There are so many things wrong with the presidency of
George W. Bush that it's hard to know where to start
describing them. His economic mismanagement? His
wartime mistakes? His broken faith on "compassionate conservatism"?
The amazing dream world he seems to inhabit when
describing his policies?
That's why, in our 2004 election issue, we offer a bill of particulars
on Bush's failed presidency. Al From and Bruce Reed examine
President Bush's record in office and find that the facts are solidly
against him. Whether it's making America safer, managing the Iraq
war, shifting the tax burden onto the middle class, or failing to generate
jobs, the man in the Oval Office has proven himself an unacceptable
steward of the nation's future. The president has also helped
drive our politics into a venomous cynicism that betrays his 2000
campaign pledge to be a uniter, not a divider. A New Democrat president
would clean up Bush's mess in Iraq, make the middle class our
engine of growth again, and unite the nation.
It's not only in Iraq and the war on terror that Bush's foreign
policy has failed, writes Will Marshall. Bush's abrasive approach to
the world has undermined today's overarching challenge: to build
a broad international coalition to stem Islamic extremism. Bush's
belligerent swagger and disdain for multilateral negotiation -- and
his unwillingness to do the hard work of engaging the Middle East
peace process -- make him singularly unsuited for the task.
Of course, there's another narrative coursing through the land.
Its mantra is "all's right with the world" and its Dr. Pangloss is
George W. Bush himself. As Ed Kilgore writes, Bush has constructed
a parallel universe -- on the war, on the economy, on
health insurance, and on the federal budget -- in which he gives
himself credit for a glowing performance and promising future.
But it's a distorted picture that is unrecognizable in the real world.
The bill of particulars doesn't end there. Randolph Court shows
how the president is in fact the flip-flopper-in-chief. Anne Kim details the betrayal of his promise of compassionate conservatism.
And, Marshall Wittmann, a longtime supporter of Sen. John
McCain and the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt, tells how,
in 2004, Bush has driven him from the Republican Party.
At this year's Democratic Convention in Boston, the
Democratic Leadership Council convened a panel of leading policy
thinkers to critique the Bush administration and lay out the
key elements of a New Democrat program for returning the economy
to the principles that made it both booming and progressive
in the 1990s. In our special economic report, we excerpt remarks
by three of them: Roger Altman, Robert J. Shapiro, and Gene
Sperling, all architects of the Clintonian economic program that
brought good jobs and prosperity to the country.
Taken together, these essays show that New Democrats are not
merely mad at George W. Bush, but have a better course to offer
the nation. And the voters should know it.
