Broder Turns the Corner on Bush
Josh Micah Marshall speaks today of a David Broder column in which Broder points out the obvious about Emperor Bush’s new clothes: Bush’s two albatrosses.
The factors that make President Bush a vulnerable incumbent have almost nothing to do with his opponent, John F. Kerry. They stem directly from two closely linked, high-stakes policy gambles that Bush chose on his own. Neither has worked out as he hoped.
The first gamble was the decision to attack Iraq; the second, to avoid paying for the war. The rationale for the first decision was to remove the threat of a hostile dictator armed with weapons of mass destruction. The weapons were never found. The rationale for the second decision — the determination to keep cutting taxes in the face of far higher spending for Iraq and the war on terrorism — was to stimulate the American economy and end the drought of jobs. The deficits have accumulated, but the jobs have still not come back.
Marshall’s commentary on Broder is basically to wonder how long it will take before the “conventional wisdom” represented by Broder’s analysis takes hold in the media.
