Republican Approach to Government
November 12th, 2006I’ll bet President Bush is quite upset with Newsweek today as their cover reads, Father Knows Best. While it’s true (at least, in the Bush family’s case), it probably isn’t smart of Newsweek to write such a thing. Heaven forbid the President think he’s being mocked and decide to go back to his Don’t-Mess-With-Austin-Mess-With-Houston! approach to policy and do the opposite of whatever-Daddy-might’ve-done yet again. I, for one, welcome the elder Bush’s new presence in the King’s Court, as it’ll be good for the Boy to learn from his father’s experiences (as his dad, too, had to deal with a feisty Democratic Congress) and how else would Bush learn but from face-to-face interactions with the men involved?
It’s not like he reads newspapers or history books.
Politics are a dirty business where the victor is often guilty of running something over on the road to the capital, but this, in Maryland, is ridiculous.
Observers have been shocked and outraged by two Maryland Republicans’ use of homeless and poor Philadelphians to pass out misleading campaign material at the polls on Election Day. Now it turns out the duo had tried this sort of thing before. This past Tuesday, for $100 and the promise of three meals, the GOP candidates for governor and senator recruited dozens of the least fortunate from Philadelphia’s shelters — all or most of whom were black — to come to Maryland for the day and pass out fliers portraying the two hopefuls as “our choice” for African-American voters. (Steele is black; Ehrlich most definitely is not.)
The tactic was brazenly amoral, but also logistically curious. Why did the candidates go all the way to Philadelphia for homeless people, when there are thousands in Baltimore and nearby Washington, D.C.? If they wanted deniability, why did Ehrlich’s wife — Maryland’s current first lady — meet the buses and pass out hats? It turns out the duo pulled a very similar stunt at least once before, in 2002, according to the New Republic. Then, they pulled homeless people from D.C. shelters, and black students from nearby Bowie State, and the candidates kept their distance from the operation. Instead of telling them to distribute literature, the campaign instructed the recruits to go door-to-door in predominantly black neighborhoods, telling residents that they were “volunteers” trying to get Maryland to elect its first black lieutenant governor.
That’s the type of approach to politics that leads to the Bushian approach to government that leads to mismanaged wars, mismanaged economies, mismanaged budgets, a disillusioned public and the loss of both Houses of Congress. But other than that, there’s nothing wrong with it.