🚀 go-pugleaf

How Dubya Got To Be President by Paul Street From the Feburary, 2001 of Z
Magazine.

On January 20, George W. Bush began his reign as perhaps one of the meanest and
certainly one of the dumbest presidents in the history of the United States. He
becomes the chief executive of the world's most powerful nation despite a
mediocre record in a series of academic institutions to which he gained
admission through inherited class privilege and family name; despite a business
record that would have brought him economic ruin but for family/class
connections and related corporate welfare infusions; despite an unimpressive and
mean-spirited record in one of the nation's weakest governorships.  He occupies
the oval office despite his transparent discomfort with fundamentals of policy
and the English language, a chronically sneering visage, a belatedly publicized
DUI conviction, and a political record contrary to principles and objectives
supported by a majority of Americans. Those principles and objectives include
campaign finance reform, environmental protection, tax equity, quality public
schools, racial justice, and the maintenance of Social Security as a viable
public program.

How did Dubya pull it off? Well, he didn't. Bush owes his presence in the Oval
Office to a fortuitous (for him) combination of factors. The first and most
obvious factor was big money. In the United States, where the escalating cost of
paid political advertising prices out candidates who can't raise fortunes and
prevailing legal doctrine (Buckley v. Valeo, 1976) holds that campaign spending
limits violate free speech rights, it is only fitting that the candidates with
the most cash should win. This happened in 9 out 10 races for federal office in
2000 and the White House was no exception. Bush's record-setting campaign
contributions ($191,617,196) and expenditures ($182,052,265) gave him a
significant money edge over Gore (who raised $132,624,544).

Significant parts of Bush's money advantage derived from major capitalist
sectors. From the automobile industry, for example, Bush garnered nearly $2
million, out raising Gore by a factor of 10 to 1. Insurance companies ($ 1,
568,184 to Bush) gave Bush nearly $5 for every $1 they gave to Gore. The
contribution differences were pronounced in other industries: gambling (3 to 1);
commercial banks (5 to 1); computer equipment and services (2 to 1); petroleum
(15 to 1); pharmaceuticals (more than 4 to 1); real estate (nearly 3 to 1);
securities and investment (nearly 3 to 1); and tobacco (nearly 10 to 1). Follow
the money (the best place to start is the website of the Center for Responsive
Politics: www.crp.org) as you seek to decode Bush policy actions in coming
years.

Bush also owes his victory to the related alienation of masses of Americans from
the political process. Reflecting the understandable calculation that their
votes do not count in a money-dominated winner-take-all electoral process, huge
numbers of Americans see no reason to exercise their right to the ballot. Even
with a highly competitive race, half of the eligible population chose not to
vote for anyone for president.  Two percent chose to protest corporate
domination of the process by voting for a left-populist candidate who had no
chance of winning under the existing political system.  Significantly,
non-participation was greatest among lower income people, who are more likely to
punch Democratic when they vote. Participation is greatest among the affluent,
who generally prefer the more explicitly pro-wealthy Republicans. While the
Nader vote was small (well below the 5 percent required to get the Green Party
matching federal funds for the 2004 race), it was, in the absence of
ranked-preference and instant-run-off methods--whereby  Gore would have received
most Nader votes in a re-do triggered by the failure of either candidate to win
as clear majority�large enough to "spoil" Gore's chances for a victory in
Florida.

Bush also owes his office to the electoral college, which permits a candidate to
lose the country's overall popular vote and still win the actual race. In the
name of preventing less populous states from being unjustly ruled by states with
larger concentrations, the EC violates the basic democratic principle of "one
person, one vote" and provides political over-representation to
disproportionately white, rural, and conservative areas of the country.

Bush also owes his success to the Democratic Party's long run to the dead center
of the ever-narrowing American political spectrum. The party continues to fail
to re-establish a sufficiently strong, energized base in the working-class and
minority communities that have historically done its heaviest electoral lifting.
This failure reflects the Democrats' own reliance on big money contributors and
lobbyists to meet the ever-rising cost of campaigns.

Bush benefited from the incompetence of the Gore campaign Even with the
Democratic Party's hideous flaws and the Republicans' money edge, the Gore
campaign should have won going away, with enough room for Nader to have gotten
his 5 percent. Gore and his handlers blew it by failing to identify themselves
more strongly with the l990s economic expansion; by failing to stay on message
with the Nader influenced left-populist theme that won them new public support
during and after the Democratic Convention; by failing to utilize the unmatched
campaign services of Clinton; by failing to pin Bush with his pro-NRA gun
record; and by failing to link Bush and his handlers and supporters to the
Republican impeachment fiasco.

Bush can thank that fiasco for its role in making him a serious presidential
contender in the first place. The public's negative reaction to the Republican
Congressional impeachment campaign meant that the Republican Party had to go
outside Washington, DC for a presidential candidate. Bush family name
recognition and the distinctly non-telegenic nature of both John Engler and
Tommy Thompson, who possessed the strongest policy (welfare and tax-cutting)
records of Republican governors, gave the big money nod to Dubya. Ruling-class
concerns about the overgrown frat boy's qualifications were allayed, no doubt,
by the promise that senior statespeople and war criminals like Dick Cheney and
Daddy Bush will be making the real decisions in a Dubya White House.

Also among the factors that elected Bush is the media. Contrary to Republicans'
persistent claims about the media's "liberal bias, the establishment print and
electronic media exhibited what Molly Ivins calls a "stupefying lack of
skepticism in their reporting about Bush." They ignored evidence that the
president-elect is a narrow and vapid man who owes everything he has ever
"achieved" to accidents of birth' name, and class. At the same time, the media's
refusal to provide free political advertising is part of the equation that
inflates campaign costs in the U.S. to the point where wealthy donors install
their favored candidates in office.

Bush owes his position also to Republican control of key offices in the
administrative and judicial determination of the contested election results.
From Florida's secretary of state to its legislature, its governor's office, and
the transparently partisan U. S. Supreme Court, where a deciding vote was cast
on Bush's behalf by a Chief Justice who once harassed Black and Hispanic voters
as a poll-watcher in Arizona.  Bush was the beneficiary of America's distinctly
partisan machinery for counting votes. He benefited from numerous voting
irregularities, the most disturbing of which included the disenfranchisement of
Black voters through inadequate voting machines, excessive identification
checks, and even police roadblocks in minority districts in Florida. African
Americans have expressed particular antipathy for George W. Bush, who has a
virulent record of incarcerating and executing African Americans in Texas and is
generally hostile to affirmative action, anti-poverty programs, and other
components of the Black political agenda.

Last but not least, Dubya owes E his new job to the lifelong politi- cal
disenfranchisement of felons and ex-felons in Florida�the offender and
ex-offender population is disproportionately Black. Gore and his handlers have
nothing to say about this last issue. Their silence is appropriate given Gore's
unpleasant record in advancing the racially biased war on drugs and related "get
tough" criminal justice policies that now place two million people behind bars,
including one million blacks.

This is a sad and sorry conjuncture of circumstances, though not without certain
positive possibilities. It has focused Americans on vital issues of voting
rights and voting procedure, creating space for productive discussion and
progressive policy advocacy to actualize the one-person one vote ideal. It has
energized the African American and civil rights community and others in ways
that promise future dividends for those who believe in that ideal. It has
created a president of unusually dubious legitimacy from the very beginning of
his Administration�something that might enhance the broader questioning of
authority. It should shed some renewed light on the inadequacy of the centrist
Gore and Democratic Leadership Council approach.

Finally, it provides some unusually sharp clarification of the relationship
between money, class, merit, and power in the United States. Make no mistake: a
Gore presidency would be fundamentally captive to the "powerful [that is,
corporate] interests" that Gore claimed (during and after his party's
convention) to want to fight in the name of America's working people.

The installation into the White House of an obviously unqualified child of
privilege by the business class and the Supreme Court will leave Americans less
confused about who really owns American "democracy" at the turn of the
millennium than they would have been under Gore. It stands as a glaring
refutation of the standard ideological notion that America is an
equal-opportunity "meritocracy" in which people rise or fall in accordance with
their individual skills, knowledge, effort, and worth to society. While a Bush
presidency is not without its very real dangers at home and abroad, there is
something to be said at this point for that sort of clarification. 

Paul Street is a writer and social policy researcher in Chicago, Illinois. His
articles have appeared in Z Magazine, Monthly Review, In These Times, and
Dissent.