After the State of the Union address and the lackluster Democratic response, I found myself watching a focus group organized by Republican pollster Frank Luntz in response to Bush's address. Luntz asked the group to use two words to describe Bush's speech. That's easy, I thought: "evil" and "scary." I guess that's why I'm never picked for these focus groups.
"Brave, courageous," said a well-dressed man in his 30's.
"Inspirational, powerful," said an older woman.
To these individuals, Bush's leadership seemed to remind them of Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln. When I think of the Bush administration, however, the name that pops into my mind is quite different: Gollum.
For those of you unfamiliar with the second Lord of the Rings movie, Gollum is a small, wily creature suffering from a multiple personality disorder. One minute he hates something; the next minute he loves it. All the while, he's after the magical ring, his "precious." How does this apply to Bush? Well, take affirmative action, for instance:
"We hates affirmative action! We hates it! We must kill it!"
This, of course, was his stance regarding the University of Michigan's program to help minority applicants. But Bush's stance on affirmative action for the privileged children of Ivy League graduates (of which Bush and I are both members) is different. In that case:
"No! We likes affirmative action! Affirmative action is nice to us!"
The plan Bush promotes as an alternative to the Michigan program is the plan currently used in California, Florida and Texas: guaranteed admission into these states' respective state schools for the top percentile (that percentile varies from state to state) of students at each high school. Hypothetically, this would benefit students at majority-minority high schools, ensuring that a certain percentage from each of those schools would gain admission. According to a recently released study from researchers at Harvard, however, this system simply doesn't work. The students accepted by these plans, the study found, would have gained admission anyway.
And then there's his first round of tax cuts, passed in 2001:
"We likes it," he said. "The economy's good, so we can afford it!" Then the economy went bad.
We needs it!" he said. "The economy's bad, so we needs it!" Hmmm.
It's also interesting to note the cynicism with which Dubya trumpeted his "No Child Left Behind" education bill (Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean calls it the "No School Board Left Standing Act").
Here is Bush talking about it: "We likes it! We needs it! We wants to fund 40 percent of national average for low-income students. We wants to expand services for 130,000 homeless children!"
Here is Bush in action:
"We hates it. We will freeze the part about the homeless children, and 8,000 fewer of these children will receive services because of inflation. And you know the whole part about how we said we likes to spend $5.65 billion more in Title I funding? We hates to admit that we lied through our unelected teeth. We actually are going to spend only $1 billion more and most of that will come from cuts in other programs. Sorry, kiddos."
On tax cuts for rich people who don't need them, however, Bush has no Gollum-like inner conflict:
"We likes tax cuts!"
"Yes! We likes them very much!"
Of course, Bush demonstrates his Gollum-like tendencies in the area of foreign policy, as well. You are either with us or you are with the terrorists, unless you are Saudi Arabia, in which case you can be with both. You have to crack down on terrorism if you are Yasser Arafat, but you are "a man of peace" if you are General Ariel Sharon.
And when it comes to Iraq, Bush is willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that we become involved in an awful, prolonged war that will inflame the Middle East, kill thousands of civilians and wreak havoc on any attempts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Here, Gollum is honest where Bush will never be:
"My precious," he says. "My precious!"
Bush won't say the word out loud, but Gollum cries out for it: "My precious!"
Bush will not discuss his precious.
North Korea sure is lucky that it doesn't have oil.
