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| Mark West |
In his own perverse way, George W. Bush has indeed proven to be a “uniter, not a divider.” The evidence of this, in the days coming up to the first caucuses, is that even the mainstream Republican candidates are united. They’re talking about the necessity of health-care reform and other progressive programs that Bush has staunchly opposed.
Even Mitt Romney. Now, I should be clear that I am no fan of Mitt Romney. He’s precisely the sort of big-business, tax-the-poor Republican that I used to think was the worst thing that could happen to America — that is, before the Bush II administration demonstrated that out-and-out insanity trumped bad policy every time. But, when he was governor of Massachusetts, he worked to institute a mandatory insurance plan for everyone in the state. It wasn’t the sort of single-payer plan that we really need and that most first-world citizens insist upon as a right; but it’s better than nothing, and is at least a first step.
Most of the Republican candidates, in fact, acknowledge that there is a
crisis in the health care system in the United States. They’re right,
of course, but this is a startling turnabout from the blithe denials of
the current occupant of the White House.
Much the same is true of global warming. In a recent Republican debate,
when the candidates were asked to raise their hands if they “believed
in global warming,” the majority complied. Mike Huckabee, for example,
thinks it might be “overblown,” whatever that might mean, but still
concedes that environmental stewardship is a duty imposed on us by
Scripture. Romney, when quizzed by Katie Couric, described it as a
global problem, which is at least an acknowledgment that it is a
problem. And John McCain has been to the arctic regions, and says he
thus knows that global warming is real.
The irrationality of the Laffer curve, that great boondoggle of
Reagan-era economics, has also become apparent to the majority of
Americans and to the Republican candidates. Reagan, and both Bush
presidents, seemed to believe that cutting taxes on the rich led to
greater prosperity for all. Middle America knows better, and now, so do
the Republican candidates. John McCain, for example, is for tax cuts —
so long as they are balanced by spending cuts. When he said that in a
recent Republican debate, no one piped up to say that the Gipper didn’t
see it that way.
George Bush has also taught the American public another salutary
lesson. As Cal Thomas — that grumpy old man of right-wing commentators
— said last week in his column, there is no hereditary right to office
in the United States. Thomas, of course, was speaking of Hillary
Clinton; but the same holds for George W. Bush, and one can scarcely
imagine that Cal, and the public as a whole, doesn’t agree.
This, then, is the true genius of American democracy. No matter how
disastrous a president might be, no matter how likely he is to be
remembered in the dreary pantheon of Coolidge and Harding and Andrew
Johnson, he can at least aspire to be a force for unity — if only by
teaching the American public what it does not want.
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Mark West is a professor of mass communications at UNC Asheville.
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