Promises to keep

After a week in glorious Amsterdam, what are my eyes treated to upon arrival? Why, the sight of George Bush making good on his promise and exercising his resolve to protect the country from the malevolent maw of expanded children's health care. Bush said he was standing firm against the evils of government health care and that the "cost" would be too great. Indeed, those paltry few billion that would have gone to the S-CHIP program will be far better spent profiting Blackwa ... uh ... fighting terror! I ask you, what good are healthy children when terror lurks everywhere? Healthy children, utterly useless for fighting terror and prone to being targets, are simply more people Bush would have to protect and he has quite enough people to protect already. When there is a war on terror to be won and taxes to be kept low, an expansion of the children's health care program is simply ill-advised. That much is surely obvious.

And really, how can you not admire the man? When he says he will veto something, by god, he does it! No intelligence failures there! Sure a bunch of electioneering Republicans are huffing about Bush's firm stand, thinking that it makes the GOP look bad, and eight states are planning to sue the Bush administration over newly restrictive S-CHIP rules but they clearly don't get it. Nor, for that matter, do the voting public. One day, they all will see clearly the master strokes of this painterly maestro. This vision may takes decades to dawn, but, one day, it will arrive.

Besides, Bush's brave veto has made Dominican tobacco growers happy. What more could we ask for? After all, isn't that what American domestic policy is all about?

Thankfully, the Democrats are "in charge" so, in all likelihood, we won't have to worry about them countering Bush's resolve.