MAVERICK
MAGAZINE 11
.The
Voice of American Poetic Arts
Copyright © Jefferson Adams, 2005. All Rights Reserved.REMEMBER THE TAR BABY!
"Eh, it's the Captain's mess, let him sort it out" --Bugs Bunny
"Mark my words...George W. Bush will go down as one of the worst Presidents in United States history..." --James Carville, shortly after Bush's first innauguration
When I was a child, my mother was fond of reading stories to my brother and I at bedtime. Among the most memorable for me were the Uncle Remus tales of Joel Chandler Harris; in particular, the battles between Bre'r Rabbit and Bre'r Fox.Now, while I report to have fond memories of Bre'r Rabbit tricking Bre'r fox and vice versa, to hear my mother tell it today, one story in particular upset me greatly whenever she read it: the tale of the Tar Baby. In the story, Bre'r Fox builds a dummy baby out of tar and dresses it up to look real. He sets it in the road as part of a trap to catch his nemesis Bre'r Rabbit, which he does on account of Bre'r Rabbit's own hubris and bad temper. Later, once captured, Bre'r Rabbit escapes a horrible fate by tricking Bre'r Fox into throwing him into the very dreadful briar patch he claims is the last place he wants to be thrown; the very place he was born and is most at home.
At the point near the beginning of the story where Bre'r Rabbit starts to strike the Tar Baby, and thus facilitate his own capture, and Bre'r Fox watches gleefully from a distance, my mother claims I used to howl in protest and cry as though the Tar Baby was a real baby, even though she tried to explain to me that it was merely made of tar to trick Bre'r Rabbit. These days, I can only remember happiness and relief at Bre'r Rabbit's clever escape into the briar patch.
Speaking to her about the war, mom says that Iraq is America's "Tar Baby". That the invasion for mistaken purposes is just a trap made possible by our own hubris.
Like my mother and so many of our fellow Americans, I believe that George W. Bush is well on his way to fulfilling James Carville's prophecy that he will be remembered as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. Unlike my mom and many of our fellow Democrats, I am happy to say that George W. Bush needs four more years as president of the United States to make it happen.
No, I am not a closet Republican, a "Reagan Democrat," nor an apologist for George W. Bush. I believe that Bush has done nothing less than a dismal job, and that he is philosophically and practically on the wrong side of just about every issue he's taken a position on. To say nothing of the fact he's so mentally lacking in the arena of critical thinking that if he got any less curious, he'd probably need a permit.
Nor was there anything wrong with John Kerry. He was a tremendously capable, smart, motivated guy who stood philosophically and practically on the right side most issues. He would have done a fine job as president. But he wouldn't have excelled. Not in the way Bush has excelled at getting us into one mess after another; from the economy and environment, to his poorly planned and executed wars in Afghanistan and of course, Iraq. At most, Kerry would have been able to bail a bit of water out of our foundering ship of state. Electing Kerry would merely have gotten rid of Bush, not Bush's army.
I don't just want to get rid of George W. Bush, I want to get rid of him and the horse he rode in on. I want to gather up his political cronies, his sycophant minions, his sanctimonious supporters, and his coat-tail congressional caucus, with their far-right wing extremist agenda of theivery, lies and deception in nearly every facet of their governance, and I want to ride them out of Washington on rails, never to show their faces in the public arena again, save to give us a good laugh.
And therein lies the rub. To do this will take nothing less than a full repudiation of Bush's social and foreign policies, a full discrediting of the ideas and agendas of the Christian far-right, big business, and neo-conservative policy wonks who help to keep him in place and who have done so much damage to America in the name of doing good. In short, the full catasptrophe must come home to roost.
As a proud member of the "Give 'Em Enough Rope" school of political thinking...I said it four years ago and I'll say it again: George Bush and his cohorts just need anough rope to hang themselves sure as Saddham Hussein was an evil doer. But they just haven't had enough rope yet.
Since just a scratch over half of the electorate remained convinced that Bush's policies actually have some redemptive for the country, it's clear that Americans just haven't taken enough of Bush's "medicine" to make them sick yet. And America needs to get sicker before it can get better.
I hold that Bush's ideas and policies are not so dangerous that we cannot weather four more years. In fact, the real and lasting danger lies in a slingshot return of the ideas and policies that Bush represents.
Bush's policies are so wrong, so backward, and so damaging to Americans that they must be fully and entirely repudiated, lest they and their proponents find a way to maintain their hold on power.
Let me give you my best James Carville impression:
What, what...what are the odds...after eight years of George W. Bush runnin' this country into the ground, guttin' the environment and gettin' Vietnamed out of Iraq...what are the odds that a Republican, any Republican, I don't care if it's John McCain, Jebbie Bush or even The Terminator himself's gonna be President of the United States?...I say just about zero. That means, if George W. Bush is re-elected, the next Democratic nominee is gonna be President of the United States. I say that nominee's gonna be Hillary Clinton. That's right, you heard me right. If George W. Bush is the price America has to pay to get its first woman President, and Hillary is the price Republicans will have to pay for giving America four more years of George W. Bush's own peculiar brand of failure, then who should be more horrified?
George Bush energizes more people to become new Democrats than John Kerry could ever dream of. If Saddam Hussein in America's Tar Baby, then the re-election of George W. Bush is likely the Democrats' Briar Patch.
If the Democrats should be worried about four more years of George W. Bush, then the Republicans should be afraid...they should be very afraid of what will follow if they fail to reign in Bush's policies and win the war they started in Iraq.
Yes, four more years of George Bush will likely be both a disaster for the country and an offense to the sensibilities of any good Democrat, but the first woman president in US history, that's a sea change. Hillary Rodham Clinton as that woman with her husband Bill along for the ride: That's a bitter pill to swallow for such a swaggering bunch as the Republicans have been.
If it happens, America will likely remember less the shock and fear of Bush's reign, and more the comfort and relief that followed a clever escape by descending into the very dark thorny place that is four more years of the kind of bumbling incompetance, lies, diviseveness and extremism that is the Republican Party in its present form. Home will be the White House that arises as the Republican party imaples itself on the very thorns they created: disaster in Iraq; a horrible economic record; a weakened environment, etc.So these days, when I talk with my mother and she speaks despairingly of four more years of George W. Bush, I remind her that we've just been thrown into the briar patch and that Hillary is just around the corner. When she reminds me that I always cried when she read that story, I tell her: Yeah, and I may cry through the next four years, too, but the story always turned out good in the end, and I'm hoping for similarly fond memories to linger long after the trauma of the Bush era has subsided.
"I hope you're right," is all she can say. I hope so, too.