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![]() Bill Orton (D-Long Beach) |
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January 27, 2003 THE POLITICAL SUPERBOWL by Bill Orton The proximity of a lopsided Super Bowl to its political equivalent -- a seemingly triumphant State of the Union address -- makes me wonder whether we are halfway through the presidency of George W. Bush, or merely pausing to reflect on the first quarter of an unsatisfying blowout. Most fans of both sports -- football and politics -- want to come out on top, but prefer an even matchup where each team possess a powerful offense and puts up a tenacious defense. Regretably, in the last two years, my party has lost its way on the field and despite a few solid defensive plays, we've thrown no touchdowns, score few points and done little to stop the unrelenting assault of the President's team. Because my party nitpicks on defense and our quarterbacks belittle as an offense, it is no wonder that we were buried in the recent political Superbowl games. Bellyaching is no path to a championship. Masterful as our Quarterback in Chief may be in reciting the State of the Union, I am not the first to say that the true measure of our success as a nation rests upon how people are doing here at home. And no matter the words are poured out by pundits, we are -- by so many measures -- not better off today than we were four years ago. Yet, after two years in office, all the President offered on health care and jobs were generalities. No explanation of how to bring about health care for kids or families. And the President's single sentence -- ONE SENTENCE -- on Israeli-Palestinian issue shows that on key issues of foreign policy, America is resorting to throwing the long bomb, impatiently abandoning our longstanding interests and our allies midfield as we go it alone to the endzone in a game of unilateralism. On foreign affairs, which dominated the President's speech, there was far more of a blitz game when finesse. Oh, but if it were merely a game. War is many things, but a game it is not. War is death and devastation and the failure of diplomacy and our brilliant, shining ideals. It seems so clear that war shall arrive like a mauled spring lamb. Few listening to the President could fail but hear his barely hidden growling, thinly veiled threats, and impatience. ("Put it this way... they're not a problem for the United States anymore.") War shall come, for it is what our leader desires, and, as such, let this game tonight give us pause to examine our enemies and the cause of their threat. We face enemies who are driven by revolutionary fervor or irrational paranoia. To take the "Axis of Evil" from last year's game, we face certain victory -- if we fight -- in Iraq, but how can we win the peace as we isolate ourselves from the very community of nations that had so warmly embraced us just one year ago? With North Korea, we've let them get The Bomb, and they're on their way to a full-fledged nuclear strategy. And in Iran, the truth of the matter has it that we should embrace the changes being brought about in that country, rather than to fight it. More importantly, both overseas and at home, is the outright war being waged against the poor of the world. Halfway through, or one period in, whichever it is, Quaterback Bush is clearly not throwing the ball to the little guy: Here at home... -- Poverty rates are again inching up and the gap between rich and poor is widening. Evidence the rise of homelessness among children. Think what you like about adults who are homeless, but kids are absolutely innocent, yet they now constitute one-quarter of the homeless. How wrong is that? -- More kids are going hungry than just two years ago as federal guidelines for school meals are rewritten to take food from the mouths of babes by raising the threshhold to qualify. -- Wefare reform laws still lack the childcare and health insurance provisions that allow for a single mother to both work (often at minimum wage) and also fend for her family. -- Hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost jobs under this President and the longterm unemployed despair of finding work anytime soon. The President responds by shortening the length of stay on federal unemployment benefits, reducing the overall amount an unemployed worker is eligible to receive and putting111111a1 the onus on the individual to beat the odds. We need a Marshall Plan for America, but what we got from the President is pennies on the dollar, for he is saving his quarters for the rich and dimes for the war. We need a national investment bank that matches the money and efforts of our ordinary entrepreneurs... a true investment that goes beyond a limited SBA, beyond capital gains and dividend tax cuts for the rich. We need tax credits that support work, whether its through a dramatic expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit or a new credit to recognize the value of work done by the "stay-at-home" parent in a joint filing household. (Who works harder than the stay-at-home parent?) We need retraining of workers, protection of 401(k) retirement savings plans, specifics on health care.... We got pablum. It isn't enough to simply say that this President doesn't care a lick about ordinary people in America, let alone the poor, although, by any objective measure, that's the case. How could he, for he spends so much time on the one-yard-line of foreign affairs. In our world, as in America, the greatest hope for those seeking to rise from poverty has been the ideals that our nation cherishes, namely that by electing one's own leaders, the people can craft their own destiny. With this little gem, we export our greatest power, for democratic ideals are the most potent weapon in our vast arsenal. In July 1965, Senator Robert F. Kennedy told an audience at the International Police Academy that struggles with communism in the Third World had demonstrated "beyond doubt that our approach to revolutionary wars must be political -- political first, political last, political always. Victory in a revolutionary war is won not by escalation, but by de-escalation." Sadly, Senator Kennedy's lesson seems to be lost on George W. Bush in the same way it was on the last President from Texas. Now, like then, we face rogues and revolutionaries, and our man from Texas combat our enemies with means that are brutish, conventional and, ultimately, ineffective. We are disengaged from America's longstanding world interests. We've stepped back from treaties and alliances. Unlike every American President since Harry Truman, this President seems not to truly care about resolving the conflict between Israelis and Arabs. In his single sentence -- ONE SENTENCE -- on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the President spoke volumes of his disdain for diplomacy and his willingness to look the other way as Ariel Sharon exerts an unbending iron will over the Occupied Territories. It is no surprise, therefore, that a confrontation with the Thug of Bagdad takes higher priority than solving the single most important dispute in the Middle East, arguably the world. We know that Saddam Hussein is a scourge and it is right to press for his regime's emasculation. But in an impatient unilateral charge towards war, do we serve our own interests by telling Iraq that it must obey the Security Council, while we stand ready to defy the U.N. Charter in order to force compliance? Make no mistake, American shall prevail militarily if we go in, but imagine the long and bitter peace that shall follow. Who shall bear the burden of reconstruction? Whose troops shall exercise control over a land that seems unlikely to simply fall into order after Saddam? Unasked by this President in his bully match is how does one snuff the ideas that drive a tyrant like Hussein? Ask any Muslim about Saladin. Most can tell tell you about the great warrior king, the man who led Muslim armies into the Holy Land, who ruled wisely and who battled Richard the Lionheart to a draw in the Third Crusade. A revolutionary hope burns inside the hearts of millions of Muslims, who seek someone like Saladin, that greatest of generals, that wisest of sages. Saddam is certainly no Saladin, but he wishes to be. Smart bombs cannot kill the idea of Saladin. As Senator Kennedy said, "our approach to revolutionary wars must be political." Even our words must be political. Take Iran, for example. A reasonable observer can see that Iran -- the so-called third leg of the "Axis of Evil" -- is in a profound internal crisis, as the strength of the 1979 revolution wanes. More than half of the voters in the last Presidential election in that country were born after the Shah was toppled and Ruholla Khomeini returned from exile. The winner of that election, a moderate, is neck-deep in a battle with the hardliners, as most young people side against the censorship, repression and the lack of freedom. Yet the words "Axis of Evil" ignore the subtle reality and, in a supreme irony, we are emboldening the revolutionaries by our belligerence. We cannot fight against religious revolutionaries with bombs. Respect of religious differences is a better method. Carrying out our national policies with tolerance and respect of these differences will weaken the fervor of the revolutionaries. It will allow us to honestly grapple with the causes of despair -- like poverty, disease, education, resource inequities. Despair is not an orphan, and in our own hemisphere we're on the wrong side of revolution. In Venezuela, the poorest of the poor have grasped to the hope that their electoral system can become their tool to deliver fundamental change in inherently their unequal society. American leaders don't like the proletarian President, Hugo Chavez, principally because his elected government is struggling to reform land and capital systems. We even backed a coup against Chavez, arguably damaging our prestige and weakened the belief that we stand for our democratic ideals. We should talk both sides in Venezuela away from the life-or-death general strike crippling that nation (and, by the way, spiking our gasoline prices). We should accept the right of the Chavez government to dictate their own internal economic policies, knowing full well that the economic shakeout may negatively impact the holdings of some American banks. If we show the poor -- in Venezuela, in Brazil... in America -- that democracy only really belongs to the rich, then we are to blame for the inexorible turn away from the ballot and over to the rages of despair. And, North Korea. In a game of political football, who scores a point when the world's most paranoid, irrational regime suddenly gets The Bomb? For two long years, this President rebuffed a "Sunshine Policy" of negotiations with the North Koreans. Now, says the CIA, North Korea likely has "one or two" nuclear weapons and, if undeterred, will be able to build six or seven more by summer. It is bad enough that we let North Korea get The Bomb, but the greater threat we face is that the regime will build up enough of a stockpile to pose a "nuclear strategy." With six or eight nuclear bombs, North Korea -- or any rogue state -- could throw a few against us, send some to operatives, hold some back and hide others. The uncertainty of taking everything out puts us at risk of being blackmailed. By the President's own admission, Iraq is several years from even joining the nuclear club, let alone posing that sort of strategic threat. But, according to the CIA, North Korea is just six months away from a nuclear strategy. Enough to make you want to punt. If politics were as simple and risk free as the Superbowl, then bring on the blowouts, the fumbles, and the misery of a mismatched game. But as Robert Kennedy (the varsity football letterman at Harvard) knew, politics is more brutal than football, for the consequences are sometimes life and death. The political raiders seem to have fallen to the swashbuckling Texas bucaneer, but don't believe the today's lopsided score. We are a long way from the final whistle. ## Bill Orton, 40, is a writer and historian who lives with his wife and daughter in Seal Beach, California. |