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Hail to the Chief: President Bush, the Strutting Squanderer

My wife, Nan, is a very public-spirited person and also a very good piano player. She indulges in her fancies by playing the piano in many of our neighborhood senior residential centers, entertaining the folks. In doing that, she routinely plays many familiar patriotic songs — “America, the Beautiful,” “Yankee Doodle,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the like.

I always drive her and tag along to these performances. I act as a chauffer and handyman. In that capacity, I recently witnessed a somewhat surprising (to me) request to my wife. A lady in a wheelchair wheeled up to Nan, at the conclusion of her playing, and requested that she not play so many patriotic songs.

The woman explained that she had been a Navy nurse for more than three years with the Pacific fleet in World War II. And because of that experience she now hated what was, to her, a false evoking of patriotism brought on by these songs. She said they were being used as a cover to elicit support for the president’s Iraq war. She said the country’s involvement there was highly questionable and was not to this country’s necessity or advantage.

It may be that the Navy nurse had something there, though it’s pretty late for the U.S. now to completely withdraw from that developing quagmire in Iraq. The nurse’s reaction, however, does point up how President Bush has shamelessly squandered both the nation’s international goodwill and the nation’s budget in pursuing his extremist goals.

George W. Bush campaigned as a “compassionate” moderate Republican anxious to work with both parties. Yet his policies are the most right-wing radical, essentially freezing out even any moderate Democrats on most issues. He seems devoted to overturning the Roosevelt New Deal programs of more than one-half century ago.

In order to succeed, Bush has to tell untruths, he has to deceive. The past deceptions are covered by new deceptions, and all of these are coming to haunt the president. Before the Iraq war, the American public was lulled with the idea that oil-rich Iraq, after the removal of Saddam Hussein, would pay its own way through oil income. According to the press, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz predicted oil revenue “could bring in between $50 billion and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years.”

Obviously this was way off the mark. The cost of occupation and infrastructure rebuilding initially was far, far too low. And even modest revenue from the continually sabotaged oil fields is becoming hard to come by. Whether through ignorance or being deliberately low in estimates, these estimates were very wrong.

The president has now informed the nation that there will be a need for an additional $85 billion to even see this year through. In Iraq, our troops alone are costing the nation $1 billion a week. And the president is asking the previously spurned United Nations for help to bail out the United States.

What with all this “unanticipated” spending, coupled with the massive tax cut for the wealthy championed by Bush also on the books, one would think the president would call for a rollback of that tax cut. If not, whom will the monies come from to fund prescription drug benefits for seniors?

Will our boomer generation inherit a broke United States just as they are poised to retire? Will Bush be known as the president who squandered the nation’s resources and bankrupted the United States in pursuit of a radical right-wing delusion to turn back history to pre-FDR days?

And the Republicans want to recall Gov. Gray Davis and re-elect Bush, the ultimate budget destroyer? Curiouser and curiouser, Alice in Wonderland would say.

Ted Ruhig is well-known in Sacramento for his tireless advocacy for proposals designed to help seniors live long, happy, full lives. He has held leadership roles in several advocacy groups and on government advisory boards. Ruhig once sued the California Department of Aging for age discrimination, and won!

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