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BUSH WOULD RATHER PLAY VIDEO GAMES WHILE ROVE MANIPULATES PUBLIC FEAR

By Bill Gallagher

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." -- President Franklin D. Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933.

DETROIT -- Roosevelt spoke to a nation in despair and in the depths of economic depression. He urged the people to overcome the fear that gripped them and show resolve against "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes efforts to convert retreat into advance."

Roosevelt said, "Our greatest primary task is to put people to work." Rather than let fear rule, the nation had to address the problem. Fear was not something to be used for political advantage.

As President George W. Bush's re-election campaign swings into full throttle, the Republican mantra is: "The only thing we have is fear." That is the key to their political strategy and it most likely will work.

The fear of terrorism is too tempting a ploy for the president's "brain," Karl Rove, to resist. In the Bush administration, there are no policies. There is no such thing as a domestic or foreign agenda.

Everything is politically driven, and policy, as Karl Rove crafts it, is simply an instrument to drive toward the overriding political goal -- power and keeping it to serve the interests of the administration's corporate sponsors and for the further enrichment of America's economic elite at the expense of average working Americans.

Rove directs his man Bush like no other president in American history has been ordered about by an ostensible subordinate.

Rove thinks. Bush acts. Rove is politically astute and clever. The president is intellectually lazy, and would just as soon pump iron and play video games and let others write the script.

Rove does not blush at all from exploiting the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks for political purposes and playing on public fear and insecurity.

In Rove's view -- and consequently the president's -- fear is a good thing. The more the better. A permanent war on terrorism and the image of the vital commander in chief taking on terrorism at every turn is the formula for victory, and that will be the image sold in the campaign.

James Moore, co-author of "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential," sees permanent war and fear as a political gold mine in Rove's crafty hands. "He has great skill at keeping messages simple and accessible. And the message today is the war and the economy are wrapped up in security, that there's unfinished business with the war on terrorism and why would you change the commander in chief in the middle of war? It's a helluva salable message."

And since Rove succeeded in convincing a majority of Americans that the war on terrorism should be fought against the wrong enemy -- Saddam Hussein's Iraq, instead of Osama bin Laden's Saudi-financed al-Qaeda -- then selling the message of Bush as the irreplaceable nemesis of terror should be a piece of cake.

Moore, who's covered Rove's political operation for more than 20 years, says, "The most powerful unelected person in American history led the nation into war to improve George W.'s political prospects."

He wrote in the Los Angeles Times how deeply involved Rove was in driving the choice of war for political gain: "The cause of the war in Iraq was not just about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction or al-Qaeda links to Iraq. Those may have been the stated causes, but every good lie should have a germ of truth. No, this was mostly a product of Rove's prescience. He looked around and saw that the economy was anemic and people were complaining about the president's inability to find Osama bin Laden. ... He convinced the president to connect Hussein to bin Laden, even if the CIA could not."

Speaking to students at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., last week (Rove rarely answers reporters' questions), the Bush administration's political Rasputin got a question from a student who asked how war with Iraq could be justified since the weapons of mass destruction, the stated reason for war, have not been found.

Rove didn't flinch, correcting the bold student. "First of all, it's the battle of Iraq, not the war." That means the war on terrorism will be longer than the Cold War.

After the 87th media report that American forces found conclusive evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq fizzled, I just lost faith. But Karl Rove, like the president an instrument of the religious right, will not allow his faith to be shaken.

He has "absolutely no doubt" that Saddam's weapons -- imminent threats to American existence -- will be discovered in time. I'm sure something will be found, but nothing nearly as threatening as the evidence that Korea has nuclear weapons, evidence Rove persuaded the president not to reveal to Congress while the war on Iraq was debated.

That disturbing fact, however threatening to national security, was "off message" for Karl Rove and was withheld from the Congress and the American people for clearly political purposes.

"It's the economy, stupid." That's what Bill Clinton's James Carville used to say during the 1992 election, when Bush the Elder got thumped in spite of huge popularity following Gulf War I.

The conventional wisdom is that bread-and-butter economic issues will decide the 2004 presidential election. That's what Karl Rove says publicly, therefore it's not to be believed.

The economy will continue to sputter, and the Bushies will go ahead with their single thought about improving the economy -- cut taxes even more.

The big plan will create 1.4 million new jobs. Don't worry. Deficits don't matter.

Spend and borrow, spend and borrow, spend and borrow and things will get better.

We were told the 2001 tax cuts would create a surge of jobs. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is also a world class economist -- the economist the administration fears most. He can add and subtract and tells the unvarnished truth.

Krugman calls the Bush economic plan just what it is -- a "lie" and a "scam" -- and he knows the administration's addiction to "fuzzy math" and the beyond-voodoo claim that growth will eliminate the record deficits brought to us by the president and the Republican Congress.

Krugman notes that there already is a track record for the Bush claim that tax cuts with a breathtaking benefit for the rich produce new jobs. "Of the 2.1 million jobs lost over the past two years, 1.7 (million) vanished after the passage of the 2001 tax cuts."

Krugman knows deficits have consequences, an economic truth the Bush administration denies. "And one day, we'll realize that international investors are treating us like a banana republic -- that they won't finance our trade deficit unless they are paid very high rates of interest."

The unemployed, the underemployed, the uninsured, new college graduates, young families, small businesses, the elderly, and on and on -- they all have real economic fears that George W. Bush is not addressing.

But fear strikes out in one sector of the economy especially benefiting from Bush's world designs -- military contractors.

After his jet landing and flight suit modeling on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, the president headed to Santa Clara, Calif., for a campaign stop at United Defense Industries. (And by the way, the White House now admits it was a big lie that the president had to take a jet because the ship was too far off shore. In fact, it was only 30 miles from San Diego, easily reachable by helicopter. Why did Karl Rove have his flacks lie?)

United Defense Industries makes the Bradley fighting vehicle and the tanks that were so often featured on television reports about the drive to Baghdad. Bush thanked the workers for their products and then made a pitch for his tax cuts. End of story.

But thanks to Tim Shorrock of "The Nation" magazine, it isn't. He points out a crucial fact that no one in the big national media did. United Defense is majority owned and controlled by the Carlyle Group, the secretive international commercial bank in which the president's father, George H.W. Bush, has a financial stake.

Bush the Elder is a paid (he won't say how much) adviser to Carlyle, which has vast military industry holdings. The boys at Carlyle have nothing to fear these days. They never had it so good.

No fear at Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old company, either. The company's no-bid emergency contract with the Pentagon to work on Iraq's oil wells is much bigger in scope and money than previously revealed.

The deal could be worth up to $7 billion and the vice president's old pals may be asked to pump and distribute Iraqi oil. Of course, Cheney's office says he had no role in this whatsoever.

We turn once more to Franklin D. Roosevelt for wisdom. "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."


Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@aol.com.

Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com May 13 2003