If the United Nations is often viewed as misguided and irrelevant in world politics, then Liberal-minded bloggers and media members may be their equivalent! Why? Because their stubborn, obsessive pursuit of ghosts and moot arguments when it comes to the Bush Administration has long since registered a collective shrug from the arena of public opinion, and they are too blinded by their hatred of “Dubya” to see it!

From the “Bush lied about Saddam” camp, to the lost souls still barking about how Bush’s presidency is illegitimate, these electronic town criers continue to push “revelations” that carry no more weight with the general public than your local street corner prophet. But what really is the goal of those making these accusations? Is it simply to seek acknowledgement from those of the opposing ideology that there is truth to their arguments, or do they wish to build momentum toward an uneasiness with, and distrust of, Bush by the voting public so that sweeping changes can occur next fall, with the ushering in of a Democratic presidency?

I’ll go out on a short limb here and assume it is the latter choice.

If so, then why don’t those in the Liberal blogosphere focus on matters that actually resonate with those whom they wish to influence? After months of daily hashing and rehashing of statements, quotes, reports, allegations, and investigations from political figures and organizations, what do we really know about how the ramp up to war came to pass? Despite what the most impassioned anti-Bush bloggers want to push as “facts”, the worst that can definitely be pinned on him is that his Administration took a collective assessment of intelligence information that would, at best, indicate a plausible likelihood that Iraq still had some active weapons programs and/or unaccounted-for WMD, and then stated this “likelihood” as a certainty to the rest of the world, to bolster the “WMD broker/user” rationale for quicker action in removing Saddam from power.

The problem is, that regardless of whether some people want to argue that this was an outright lie, an immoral distortion, a calculated assumption based upon inconclusive data, or an overstatement of the facts, this issue isn’t, and hasn’t been, of any real importance with the general US public for some time now! Even I thought that if Bush can’t prove at least a dormant network of weapon development existed, that he would feel the wrath of public anger. But now I know he won’t (at least, for that reason).

Most polls still have shown a fairly consistent majority (around 60%) of the public typically feels that the war itself was justified, if simply to remove Saddam’s regime from power. Where the Bush Administration is actually getting eroding support is on the question of how much continued military and monetary commitment the US should make in Iraq. The more Bush’s opponents chase the “pre-war justification” ghosts endlessly, the more they help Bush deflect attention from the post-war challenges with which he is struggling. And, although it’s a less sexy topic, the current jobless recovery that is happening under Bush’s watch is a key negative influencer on the voting public that the anti-Bush crowd seems uninterested in emphasizing. Nothing gets feet moving into voting booths faster than issues of the wallet. Bush will be at his most vulnerable if the public blames him for the money drain going outside the Country and for the economic lethargy within it.

But the light in the tunnel for Bush and the Republican Party is that public opinion is still not being effectively galvanized to those weaknesses, either by Liberal opinion-makers or by any truly viable, dynamic, consensus-building Democratic candidate. So, go ahead Bush haters. Keep chasing the fruitless “Bush lied” stories. The only thing that will topple him is the political Perfect Storm next summer of a lack of significant progress in Iraq, a stalled economic recovery, and the emergence of a Democratic candidate who isn’t too scary for the moderate swing voters to embrace.

This entry was posted by Craig on Tuesday, October 7th, 2003 at 8:41 pm and is filed under george_w_bush. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.