Blog For Arizona

Bushie Brain Sushi

A look inside the weltanschauung of the Bush Administration requires you to look no further than the top of your nigiri. The Bushies views on salmon in the Northwest clearly demonstrate their lack of any political principles beyond the gathering of campaign funds and the courting of self-interested votes. The Bush Administration is a political machine animated solely by expediency.

Take first Karl Rove's influence over the administration's position on the Klamath River of Oregon. Rove led the administration to favor farmers over fish, to the point of suborning of the Interior department's internal decision-making process, for partisan advantage. The result: farmers got the water diversion they sought, and the salmon died in droves.



Contrast that with, the administration's approach in Washington state, where they seek to tread a line between industrial interests who want cheap hyro-electrical energy and those who depend upon, and are concerned about, salmon populations. In order to have any hope of carrying Washington in 2004 the Bush administration must walk a careful line between interests groups neither of whom they can satisfy or alienate. The result is a typical Bushie suspension of realty; an insistence that there can be compromise between incompatible goals; the generation of maximum hydroelectric power from the state's dams, and the preservation of the spawning habitats of an already declining salmon population.

Every administration must respond to the needs and wishes of local constituencies to win elections and help their party; I haven't any quarrel with that. But the Bush administration subordinates every principle to political expediency. They do not even try to educate or convince anybody to pursue interests greater than their own. They simply bend any rule, corrupt every decision-making process, and pull out all the stops, to ensure that policy always coincides with political expediency.

That is why the Bush administration must go; no good can come of leadership whose vision of national purpose consists simply of giving way to the highest bidder. Leadership of America in this time of change, challenge, and great opportunity must project a robust vision of our future. A real leader challenges people, educates them, and motivates them to build a better nation. Leadership that simply appeases whomever shouts the loudest or opens their wallets the widest ensures the stagnation of our economy, a growing polarization of our people, and the mediocrity of America.

There is only one person in the race for the Presidency capable of challenging America is such a way. Only one with the spine and the honesty to tell America what's what. Only one who is truly a leader, not a weathervane, a relic, a tyro, a doppleganger, a cypher, a panderer, a jester, a token, or a puppet (guess which candidate each term refers to). And that person will to be our next President.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 8/23/2003 10:40:00 PM