Bush's Era of Good Feelings

I can't sleep because of the exciting anticipation of the day ahead -- in which I am expecting a delightful break in my mid-life crisis -- I will write more about it if it comes to pass.

In the meantime, in an act of shameless self-promotion, and intemperate finger-pointing, I am republishing my December 31, 2004 posting, written on a day where I think everyone else had something better to do.

I see a lot of blogs are publishing quarterly reports.

I prefer to just put out what I said then, and see how it is holding water.



Bush's Era of Good Feelings

The fact is that most people trust that W- will, all-in-all, do the right thing. I believe that the trust is misplaced, but my viewpoint lost the election. I think the trust is based, in part, on the fact that people still see this as a liberal government, a high-tax welfare state, a Gomorrah surrounded by two oceans, and that the Republican Party is just a corrective, a pruning against excesses, until the "FemiNazis" return.

But ---

From the time of FDRs election to LBJ's election --- 9 elections. 7 Democratic victories, 2 victories for a Republican (Eisenhower) who wasn't really a Republican.

From the time of Nixon's election to the time of Bush's re-election --- 10 elections, 7 Republican victories, 3 victories for Democrats (Carter, Clinton) who were Democrats in name only.

Any real opposition to anything Bush will do between now and Labor Day 2006, when the Congressional elections kick in, and Bush will become a lame duck, will have to be made by Republicans. This is Bush's Era of Good Feeling, and no amount of pointing at the liberal media can disguise the fact that the liberal media has not influenced an election in a very, very, very, very, very long time.


In the meantime, Democrats have to assist those Republicans who believe in the Constitution. I get a lot of flak when I say that Republicans do not believe in the Constitution. They think I am using code-words. I am not. I know that Republicans believe in freedom. However, as I have said many times before, it is my contention that a critical mass of conservatives, the movement conservatives that are in charge of the government and will be in full power over the next 21 months, do not believe that the Constitution is the single, most important vehicle for preserving that freedom. They are dead-in-their-tracks wrong.

To the extent that they believe in the Constitution at all, they believe in the slave-owners Constitution that died at Gettysburg, or they believe in the factory-owners Constitution that died on Black Friday. These new leaders believe that the clock should be turned back --- that the old days were better days, that they were more God-fearing days. They are wrong on every single count, including the notion that people in those times were more moral or more God-fearing than they are today. Because these people are in power, other people, including the sons and daughters of those currently in power, will live shorter, less prosperous, and less healthy lives.

It is the job of Democrats, short-term, to help those Republicans who believe in the importance of the living Constitution and the right to pray to the living God -- to insure that the United States preserves them both, and keeps damage from the political tsunami to follow to a minimum.

It is the job of Democrats, long-term, to ignore those who say that it is passe to support a Democratic Party whose primary purpose is to help working Americans work in dignity, and to help more-and-more people realize the American Dream.

If the Republican Party is stuck in 1863, if it stuck in 1929, the Democratic Party can surely be stuck in 1964.

My own wrinkle, and there is nothing new to it, although it is rare in today's Democratic Party, and which comes across more clearly in other things I have written in 2004 , is that the American promise of freedom, as set forth in the Constitution, in the Declaration of Independence, in the Gettysburg Address, in the Four Freedoms, is exceptional.

Freedom is, as George Bush likes to say, God's gift to everyone.

American Freedom, as set forth in the Constitution, and lived in this New Jerusalem, is not. It takes muscle to preserve it, and people living elsewhere simply do not get it, and cannot get it unless they are living here. A Democratic Party that is not taking its cues from the American Experience, and the American Experience only, a Democratic Party that turns a blind-eye to the nature of American Exceptionalism, the American Exceptionalism has a radically liberal view of the freedom of the working person to speak, read, pray, travel, and yes, to defend their own property, and maintain their own privacy, as he or she chooses, is going to find that America will turn a blind eye to it.