Three Way News: London calling: An' you know what they said? Well, some of it was true!

Monday, September 12, 2005

London calling: An' you know what they said? Well, some of it was true!

It has been obvious for quite a few years now that civilized political discourse is pretty hard to come by in the US. Talk radio figures prominently in most people's theory about why this is and it is certainly part of the story. Naming the other sources and making arguments about who is most to blame is a post for another day, but at a meta level I think a lot of it boils down to the lack of commonly accepted neutral sources for information. (In that other post I will lay out an argument that this is to a large extent by design, at least on the part of the right, but as I said that is for another day.) In the mean time I like to think that The Economist is about as close as we come these days to that neutral source that both left and right can agree on. Now neutral does not mean unbiased and The Economist's bias is pretty obvious, but they are almost never unfair in the way that, say, FOX News, or even Michael Moore, is unfair. And since their bias sometimes, tho certainly not always, leads them to be a little more symnpathetic to the Republican party than it deserves I am always happy to see them be critical of Republicans and their policies. Bottom line? When The Economist says the Republicans suck, they should just go ahead and admit they suck. Like now.

EVEN America's many enemies around the world tend to accord it respect. It might be arrogant, overbearing and insensitive—but, by God, it can get things done.
Since Hurricane Katrina, the world's view of America has changed. The disaster has exposed some shocking truths about the place: the bitterness of its sharp racial divide, the abandonment of the dispossessed, the weakness of critical infrastructure. But the most astonishing and most shaming revelation has been of its government's failure to bring succour to its people at their time of greatest need.
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Local government must shoulder some of the blame.
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Still, Washington is mostly at fault. The responsibility for mobilising the response to a disaster lies squarely with the federal government. And the responsibility for galvanising the federal government lies squarely with the president.
The administration's initial response recalled Donald Rumsfeld's reaction to the anarchy in Iraq: stuff happens. George Bush was listless and confused. Dick Cheney, the vice-president, remained on holiday in Wyoming. Condoleezza Rice, the highest ranking black in the country, saw a Broadway show, “Spamalot”, while New Orleans's poor looked out at the floodwaters. Mr Bush then added disingenuity to leaden-footedness, declaring that nobody had anticipated the breaching of the levees—even though people have been worrying about the possibility for years and an official report published in 2001 warned of impending disaster. Mr Bush's personal weakness is shaming.

Now talk like this from The Economist will do nothing to dent the lead encased brains of the 20% in this country who think Bush was personally anointed by God. Face it, they'd still think that if they walked in on W snorting coke their 15 year old daughter's bare chest. But as for the rest of the so called conservatives in America, isn't it about time they admitted that a pretty good portion of what the left has been saying about Bush is probably true?