After the chaos of the truncated Florida recount and Bush’s one-vote lead in the most important precinct in Florida, there was a lot of talk about how Bush would heal our country, and bring the divided nation together. But even as he took the Oath of Office, Bush’s transition team had hit on a new strategery to divide and conquer. Karl Rove, the boy genius who turned out to be the harbinger of doom for the Republican party, came up with the brilliant strategy that George W. Bush would pander hard to the right. Bush picked ardent conservatives like John Ashcroft and clinically insane people like Donald Rumsfeld to advise him. He quickly moved away from doing anything about global warming and pushed for a quick tax cut for the wealthy.
By May 2001, Bush was adding right-wing ideologues like William Boyle, a former aide to Jesse Helms, to the Federal Courts. And of course, after 9/11, everything changed, insofar as Bush had more ability to try to swing the party rightward.
Bush campaigned on uniting the country, but from day one, he governed as a divider. Ironically, he has united the country against him.
I’m really enjoying this series. Makes me excited for the day when our country is being run by someone who isn’t a petulant child.
Any chance, Jeff, that instead of using ‘ insane’ (in this case ‘clinically’) as a pejorative you could choose other words that fit? (I googled – so far as I know, Rumsfield isn’t clinically insane, either, unless you’ve got a link otherwise) There’s lots of combinations to choose from; you could use something that actually describes him instead of laying his actions in the mental health community’s doorstep as the reason for his moral bankruptcy and deliberate, pie-in-the-sky ineptitude. There’s lots of words to choose from – logically incoherent, morally incompetent, indescribably corrupt, foolish, deliberately obtuse… It’s just next to every time I visit here it seems like someone is using ‘insane’ in leui of mental incompetence and s’a bit of an insult for the rest of us that have to deal with mental health problems. Nothing like seeing some asshole described as ‘insane’ when the general population tars you with the same brush by default.
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I’m really enjoying this series! Please keep up the good work!