What Will Bush Do Now?

by Daniel Kohanski

I have become concerned in the past days by Bush and Rove's firmly
expressed conviction that, all the polling and other evidence to the
contrary notwitstanding, the Republicans will somehow retain control of
Congress after the upcoming election. It has even been news over here
in Kenya, where the Nation, a national paper, carried a story about how
Bush was upset with his father's worries about disaster (from the Bush
perspective) if the Democrats were to win. Bush lamented that his
father had not checked with him first, as he could have reassured the old man
that it was not going to happen.

It is possible that Bush/Rove have reason to be confident. After all,
voter disenfranchisement, absence of sufficient voting machines, and
outright manipulation of the count saved them the last time (see Robert
Kennedy Jr's analysis of the Ohio 2004 vote), and there are indications
the same thing is about to happen again. There are already stories from
Ohio to California of voters, overwhelmingly Democratic ones, finding
themselves inexplicably removed from the rolls. Also in Ohio, the
Secretary of State, who is running for governor - and trailing badly -
was at last report trying to use the power of his office to have his
opponent declared ineligible to run. The move is almost certain to
backfire - it is already reportedly making Ohioans even more disgusted
with him - but it is indicative of the depths to which the GOP will
sink under Rove's direction.

Nonetheless there are signs that the Rove machine is sputtering. Last
weekend high administration officials, including Bush himself, took to
the airwaves to declaim that, in Bush's own words, "we've never been
stay the course" in Iraq. Really? Once the bloggers stopped falling
over themselves with laughter, they filled the netwaves with countless
examples of Bush saying exactly that, over and over and over. "Stay the
course" was a Rove slogan meant to be held up in contrast to the
Democrats' "cut and run" (though no Democrat has ever said that). Now
it appears to have become, as Nixon's press secretary might have said,
"inoperative."

(Every time I hear "stay the course," I'm reminded of that scene in
Star Wars, where the rebels are attacking the Death Star and one fighter
starts to worry about his flight path. His leader keeps on telling him
"Stay on target!" so the guy does - and gets blown up.)

Also, in order for a voter fraud to succeed, it requires that there be
a small margin, say five percent or so, between the exit polls and the
final count, otherwise it will not be seen as credible and will be
challenged by an increasingly restless and suspicious electorate. The
margins in recent polling are the greatest that have been seen in many
years, in some cases since the start of polling, and much too great for
the election to be manipulated without detection and challenge. All in
all, the Republicans could well be heading for a rout similar to,
perhaps even greater than, the one they perpetrated on the Democrats in
1994, Bush's insistence to the contrary notwithstanding.

It will not sound as odd as it should, then, when I say that I draw
some comfort from Woodward's latest book, "State of Denial," which is, as
the title suggests, essentially a series of interviews in which Bush and
his administration consistently deny the reality of Iraq, and denigrate
anyone who dares describe reality to them. This state of denial has, of
course, cost us immeasurably in blood and treasure and the good will of
the world. But it also suggests a pattern of dealing with the world by
acting as if what one wished for were so, and that same pattern may
well be at work in Bush's refusal to even consider losing control of
Congress. Certainly many in the GOP, especially those up for
reelection, are concerned with the White House's continued insousiance in the face
of what to them is clearly impending doom.

Bush may be putting the best face on things in order to suppress panic
among his followers and thus keep the damage from getting totally out
of hand. But I am more inclined to think that he is behaving as he always
has up until now, which is to imagine a world that conforms to his
desires, and then to insist that this world and the real world are one
and the same.

But if he was able to ignore and wish away reports that all was not as
he wished it to be in Iraq, it will be impossible for him to do so with
the election, should he wake up on November 8th to discover that Harry
Reid is the new Senate majority leader and Nancy Pelosi is about to be
the Speaker of the House. No compliant media, no shielding by
syncophants will be able to keep this truth from him. Thus, what
concerns me more than his ability to steal the election is his
inability to accept such a result.

Several months ago I wrote that I could see no legitimate way the
Republicans could keep control of Congress in the midterms. I was
therefore concerned with the illegitimate ways. While that still
concerns me, I have some hope that the margin of victory will be so
great that any attempt to alter the result will be seen for what it is,
and rejected. But I am convinced, as I wrote before, that Bush will
never accept being held to account. Nor will he accept "adult
supervision," as at least one commentator has recently suggested he
needs. And that is precisely the "disaster" that the elder Bush was
referring to: the prospect of Democrats having the power to "supervise"
the president - that is, to restore the system of checks and balances
set up in the Constitution.

For then they will have the power to find out what has really been
going on, from downplaying terror warnings and misusing intelligence to
no-bid contracts to the prescription giveway to the destruction of New Orleans
to the lack of real protection against terror to ... ad infinitum. What
then might be his plan to escape the wrath of Congress and the country
once they acknowledge the extent of the damage he has done? What
further damage might he do to the Republic in his attempts to wiggle off the
hook, to drag the process out until his term ends and he can run off to
South America? (For those who missed it, Bush recently bought about a
hundred thousand acres in Paraguay.) These are the concerns that
trouble me now.

Dan