1 Boring Old Man

• After the planes crashed into the Twin Trade Towers in New York, Bush declared a War on Terror. He added, "either you’re with us or against us" referring to countries that harbored Terrorist Organizations. In retrospect, he should have seen it coming. We all know that now. But "hindsight is 20/20" we always say. And, he was a rookie. We let him off the hook for that one.
• Next, he went to war with Afghanistan. That was fine. The Taliban had given al Qaeda refuge. He didn’t catch Bin Laden and he didn’t consolidate his gains in Afghanistan. In fact, he seemed to forget about both the Taliban and al Qaeda as time passed.
• Then he began to escalate his demands that Iraq come clean about Weapons of Mass Destruction. He went to the U.N. Sabers rattled all over Washington. The U.N. was exhorted to send in Inspectors. The United States of America meant business! Saddam Hussein wasn’t going to get away with his sheenanigans ever again! Up to this point, what he was doing was fine., and he had Hussein on the run. The Inspectors went to Iraq and didn’t find anything. Bush didn’t believe them.

Now comes the error. Instead of continuing to press in the U.N., he decided to go to war and blitzed America, our Congress, and the World with a relentless campaign for war. Out came the Four Horseman of the Apocolypse [Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell]. So convinced was Bush of his rightness that he [or someone] fudged the evidence [some would say "fabricated"] to strengthen his campaign.

• No one faults him for being skeptical about Hussein. As Bush brilliantly observed, "Hussein was a bad man." He could have continued the pressure in the U.N. He could have resumed flights over Iraq and if they shot at us, made careful air strikes. He could have insured our safety, put  the rest of the Middle East on notice, and focused on the Taliban and al Qaeda. We all know that now.

Here we go again. Bush has ignored the Mortgage Crisis from it’s inception. It’s roots are in several pieces of legislation passed immediately prior to his coming into office by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democrat President under siege. Both were at fault [Congress and the Executive]. Almost from the start of the Bush Administration, Wall Street changed the rules on Mortgages and went on a lending spree. We all knew about it, but the money was flowing and the possibility of collapse was ignored. As the coming Crisis became apparent, the Bush Administration ignored it. They were too busy dealing with their last mistake – the Iraq War.

Now, in response to a crisis, all of a sudden, the Bush Administration wants us to make a dramatic and expensive intervention – immediately. The Horsemen are riding again. [this time it’s Cheney, Paulson, and Bernanke]. Instead of carefully weighing the options, intervening only enough to handle the emergency, sticking with the problem until a solution or the best-case non-solution appears, we’re off and running with a campaign to "act" in a way that we all know is colored by allegiances the Bush Administration has with other priorities – in this case, the very people that caused the problem in the first place.

Our mistake in the Iraq War was to become so caught up in Bush’s solution that the only choice was to either go along with it or do nothing. Now we’re in the same boat. In both situations, what we need to realize is that George Bush doesn’t know when or how to recommend "action." And, in spite of his claims, he is "decider-challenged" – a modern "Chicken-Little." We are like a sailboat flying along in the wind with either no one or a madman at the helm. So, Congress is going to have to carry the executive function of our government until we get a captain. What we did in the build-up to the Iraq War was a mammoth mistake. Fortunately, people are wise to the similarities between this precipitous campaign and the lead-up to the Iraq War. On the other side of the coin, Congress is still in its traditional reactive mode. Neither candidate can take the helm at this point because any solution is going to be painful and might jepardize the candidacy. Since we have no rational "Executive," this unwanted and unfamiliar task falls to the Congress for three or four months. So far, Senator Dodd seems to be emerging as the more rational voice, though he too is still caught up in the BushCo windstorm…

• Ignore Bush and Cheney. They don’t know what to do.
• Recognize that in its current form, this is an insoluble problem. Only do what has to be done until the problem takes a form that leads to something that seems like a genuine solution.
• Don’t further run up the National Debt if possible. We are going to need emergency funds to respond to the fallout from this crisis.
• Elect Obama/Biden. They may be overly cautious, but McCain/Palin are just not up to the task. McCain is a big part of the deregulation problem that underlies this whole mess.
• Get out of Iraq!