Setting Priorities for De-Bushification

(10 am – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Assuming our patented circular firing squad doesn’t wipe out too many of those who would otherwise cast a progressive-leaning vote in the general elections, we Democrats will win the White House come November.  While this is indeed fantastic – and probably the only outcome that will allow for the survival of an intact democracy – in assuming the reins of power, we’ll have only taken the first step in undoing the vast damage that The Decider and his cronies have visited upon our land over the past eight years.

If “change” is to be “the economy, stupid” of this election cycle, then now is the time for us to talk about the changes we’ll need to implement in order to restore our democracy to pre-Bushian levels of functionality.  We must ask ourselves: What putrid laws need to be undone, what emasculated institutions resurrected, which Manchurian Wingnuts fired, so that our nation might leave the 19th century and rejoin our allies in the 21st?

In short, what should be our next president’s priorities as s/he leads the citizenry in its efforts to De-Bushify our mangled government?

A Note on Language for the non-Hyperbolicly Inclined

The similarity of the term “De-Bushification” to the one that describes the president’s efforts to ensure that remnant Saddamist elements are expunged from the Iraqi government is intentional, but should not be construed as a claim that George W. Bush is worse than/the same as Saddam Hussein.   Historical-evaluationwise, however, it would be inappropriate to let the Preznit or his minions off the hook, no matter how noble they felt their intentions – after all, the bar has been set pretty low when the best a leader can claim about his human rights record is that it’s “better than” Saddam’s.  Still, in order to head off at the pass those who would conflate it with advocacy for a violent reordering of government or some other Stalinesque totalitarianism, I ask that “de-bushification” be understood in a political context only – a series of measures to rid our republic of the curse of neocon influence, not unlike the policies with which they once attacked the New Deal – and nothing more.  Similarly, if the word “purge” gets mentioned later on – and it probably will – I ask that it not be taken to carry connotations of machine guns in clearings in Siberian forests, but rather those of its more generic definitions.

The Legislature

Since the challenges of De-Bushification are vast, and extend to all branches of government, I decided the easiest way to approach the issue was in the same order the Founding Fathers sought to do their own De-Georgeifying.  Accordingly, let’s look first at some of the crap that the past couple of Congresses have left on liberty’s doorstep – feel free to prioritize or add your own in the comments, but do keep in mind that even after we get our legislature back in order, we’ve still got two other branches of government that we need to De-Bushify:

‘No Child Left Behind’ Act/ESEA:  Bush’s flagship domestic policy is in the process of destroying the foundations of public education, and has been since its unfortunate passage in 2001.  Personally, I disagree with my union here – I don’t think this turd can be polished to the point that it will ever work with the best interests of kids at its forefront.  De-bushifying education, imho, requires the repeal and scrapping of NCLB, and a firm stance against creeping privatization efforts disguised as “education reform” (q/v. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or “Dem” CO-2 House candidate Jared Polis).

Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001:  Someday, the USA PATRIOT Act may be spoken of in the same tone of voice as the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), the U.S. Espionage Act of 1917, and domestic spying during the 1960s – but only if Bush’s wannabe Enabling Act is recognized for the hysterical piece of unconstitutionality that it is.  An even bigger question might be: who, among those who may assume power, will willingly hand back the tools for creating a totalitarian state?  The pull of the One Ring is considerable, my friend Frodo tells me…

Republican Obstructionism:  If we obtain veto-proof majorities in both houses, should we change the rules so that Republicans are fully cut out of the process, and we can have our way with legislation in the same manner that they did for the first six lamentable years of the Bush Administration?  If 2008 is indeed the death knell of the Republican Party, then should we take advantage of their helplessness and start driving wooden stakes into our fallen foe?  Finally, an ethical quandary/corollary:  To what extent should “they’d have done it to us”-type reasoning play a part regarding bipartisanship in a Congress with a large (enough) Democratic majority?

Our Own Democratic Leadership:  A lot depends on whether or not the election plays out as a mandate on progressive vs. moderate vs. conservative, but if November and beyond do find the results being viewed as a mandate for the good guys, then what is to be done about those who’ve sold us out along the way?  How shall the Ken Salazars, and other Bush appeasers, be regarded?  In a like vein, I’m assuming we’ll run Lieberman out on a rail if we have 60 Dems in the Senate, but what if we don’t manage to score more than 59?  And should Pelosi and Reid retain their leadership positions in the spirit of a united Democratic party, or should they be back-benched in the name of ridding our government of anyone who ever capitulated in the face of a Bush tantrum?

There are plenty more – the Authorization for Use of Military Force (when will Congress cease abrogating its constitutional responsibilities via joint resolution or “war powers” act?); the Kyoto Protocol (can’t you just hear the “but we don’t have a treaty-proof majority” argument already?); and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (screw habeus corpus, anyway) all come to mind – but in the interest of semi-brevity, I’ll leave it to the Gentle Reader and the comments to decide which aspects of our legislative branch need to De-Bushified first.

Breaking!!! “Dignity of the Office of the Presidency” replaces “Rush Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies” as Silliest Oxymoron in the World!

A ‘national disaster’ on the Foreign Front:  George W. Bush has done more than any president in our history to perpetuate the image of the average American as a barely-unilingual, puffed-chest dumbass with little knowledge or concern beyond the range of one’s high school football team (fortunately, Zachary Taylor, who chewed and spat tobacco at public functions, never made a foreign visit).  This image must change – forcibly, clearly, and quickly – as the honeymoon of world opinion will not last long, and we’ll need to put our best foot forward if we are to avoid being forever branded as a bunch of Bush-league incompetents gathered into a government as maladapted for empire as it is for pacifism.  

So, how best to De-Bushify our foreign policy?  A fast redeployment of our troops from Iraq, or a really fast redeployment?  Putting the State Department under the direction of someone who won’t be shopping for shoes as foreign governments rush to pledge assistance to help a disaster-struck American region in a time of need, or is willing to trade the credibility earned over 30 years of military service in order to lie to the United Nations about Winnebagos of Doom?  Or does the problem go even deeper: is the State Department now populated with neocon cells bent on asserting “American exceptionalism” whenever their superiors aren’t looking?  If so, how to we identify such sleepers without descending into our own version of the McCarthy hearings?

This same problem – the presence of Moncia Goodlings and other air-headed (or more sinister) flunkies at all levels of the executive branch – will plague De-Bushifiers in the years to come.  As was seen in the sorta-investigation of partisan corruption at the DoJ, Bushco considered nothing above future political advancement, not even positions that were designed to serve the Constitution free from any type of partisanship.  Who knows how many agencies are headed or primarily staffed by ideological hacks with no other qualification for their position than a particularly groveling kow-tow (think Michael Brown)?  Similarly, how many department-level pieces of tyranny are going to have to be excised from Standard Operating Procedures and inter-office memos?  And where should reorganizing the executive Cabinet-level Departments fall in the overall De-Bushification program?

In a related category, what should cabinet De-Bushifiers do with the Department of Homeland Security?  If we don’t rid ourselves of it, this most wasteful government-expanding boondoggle of all time may well end up a permanent federal money pit, forever siphoning tax revenues away from valuable programs and funneling them toward no-bid contracts awarded long ago to Carlyle Group cronies.  And speaking of incompetently-run boondoggles, should we De-Bushify our airports by abolishing the Transportation Security Administration – seriously, part of their “I Am the TSA” pledge says, “I am the frontline of defense, drawing on my imagination to creatively protect America from harm.”  It’ll be up to us to determine if TSA’s “imagination” and “creativity” have done any more to protect Americans from harm than ensure that all passengers have taken their shoes off before they got x-rayed.

And, of course, there’s the 12 Trillion Dollar Question: How will we ever De-Bushify the economy?  To those who say it can’t be done, history does show that corruption and fiscal mismanagement can be overcome – FDR undoing the neglectful laissez-faireism of Hooverism would be a good example – but it ain’t at all easy.  I’ll leave it to my more fiscally-oriented brothers and sisters to explore the nuts and bolts of how to De-Bush our country’s plummeting currency, confidence, and financial solvency, but it is something that’s going to affect us all.

For most of us, The Enlightenment redefined the Social Contract long, long ago, but conservatives never quite understood the nature of the change.  To them, medieval societal structures, based as they are upon the exercise of raw power, are far easier to understand – and therefore preferable to – a bunch of complicated philosophical observations (many of which were written by, suspiciously, French guys wearing frills and wigs) about the relationship of the state and its sovereign citizens.  Nowhere is this preference more apparent than in our Murder By Spreadsheet-based health care system.  Clearly, the time has come to quit using leeches to treat our sick – only now the bloodsuckers are incredibly powerful, continent-sized, faceless bureaucracies established for no other purpose than to decide who gets to live and who gets to die.  It’s gonna take a lot of salt to get those things off of us…

Arching over all of the De-Bushification of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the question of how the presidency will be restored to a position of honor in the eyes of the American people.  At present, the office is held in the derision that one would expect after 8 years of allowing a spoiled frat boy to play deadly sand-box games with the United States military, or of listening to his petulant sneers whenever his twisted beliefs are challenged – but how does that get undone?  Regardless of how “presidential” our candidates may appear to be, will they hold enough gravitas to re-instill in the American people the respect lost in two terms’ worth of ‘Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream’, or ‘Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?’  It’s a tall order – I sure hope we don’t misunderestimate what may be involved in this aspect of De-Bushification.

Finally, regarding the Constitution’s last section under Article 2: What if there are lead pipes in the White House, and what if drinking the water (and not just being unable to deal with the pressure of the office) is what caused Bush to go insane?  What if the person we elect is similarly afflicted, and decides to inexplicably invade a disarmed country under false pretenses?  Clearly, we didn’t have the balls to impeach someone from the other side when he launched a foolish foreign misadventure that’s turned into a violent quagmire – if the president who crapped upon the Constitution were one of our own, would it be any easier to hold him or her accountable for the crimes committed as part of the crapping?

Blind-but-fully-robed Justice

There’s little we can do about the damage Bush has done to the Supreme Court, except, perhaps, thank our lucky stars that he didn’t shove a 25-year-old Scalia down the throats of our compliant Congresstrati, or that he never managed to foist upon our nation the searing judicial logic of Harriet Miers.  Regrettably, we have only ourselves to blame for this one: any or all of the ideologues ensconced during the Bush administration could- and should have been filibustered, and damn the risk that it might’ve upset a delicate political balance (or whatever the Gang of 14 and the noodlebacks like them set forth as their reason for inaction during the Alito and Roberts confirmation fights).

Knowing who to blame is different from being able to do something about it, however: John Roberts is going to be sitting on that bench for 30 years, and will be handing down asinine decisions based on pre-Brown v. Board logic long after neoconservatism as a movement has assumed its rightful place on the ash-heap of history.  Still, we probably do have a few means to begin the De-Bushification in the judiciary at our disposal – any spring to your mind?

Is Faking a Nationwide Case of Amnesia Even Possible?

Undoing the damage done to our democracy by George W. Bush and his minions is going to take a lot of effort, but even more than that, it’s going to take a population that recognizes what a travesty this presidency has been.  Will it be incumbent upon us to give him the Akhenaton treatment, and try to erase all mention of his presidency from the historical record?  We could spend the next few decades looking at our foreign friends quizzically when they ask about U.S. policy, 2001-2009, asserting that there was no President between Clinton and (Clinton, Edwards, Gravel, Kucinich, or Obama), hoping that sooner or later, they’ll forget this miserable decade, too.

Of course, burying the historical record is not something in which I’m professionally or personally in favor, but historically speaking, the precedents set by Bushco do not bode well for our country.  Usually by the time a civilization starts contending with leaders like Bush – entitled descendents of earlier rulers, with neither the inclination nor the ability to achieve greatness – it’s on the downward end of its historical run.  That’s not to say this is always the case; Rome managed to survive hundreds of years after Caligula and Nero, but by the time it got to the early 300s, it had only a couple of Constantines left in the royal bloodline.  We could be facing a similar issue here: we may have allowed the media to run so far amok that we’re now unable to elect for ourselves the flawed-but-great leaders we’ve been able to produce in the past.

Regardless of who inhabits the Oval Office starting next January, they’ll face the daunting task of ridding Washington of the neocon miasma that has descended upon that alabaster city.  The process of De-Bushification will be long and arduous, and while I believe that the Democratic government we’re about to elect will be up to the job of getting it started, we’ll need to help our representatives figure out which parts of our tarnished credibility need attention first.