my lifetime, perhaps, in any American's lifetime.
>
> You can make a case that Abraham Lincoln did what he had to do, the
> public be damned. If you roll the dice on your gut and you're right,
> history remembers you well. But, when your gut led you from one
> business failure to another, when your gut told you to trade Sammy
> Sosa to the Cubs, and you use the /same/ /gut/ to send our sons and
> daughters to fight and die in a distraction from the real war on
> terror, then history /will/ and /should/ be unapologetic in its
> condemnation.
>
> None of this, by the way, should be interpreted as an endorsement of
> the opposition party. The Democrats are /equally bankrupt/. This is
> the second crime of our age. Again, historically speaking, its times
> like these when America /needs/ a vibrant opposition to check the
> power of a run-amuck majority party. It requires it. It doesn't work
> without one. Like the high and low tides keep the oceans alive, a
> healthy, positive opposition offers a path back to the center where
> all healthy societies live.
>
> Tragically, the Democrats have allowed crackpots, leftists and
> demagogic cowards to snipe from the sidelines while taking /no/
> responsibility for anything. In fairness, I don't believe a Democrat
> president would have gone into Iraq. Unfortunately, I don't know if
> President Gore would have gone into Afghanistan. And that's one of the
> many problems with the Democrats.
>
> The two party system has always been clumsy and imperfect, but it has
> only collapsed once, in the 1850's, and the result was civil war.
>
> I believe, as I have said countless times, the two party system is on
> the brink of a second collapsed. It's currently running on spin,
> anger, revenge, and pots and pots and pots of money.
>
> We're being governed by paper-mache patriots; brightly painted red,
> white and blue, but hollow to the core. /Both/ parties have mastered
> the cynical arts of media manipulation and fund raising. They've
> learned the lessons of Watergate and burn the tapes. They have learned
> to divide the nation for their own gain. They have demonstrated the
> willingness to exploit any tragedy for personal advantage. The
> contempt they have for the American people is without parallel.
>
> This is painful to say, and I'm sure for many of you, painful to read.
> But it's impossible to heal the country until we're willing to
> acknowledge the truth no matter how painful. We have to wean ourselves
> off sugar coated partisan lies.
>
> With a belated tip of the cap to Ralph Nader, the system is broken, so
> broken, it's almost inevitable it pukes up the Al Gores and George W.
> Bushes. Where are the Trumans and the Eisenhowers? Where are the men
> and women of vision and accomplishment? Why do we have to settle for
> recycled hacks and malleable ciphers? Greatness is always rare, but is
> basic competence and simple honesty too much to ask?
>
> It may be decades before we have the full picture of how paranoid and
> contemptuous this administration has been. And I am open to the
> possibility that I'm all wet about everything I've just said. But I'm
> putting it out there, because I have to call it as I see it, and this
> is how I see it today. I don't say any of this lightly. I've thought
> about this for months and months. But eventually, the weight of
> evidence takes on a gravitational force of its own.
>
> I believe that George W. Bush has taken us down a terrible road. I
> don't believe the Democrats are offering an alternative. That means
> we're on our own to save this magnificent country. The United States
> of America is a gift to the world, but it has been badly abused/ /and
> it's/ /rightful owners/, We/ /the People/, had better step up to the
> plate and reclaim it before the damage becomes irreparable.
>
> So, accept my apology for allowing partisanship to blind me to an
> obvious truth; our President is incapable of the tasks he is charged
> with. I almost feel sorry for him. He is clearly in over his head.
> Yet, he doesn't generate the sympathy Warren Harding earned. Harding,
> a spectacular mediocrity, had the self-knowledge to tell any and all
> he shouldn't be President. George W. Bush continues to act the part,
> but at this point whose buying the act?
>
> Does this make me a waffler? A flip-flopper? Maybe, although I prefer
> to call it realism. And, for those of you who never supported Bush,
> its also fair to accuse me of kicking Bush while he's down. After all,
> you were kicking him while he was up.
>
> You were right, I was wrong.
> *AN APOLOGY FROM A BUSH VOTER*_
>
> By Doug McIntyre
>
> Host, /McIntyre in the Morning/
>
> Talk Radio 790 KABC (Los Angeles, CA)
>
>
>
> There's nothing harder in public life than admitting you're wrong. By
> the way, admitting you're wrong can be even tougher in private life.
> If you don't believe me, just ask Bill Clinton or Charlie Sheen. But
> when you go out on the limb in public, it's out there where everyone
> can see it, or in my case, hear it.
>
> > historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the/ /worst two-term
> President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also
> believe a case can be made that/ /he's the worst President/, /period.'>
>
> In 2000, I was a McCain guy. I wasn't sure about the Texas Governor.
> He had name recognition and a lot of money behind him, but other than
> that? What? Still, I was sick of all the Clinton shenanigans and the
> thought of President Gore was unthinkable. So, GWB became my guy.
>
> For the first few months he was just flubbing along like most new
> Presidents, no great shakes, but no disasters either. He cut taxes and
> I like tax cuts*. *
>
> Then September 11^th happened. September 11^th changed everything for
> me, as it did for so many of you. After September 11^th , all the
> intramural idiocy of American politics stopped being funny. We had
> been attacked by a vicious and determined enemy and it was time for
> all of us to row in the same direction.
>
> And we did for the blink of an eye. I believed the President when he
> said we were going to hunt down Bin Laden and all those responsible
> for the 9-11 murders. I believed President Bush when he said we would
> go after the terrorists and the nations that harbored them.
>
> I supported the President when he sent our troops into Afghanistan,
> after all, that's where the Taliban was, that's where al-Qaida trained
> the killers, that's where Bin Laden was.
>
> And I cheered when we quickly toppled the Taliban government, but
> winced when we let Bin Laden escape from Tora-Bora.
>
> Then, the talk turned to Iraq and I winced again.
>
> I thought the connection to 9-11 was sketchy at best. But Colin Powell
> impressed me at the UN, and Tony Blair was in, and after all, he was a
> Clinton guy, not a Bush guy, so I thought the case had to be strong. I
> was worried though, because I had read the Wolfowitz paper, The
> Project for the New American Century. It's been around since '92, and
> it raised alarm bells because it was based on a theory, Democratizing
> the Middle East and I prefer pragmatism over theory. I was worried
> because Iraq was being justified on a radical new basis,pre-emptive
> war. Any time we do something without historical precedent I get
> nervous.
>
> But the President shifted the argument to WMDs and the urgent threat
> of Iraq getting atomic weapons. The debate turned to Saddam passing
> nukes on to terror groups. After 9-11, the risk was too great. As the
> President said, The next smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud. At
> least that's what I thought at the time.
>
> I grew up in New York and watched them build the World Trade Center. I
> worked with a guy, Frank O'Brien, who put the elevators in both
> towers. I lost a very close friend on September 11^th . 103 floor,
> tower one, Cantor Fitzgerald. Tim Coughlin was his name. If we had to
> take out Iraq to make sure something like that, or worse, never
> happened again, so be it. I knew the consequences. We have a soldier
> in our house. None of this was theoretical in my house.
>
> But in the months and years since shock and awe I have been shocked
> repeatedly by a consistent litany of excuses, alibis, double-talk,
> inaccuracies, bogus predictions, and flat out lies. I have watched as
> the President and his administration changed the goals, redefined the
> reasons for going into Iraq, and fumbled the good will of the world
> and the focus necessary to catch the real killers of September 11^th .
>
> I have watched the President say the commanders on the ground will
> make the battlefield decisions, and the war won't be run from
> Washington. Yet,politics has consistently determined what the troops
> can and can't do on the ground and any commander who did not go along
> with the administration was sacked and in some cases, maligned.
>
> I watched and tried to justify the looting in Iraq after the fall of
> Saddam. I watched and tried to justify the dismantling of the entire
> Iraqi army. I tired to explain the complexities of building a
> functional new Iraqi army. I urged patience when no WMDs were found.
> Then the Vice President told us we were in the waning days of the
> insurgency. And I started wincing again. The President says we have to
> stay the course but what if it's the wrong course?
>
> It was the wrong course. All of it was wrong. We are not on the road
> to victory. We're about to slink home with our tail between our legs,
> leaving civil war in Iraq and a nuclear armed Iran in our wake. Bali
> was bombed. Madrid was bombed. London was bombed. And Bin Laden is
> still making tapes. It's unspeakable. The liberal media didn't create
> this reality, bad policy did.
>
> Most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a
> reasonably accurate take on a President's place in history. So, maybe
> 50 years from now Iraq will be a peaceful member of the brotherhood of
> nations and George W. Bush will be celebrated as a visionary genius.
>
> But we don't live fifty years in the future. We live /now/. We have to
> make public policy decisions /now/. We have to live with the
> consequences of the votes we cast and the leaders we chose /now/.
>
> After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I've reached the
> conclusion he's either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a
> gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the
> world works. Or both.
>
> Presidential failures. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Jimmy Carter,
> Warren Harding - the competition is fierce for the /worst of the
> worst/. Still, the damage /this/ President has done is enormous. It
> will take decades to undo, and that's assuming we do everything right
> from now on. His mistakes have /global/ implications, while the other
> failed Presidents mostly authored domestic embarrassments.
>
> And speaking of domestic embarrassments, let's talk for a minute about
> President Bush's domestic record. Yes, he cut taxes. But tax cuts
> combined with reckless spending and borrowing is criminal
> mismanagement of the public's money. We're drunk at the mall with our
> great grandchildren's credit cards. Whatever happened to the party of
> fiscal responsibility?
>
> Bush created a giant new entitlement, the prescription drug plan. He
> lied to his own party to get it passed. He lied to the country about
> its true cost. It was written /by and for/ the pharmaceutical
> industry. It helps /nobody /except the multinationals that lobbied for
> it. So much for smaller government. In fact, virtually every tentacle
> of government has grown exponentially under Bush. Unless, of course,
> it was an agency to look after the public interest, or environmental
> protection, and/or worker's rights.
>
> I've talked so often about the border issue, I won't bore you with a
> rehash. It's enough to say this President has been a catastrophe for
> the wages of working people; he's debased the work ethic itself. Jobs
> Americans won't do! He doesn't believe in the sovereign borders of the
> country he's sworn to protect and defend. And his devotion to cheap
> labor for his corporate benefactors, along with his worship of
> multinational trade deals, makes an utter mockery of homeland security
> in a post 9-11 world. The President's January 7^th , 2004 speech on
> immigration, his first trial balloon on his guest worker scheme, was a
> deal breaker for me. I couldn't and didn't vote for him in 2004. And
> I'm glad I didn't.
>
> Katrina, Harriet Myers, The Dubai Port Deal, skyrocketing gas prices,
> shrinking wages for working people, staggering debt, astronomical
> foreign debt, outsourcing, open borders, contempt for the opinion of
> the American people, the war on science, media manipulation, faith
> based initives, a cavalier attitude toward fundamental freedoms-- this
> President has run the most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in
> my lifetime, perhaps, in any American's lifetime.
>
> You can make a case that Abraham Lincoln did what he had to do, the
> public be damned. If you roll the dice on your gut and you're right,
> history remembers you well. But, when your gut led you from one
> business failure to another, when your gut told you to trade Sammy
> Sosa to the Cubs, and you use the /same/ /gut/ to send our sons and
> daughters to fight and die in a distraction from the real war on
> terror, then history /will/ and /should/ be unapologetic in its
> condemnation.
>
> None of this, by the way, should be interpreted as an endorsement of
> the opposition party. The Democrats are /equally bankrupt/. This is
> the second crime of our age. Again, historically speaking, its times
> like these when America /needs/ a vibrant opposition to check the
> power of a run-amuck majority party. It requires it. It doesn't work
> without one. Like the high and low tides keep the oceans alive, a
> healthy, positive opposition offers a path back to the center where
> all healthy societies live.
>
> Tragically, the Democrats have allowed crackpots, leftists and
> demagogic cowards to snipe from the sidelines while taking /no/
> responsibility for anything. In fairness, I don't believe a Democrat
> president would have gone into Iraq. Unfortunately, I don't know if
> President Gore would have gone into Afghanistan. And that's one of the
> many problems with the Democrats.
>
> The two party system has always been clumsy and imperfect, but it has
> only collapsed once, in the 1850's, and the result was civil war.
>
> I believe, as I have said countless times, the two party system is on
> the brink of a second collapsed. It's currently running on spin,
> anger, revenge, and pots and pots and pots of money.
>
> We're being governed by paper-mache patriots; brightly painted red,
> white and blue, but hollow to the core. /Both/ parties have mastered
> the cynical arts of media manipulation and fund raising. They've
> learned the lessons of Watergate and burn the tapes. They have learned
> to divide the nation for their own gain. They have demonstrated the
> willingness to exploit any tragedy for personal advantage. The
> contempt they have for the American people is without parallel.
>
> This is painful to say, and I'm sure for many of you, painful to read.
> But it's impossible to heal the country until we're willing to
> acknowledge the truth no matter how painful. We have to wean ourselves
> off sugar coated partisan lies.
>
> With a belated tip of the cap to Ralph Nader, the system is broken, so
> broken, it's almost inevitable it pukes up the Al Gores and George W.
> Bushes. Where are the Trumans and the Eisenhowers? Where are the men
> and women of vision and accomplishment? Why do we have to settle for
> recycled hacks and malleable ciphers? Greatness is always rare, but is
> basic competence and simple honesty too much to ask?
>
> It may be decades before we have the full picture of how paranoid and
> contemptuous this administration has been. And I am open to the
> possibility that I'm all wet about everything I've just said. But I'm
> putting it out there, because I have to call it as I see it, and this
> is how I see it today. I don't say any of this lightly. I've thought
> about this for months and months. But eventually, the weight of
> evidence takes on a gravitational force of its own.
>
> I believe that George W. Bush has taken us down a terrible road. I
> don't believe the Democrats are offering an alternative. That means
> we're on our own to save this magnificent country. The United States
> of America is a gift to the world, but it has been badly abused/ /and
> it's/ /rightful owners/, We/ /the People/, had better step up to the
> plate and reclaim it before the damage becomes irreparable.
>
> So, accept my apology for allowing partisanship to blind me to an
> obvious truth; our President is incapable of the tasks he is charged
> with. I almost feel sorry for him. He is clearly in over his head.
> Yet, he doesn't generate the sympathy Warren Harding earned. Harding,
> a spectacular mediocrity, had the self-knowledge to tell any and all
> he shouldn't be President. George W. Bush continues to act the part,
> but at this point whose buying the act?
>
> Does this make me a waffler? A flip-flopper? Maybe, although I prefer
> to call it realism. And, for those of you who never supported Bush,
> its also fair to accuse me of kicking Bush while he's down. After all,
> you were kicking him while he was up.
>
> You were right, I was wrong.