La Shawn Barber reminds us that it is a year since George W. Bush was re-elected
Nine percent of voting D.C. residents voted for Bush, but I didn’t see any that day, judging from the faces of people on the street. I didn’t see one smile the whole day other than the one I saw in the mirror when I powdered my nose.
George Bush can’t be all men to all people. He’s only one man, doing what he thinks is best, I suppose. I hate his amnesty-for-illegal-aliens plan, but I’m glad he’s in the White House screwing up instead of John Kerry.
She’s been pretty hard on Bush of late, but I wasn’t surprised to hear her re-iterating her support for him — or at least, her continuing preference for Bush over the available alternative. “He might be messing stuff up, but he’s messing it up from the right side of the fence,” is how I’d paraphrase her position.
That might sound perjorative, but it isn’t how I mean it. In many ways, I feel exactly the same way about Blair’s government. The latest events in the life of what is beginning to look like a government losing it’s grip — the resignation of David Blunkett and the Commons rebellion over anti-terror legislation have done nothing to inspire confidence in the Prime Minister.
I remember well the euphoria on Blair’s first election victory in 1997. The end of Tory sleaze! A new era! It’s hard to feel anything like that level of enthusiasm now, for although Blair’s government has undoubtedly achieved many things — their record on the economy is unarguably commendable — he has become a Prime Minister it is hard to trust. The Iraq war and all that surrounds it is just the largest of a whole set of circumstances about which he has been economical with the actualité.
So do I want him gone? Yes, but… You see, I may not support Blair, but I support the Tories even less. The prospect of even the thought of the merest possibility of the Tories getting back into power is too dreadful to contemplate.
Blair and his government might be messing stuff up. But at least they’re messing it up from the right side of the fence.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Gord 11.03.05 at 2:21 pm
Thanks for this Richard. Here in Canada we have much the same type of problem. THe Liberals (who have been in government since 1993) have been proven to have been involved in a kickback scandal using government money–and there are other signs of arrogance and entitlement from being uncontested for too long. They do need to have a turn on the opposition benches. BUT… THere is no party that has a chance of winning. THe closest are our Conservatives, a party that has stepped far far away from the Progressive that used to be part of their name to appease the furthest tip of the right wing.
A no win situation all told.
Wood 11.03.05 at 4:38 pm
I agree. Blair may not be great, but things have actually got better since 1997. Slightly, maybe, and not as muich as we wanted… but they have.
Mike 11.03.05 at 8:04 pm
An extremely honest and thought-provoking post, Richard. I’m with you all the way on this one. What we have to ask now, however, is what happened to the fence?
Mark Byron 11.03.05 at 10:11 pm
Blair seems to be a good fit for the UK; a bit to my left and a bit to your right. He seems to be living up to the clippings that he came in with, a Bill Clinton that keeps his pants on (except with Cherie); he’s even improved on that by having more courage on the international stage than Clinton had.
Even good administrations have a bad apple or two, especially if they’ve been in office for almost a decade; the longer they’re in, the longer they have to get sloppy and get tempted to do something shady. Over here, Carter, Reagan and Dubya were/are pretty much straight-arrows, but they all had scandals in their midst.
Hang in there a bit; Gordon Brown’s slated to take over in a year or two, and he’s a bit more towards where you’re at.