Post in Which I Come Off Like An Elitist Jerk

This is a link to an article from Rochester's NBC station. Kind of an odd link, but it was the only place where I could find documentation of a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll that indicates that nearly half of Americans surveyed (49%) seem to think the country is better off under Bush than it was under Clinton. This is, to me, a rather shocking statistic, like the number of Americans who thought Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were intimately linked, or the number who think we've already discovered WMDs. And it shocks me so much that I'm really at a loss to explain it.

I know people who don't think like myself, who are closer to normal, perhaps. I know that there are people that are decent, intelligent, and vote Republican. I think that's strange, but I can comprehend it. But what I can't comprehend is how anything but a clueless or especially wealthy minority could think we're better off now than under Clinton.

I'll speak for myself, and how I feel. Security? Do I feel more secure now than 3 years ago? Hell no! I haven't felt safe since September 11th. At that point in time, I realized that there are two groups who want to end my way of life, that one of those groups was the loose association of Islamofascist terrorists under bin Laden's umbrella, and the other is the association of rightist Republicans who run this country. The first wants me to burn in flames and the second wants to turn this country into a pale shadow of itself. While I fear the long term damage the current regime is doing to this country, I feel that Al Qaeda's threat more palpably. While it is currently in a somewhat weakened, disordered state, it would not require the kind of intricate operational order that made 9/11 possible to put the US into a state of true terror. A truck bombing at a shopping mall or sporting event could do that, a dirty bomb in downtown NY would certainly do so. And I don't feel like our government has done enough to prevent that from happening. We haven't captured bin Laden, and we let much of Al Qaeda's organization escape in Tora Bora. We haven't properly funded and trained first responders with federal money, and this recession has crippled the states' ability to do so. We haven't secured our ports.

Economic security: Come on. When I was entering college, people were entering the workforce with my skill set, and finding jobs that fit that skill set. They were making good money too. Since I've graduated, I've been unemployed or underemployed every step of the way. I've had to fight like hell to get jobs that didn't pay enough to live on. I've sent resumes off to any company who advertised anything like my skill set. Also, if I were trying to support myself by making and selling artwork, which I briefly considered, I would likewise be up a creek. The art world is very sensitive to macroeconomic shifts, and it tends to ride high when the economy is doing so as a whole. Needless to say, the art world is deflated, even relative to the past couple years. This economy has also, apparently, lost something like 3 million jobs since Bush took office. This does not take into account the slow but steady increase in US population. Millions of Americans have seen their investment portfolios shrink in value since January, 2001, including many people's college and retirement funds. The government has been running significant deficits, which are, most economists agree, a weight on the economy, along with our rising national debt. So, yeah, I don't feel any more economically secure.

Has Bush changed the tone of America? I should say he has, although much of the change of tone is not his fault. Personally, I've alway felt a bit marginalized, but I have never felt as excluded from my own country as I have in the past 2 years. I'm, as far as I can tell, a few hairs left of center politically, maybe more. But I have always, since my Reagan-era childhood, mistrusted the Republicans and their agenda. I mistrusted the Republican party's pandering to the Christian Right, I mistrusted their aggressive bull-in-a-china-closet foreign policy, with its tendency to escalate crises and prop up rightist dictatorships. I mistrusted their total lack of compassion, their falseness.

Since 9/11, Bush has not merely been given a free pass, by the press and others, but he's been lionized just for being president. 9/11, the worst thing to happen to America in my lifetime, has been the best thing to ever happen to Bush. It has given him and and his friends license to demonize all opposition as traitors. People like myself, people who can see through Bush's essential phoniness, people who mistrust the Republican agenda and don't like being lied to, have been made to feel like thought criminals. People who refused to accept the poorly-thought out Iraq war were objectively pro-Saddam, or perhaps just as cowardly the supposedly cowardly French. Bush may not be 100% behind the fact that there's an atmosphere of almost fascistic conformism in the air, but he has done nothing to better the situation.

Is Bush a better leader than Clinton was? My response is going to be ideologically biased. Of course I think Clinton was a better leader. He was an eloquent speaker, he improved America in palpable ways during his two terms, and he did many positive things on the international front. He was also possibly a more polarizing figure, and much of his presidency was bogged down by pseudoscandals and hard driving attempts to destroy him. So I think he was a better leader, but not an excellent leader. An excellent leader would have more effectively dealt with the opposition. Bush is very good when it comes to dealing with the opposition, but that's about it. He has been a failure on the domestic front. His primary successes have been the passing of several utterly unhelpful tax cuts. He has been a disaster on the international front as well. He's weakened the international system by abrogating treaties and abusing the United Nations. He's escalated the crisis in North Korea with his strident rhetoric and rash behavior. I think he's a downright lousy leader.

So my question, the one that paints me as an elitist jerk, is what the hell is wrong with 49% of Americans? Do people look at Bush in cowboy boots and an aw, shucks expression and think, "oh, he's just folks." Do they see him in a codpiece on an aircraft carrier and think he's so virile, he has to be good? Do they see him acting sanctimoniously and talking about prayer and think he's areal Christian, unlike that adulterer Clinton? Do they see that Mission Accomplished banner and think that defeating Iraq is so great it mitigates the fact that our economy is in the dumper? Or do they just have such short memories that they forget what it was like to have peace, prosperity, and a president who lied about oral sex instead of weapons of mass destruction?