The way things should have been

Yes, there has been a gap in the ... uh ... output, as some might be inclined to call the daily offering of screeds here. I may later engage readers other than google web crawlers with just why that has been the case, but for now I feel compelled to remark upon something from a few days ago that was noteworthy to lefties across the board: Bush friendly, Mathew Dowd, jumped ship and paddled furiously away from Karl Rove's White House.

Matthew Dowd has spent a lot of time being disappointed. First, he was disappointed with Clinton. Now, he has grown disappointed with George Bush, a man who was supposed to relieve Dowd of his days of disappointment with Clinton. Today, disappointment is an euphemism for what most of the country, and Matthew Dowd, now feel toward this president. Pissed off and furious are other words that might suffice during these days of Bush.

It is not entirely clear just why Dowd found Clinton so disappointing, but I doubt it had much to do with the hallucinated wealth of the dotcom bubble or the nascent blossoming of the mortgage and housing flower, the petals of which are fluttering back to earth as we speak. Perhaps it was the failed attempt at universal health care; the at-long-last realized budgetary discipline that brought surpluses -- however ethereal -- to the federal ledger for the first time in decades. But no, I doubt it was any of that. A dark blue dress no doubt figured prominently in Dowd's disappointment.

But Matthew Dowd is now disappointed in George Bush and his conservative yet compassionate desire to bring the country together after Bush's party, the GOP, had conducted the most repugnant political lynching seen in decades. Yes, Dowd imagined that it would be George Bush who would be just the man to rassle us all together and mosey us on down to the saloon for a great big Texas pint and a few good-natured, back slappin' heehaws. Oh boy, the days of Bush would be not only grand but gleeful.

Things didn't quite turn out that way. And Matthew Dowd is disappointed.

Considering Dowd enthusiastically partook in the 2004 campaign smearing of John Kerry, whom Dowd now says "was right" about Iraq, he appears to be speaking rather civilly in this interview. It would be hard believe that Dowd is actually filled with the glut of naïveté he so quietly evinces. Nonetheless, Dowd now says that he is called upon by God or karma (he's not sure which or if there is a difference) to put things right:

I’m a big believer that in part what we’re called to do — to me, by God; other people call it karma — is to restore balance when things didn’t turn out the way they should have.

What Dowd fails to appreciate, or perhaps wishes no one would notice, is that things have turned out exactly the way they should have, if you happen to be Karl Rove. Or Dick Cheney. Or any number of other Republican operatives, agents, hacks, loyal Bushies or neo-con opinionators, including the aforementioned Matthew Dowd. The rigged elections, the assault on constitutional liberties, the dismantling of policy apparatus at the behest of political agenda, the planned and waged invasion of Iraq, the "our due" attitude toward the federal budget, all have occurred exactly as planned. (The one thing that didn't quite turn out as planned was that Rove's machine failed to appreciate the ire of the American public in the last election and, despite getting 3 million votes tossed in November, still lost the congressional majorities.)

Given the litany of politicization of every facet of American policy making in both the domestic and foreign arenas -- a process to which Dowd was a party -- one wonders just how Dowd thinks things "should have" turned out. But then this is simply one more indicator that even those in on the scam refuse to admit that, somehow, the way things have actually "turned out" has been a big mistake. Or a bunch of big mistakes.

No, Mr. Dowd, things are not the way you lament they are because of mistakes. The United States is where it is now precisely because the people you helped put in office planned and executed their dreadful agenda, while our pathetic, complacent, if not outright complicit corporate media have tagged along for the worst of rides. And the fact that you, Matthew Dowd, have finally come to your senses does not make the rest of the despicable Republicans, who have appeased or participated in the racketeering and grand larceny we see before us, any less of a threat to a country that, at one point, actually imagined itself as a republic.


[h/t hotpotatomash for stirring me from my slumber]