George Bush the Younger
by Joseph C, Hinson
Monday August 7, 2000
 

During the Republican Convention last week, it occurred to me that the majority of the citizens of this country, myself included, don't have a clue as to what those every-four-year gatherings of our political parties used to be like before the days of tightly scripted displays designed to root out any hint of reality.  And it occurred to me that almost none of us know what it was like -- back before the days of slick Madison Avenue ad campaigns, and nominees who are so programmed to appeal to the masses that they fail to appeal to almost anyone, to be able to get a meaningful sense of what a candidate was made of, underneath the plastic façade.

Up on the podium, saluting the people who put him there was the man-who-would-be-president, George Bush the Younger, playing his part perfectly, smiling for the camera when it was called for, acting tough on cue, gazing off into the distance looking for a vision, searching diligently for those "thousand points of light" from that "shining city on a hill."

Suddenly, I found myself remembering how the Oliver Stone movie, "JFK," opened, using actual black and white footage of a nearly forgotten warning that's as prescient today as it was four decades ago. Way back in 1960, at about the same time a film with the title of "The Manchurian Candidate" was being produced in Hollywood, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, in his farewell speech from the White House a few days before handing the nuclear attack codes over to the young Democrat from Massachusetts, John  F. Kennedy, was sending out a warning, about a threat of what he called "the military industrial complex."

It was a warning about the partnership between capitalists who'd learned to line their pockets making weapons, and the generals who couldn't get enough shiny new hardware to keep them happy: "In the councils of government,"
this war hero and architect of D-Day ironically cautioned, "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex."

Many people now believe Eisenhower's concerns were more than well placed, and that he was trying to send us a cryptic message about a threat much more dangerous than any Communist plot - because it was real.  There were no Hollywood script writers behind this threat. Others believe that Kennedy was assassinated because he threatened the power of that "military industrial complex."  And there are some who believe that cadre then set about grooming their own lackey - one whom they could control, who would do their bidding - to one day become President.  And their triumph was celebrated when Ronald Reagan - a bad movie actor from the 50s playing the role of his life -- took the Oath of Office twenty years after Eisenhower's warning, launching an escalation in military spending that lined the pockets of a few, while nearly bankrupting the country. Meanwhile, Elder Bush's old cronies at the CIA failed to take notice that Communism was falling faster than tube tops at a Lilith Fair concert. Or either they ignored it. Afterall, Big Business was still making a killing off of the Cold War.

There are many who believe that it was no accident that Reagan chose as his Vice-President George Bush the Elder, a one-time head of the CIA. Elder Bush succeeded Reagan in 1988 largely because the Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis made the mistake of looking silly, riding around on a tank with a helmet on his head. (The Duke, as no one really ever called him, also had creepy eye brows.)  One might ask if it's an accident that, following eight years in which, for better of worse, President Clinton restrained military spending, George Bush the Younger has chosen former Defense Secretary - and military/oil businessman - Dick Cheney to be his running mate.

Was Bush, Sr., placed there to make sure that the dummy Reagan stayed on script?  Is Cheney there to make sure Bush, Jr., does the same? Is the Military Industrial Complex Ciniplex gearing up for Act III? It would seem so.

W. Certainly has the part down to a tee, in the best Madison Avenue style:  Hide your faults, or your party's, behind closed doors, while pretending to be that which you are not: compassionate, truly caring about
the woes of the average Joe.  If the Republicans have been howling for years that Bill Clinton has stolen their issues - a balanced budget, welfare reform, free trade, tough law enforcement - then George the Younger has
raised the bar to a new level altogether.  Somehow, we're to believe that the Republicans are now really a "big tent," inclusive, loving, fair?

That might have been the goal of the men behind the curtain - to obscure, to dazzle us with a nice smile and a few card tricks - and they might have succeeded, as they did with Reagan, who convinced a gullible public twenty years ago that he could cut taxes (mostly for the rich), increase defense spending dramatically, and still magically balance the national budget.  But George, Jr.'s father was right back then - it was voodoo economics.

Despite the most recent polls, I'm not so sure.  Al Gore just today announced his running mate would be Senator Joseph Lieberman from Connecticut, the first Jew to be vice presidential candidate in America's history. (Jerry Klein must love that.) Both men will have their chance next week to bring us back to the real world, to remind us how bad things get when the Republicans get their way, to raise our consciousness about how many tricks the GOP would have gotten away with if Bill Clinton hadn't been standing in the way - and about how the military industrial complex will get its way again with another lackey in the White House while the Republicans hold the Congress.

And, of course, let us not forget Harry Browne there in the background with whoever it was he picked as his Libertarian running mate.

Let us also not forget what happened when Reagan lived in the mansion, while his puppeteers pulled the strings behind the scenes.  Do you really want to go back to that era?

Elder Bush: "He could have been worse. He could have been like that fucking Quayle."
Barbara Bush: "Thank God the boy's got a good grasp of the English language."

Dumb and Dumber at the 1984 GOP convention.

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