[Mb-civic] End of the Bush Era - E. J. Dionne - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

End of the Bush Era

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005; Page A27

The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize 
that, the better for them -- and the country.

Recent months, and especially the past two weeks, have brought home to a 
steadily growing majority of Americans the truth that President Bush's 
government doesn't work. His policies are failing, his approach to 
leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has 
produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not 
go on like this.

The Bush Era did not begin when he took office, or even with the 
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It began on Sept. 14, 2001, when 
Bush declared at the World Trade Center site: "I can hear you. The rest 
of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down 
will hear all of us soon." Bush was, indeed, skilled in identifying 
enemies and rallying a nation already disposed to action. He failed to 
realize after Sept. 11 that it was not we who were lucky to have him as 
a leader, but he who was lucky to be president of a great country that 
understood the importance of standing together in the face of a grave 
foreign threat. Very nearly all of us rallied behind him.

If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national 
unity, as he seemed to shortly after Sept. 11, the country would never 
have become so polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of 
narrowly ideological policies and an extreme partisanship. He pushed for 
more tax cuts for his wealthiest supporters and shamelessly used 
relatively modest details in the bill creating a Department of Homeland 
Security as partisan cudgels in the 2002 elections.

He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a war in 
Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United 
States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job 
through. The president assumed things would turn out fine, on the basis 
of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking 
through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration's 
strong suits.

And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first 
toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic 
moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had 
by then penetrated the country's consciousness. Yesterday's resignation 
of FEMA Director Michael Brown put an exclamation point on the failure.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/12/AR2005091201433.html?nav=hcmodule
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