Predictions, some frightening, some optimistic, some optimistic and frightening (bete noire Norquist) in this Washington Monthly forum.
Greenberg on "anything goes" governance:
Should Bush win a second term, the politics of anything-goes would only intensify--because it would no longer be seen as controversial. It would no longer be noteworthy that an administration declassifies documents to embarrass opponents, as when John Ashcroft released a memo by former Clinton administration official and 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick. It would become more or less acceptable to threaten the jobs of bureaucrats who won't play ball in misleading Congress, as happened with chief actuary Richard Foster, who wanted to answer congressional questions about the price tag of the administration's Medicare plan. Or to toss aside legal and constitutional rights of the accused, as at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Or to interfere with the public's right to know, as the administration did in ordering federal agencies to provide fewer records under the Freedom of Information Act.
Fifteen years ago, conservatives put forth the "broken windows" theory of crime. If small street crimes are tolerated, the theory went, neighborhoods begin to accept them as normal and the result is more lawlessness. The same thing will happen if a democracy tolerates Bush's ruthless behavior as business as usual.
Galbraith on plutocracy:
George W. Bush has never tried to fix the economy in the short term. His focus is on making long-term--and, he hopes, irreversible--changes to taxes and social programs; foreign policy; and the government's capacity to regulate the environment, natural resource use, and corporate behavior.
Bush's top economic priority has always been to cut taxes on the wealthy; as he famously said, the "have-mores" are his political base. The marginal income-tax rate, the estate tax, the tax on dividends, and the proceeds of the profits tax all fell sharply in his first term. His second term could finish the job, shifting the tax base to consumption, perhaps even abolishing the income tax for a value-added tax (as Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert now suggests). Virtually the whole tax burden will then fall on the middle class, on working Americans, and on the poor.
Norquist lays on the line his plans to destroy the Democratic Party (maybe for fun I'll rebut some of his nonsense tomorrow).
Cass Sunstein on a retrogression toward 1932's "constitution in exile":
Here's another clue. In the last few years, right-wing activists have become far more ambitious. There is a great deal of talk about restoration of the "Constitution in Exile"--the Constitution as it existed in 1932, before President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Under this Constitution, the powers of the national government were sharply limited. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, not to mention the Civil Rights Act of 1964, would have been impermissible. Under the Constitution in Exile, rights to have recourse against discrimination, and to protection of privacy, were minimal. A far more significant right was freedom of contract, which threw minimum-wage legislation into constitutional doubt. The Supreme Court tends to move slowly, and under a second Bush term, it would not adopt the Constitution of 1932; but it would probably move in that direction.
Begala on "a campaign of political retribution the likes of which we haven't seen since Richard Nixon":
Tony Sanchez's story is different. He actually dared to run against Bush's handpicked successor. The son of a typewriter repairman, Sanchez is a great American success story, rising from days packing produce on the Mexican border to eventual success in the very areas that had disappointed Bush: in the oil patch and, later, in banking. In 1994, Sanchez donated $300,000 to Bush's campaign, making him one of Bush's leading Democratic supports and putting him in league with Ken Lay as one of the largest patrons of Bush's early political career.
Sanchez stood by Bush when he ran for reelection, and then when he ran for president. But he just couldn't stomach Rick Perry, Bush's lieutenant governor, who took over when Bush went to Washington. So Sanchez decided to run himself, perhaps naively thinking his old pal George might be neutral in a race between his lieutenant governor and his most prominent Hispanic supporter.
Fat chance.
Bush not only actively campaigned for Perry, but he also allowed Perry's goons to run vicious ads against Sanchez. They portrayed Sanchez as somehow complicit in the 1985 torture and murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena because during the 1980s, drug dealers used Sanchez's bank (as they did most banks on the border) without his knowledge.
What the ads did not mention is that Sanchez helped federal authorities bust the bad guys, and earned the praise of the Reagan Justice Department. In fact, when the ads ran, David Almaraz, the DOJ official who handled the investigation, denounced them, saying, "Perry's claim is absolutely preposterous and completely false, without any foundation and fact."
But Sanchez's vast fortune was no match for good old-fashioned Texas racism. Do the math: Mexican American plus rich plus bank plus drugs equals disaster. Sanchez was crushed in the 2002 election
[...]
Who will be the next unlucky enemy targeted under a second Bush term? I'd put my money on any Democratic swing-state legislator who seeks to accommodate him. Moderates like Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) might feel an even greater political imperative to accommodate Bush on his second-term agenda--from further tax cuts to privatizing social security--but if history is any guide, he will simply pocket their support and then viciously attack them. That, after all, was the fate of former Sen. Max Cleland who supported Bush's tax cuts and the war in Iraq. All he got for his goodwill was a ruthless general election campaign engineered by the national GOP on behalf of Saxby Chambliss, who ended up taking Cleland's seat after attack ads charged that the Vietnam triple amputee was soft on national security.
If Democrats are smart, they will instead steal a page from the playbooks of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and the late senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.). In the midst of tough midterm election challenges in heavily contested swing-states, both politicians stood up to Bush. Although the GOP attack machine whirred into action, it sputtered and failed against Harken and Wellstone. Even voters who disagreed with them on some issues admired their independence Harkin won his race easily, and Wellstone was well out in front when he died in a plane crash. Their toughness should provide a model to other targeted Democrats, even in states with split constituencies: In modern politics, as in war, there's simply nothing to be gained by accommodating the enemy.
Dionne on individualization of risk:
What would President Bush do with a second term? Let's take him at his word. Bush is engaged in a bold (and, if you disagree with him, dangerous) project to dismantle the social advances of the New and Fair Deals, the New Frontier, and the Great Society. He wants to throw more risk onto the individual, free corporations and employers from regulations that protect employees and consumers, and reduce government's role in providing retirement security. He would further cut taxes on the savings and investments of the well-off and weaken the individual's right to sue corporations and heath-care providers for malfeasance.
Or, to put this same list in Bush's terms, he wants to "empower" individuals, end "junk law suits," expand "incentives" for investment, give the elderly "ownership of their retirement," and free businesses from "unnecessary" regulation. A second Bush term would be a big deal, if not necessarily a fair one. I write these words before the president has spoken to his national convention, where his aides promise he will lay out his new ambitions. But he's already told us a lot about where he wants to go.
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