Boo.
The only people left in America afraid of the Big Bad Wolves, George W. Bush and Richard "Lon" Cheney, are the 535 members of Congress and the 10 or so announced candidates for the presidency in 2008.
I have the statistics to prove it.
A recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll indicated that 33 percent of the American people believe in ghosts. The same poll indicated that 23 percent of the respondents had actually seen a ghost or "been in one's presence." Curiously, that's the same percentage of Americans who approve of the job George W. Bush is doing. However, few things reach into the netherworld quite as deeply as Cheney's 17 percent approval rating.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party was elected to a majority in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate last November, in a tsunami of voter discontent rarely seen in American history. Clearly, the American voters embraced change. They wanted a new Congress to throw a roadblock in the path of the runaway freight train driven by the White House.
To use a more concise metaphor, for six years Americans sat in the back seat of a car being driven twice the speed limit in the wrong direction by someone whose mental faculties and reflexes were impaired. They decided last November to be responsible adults again, rather than wishful thinkers or roadkill statistics. They asked the driver to pull over and they arranged for someone else to drive the car.
That "someone" was the U.S. Congress. However, instead of doing the responsible thing, the U.S. Congress has slowed the car down a bit, but continued to drive it in the same dead-end direction. This only further enables Bush and Cheney's reckless driving. Congress has voted to give Bush and Cheney their requested funds to continue this war, with no strings—or targeted withdrawal dates—attached. They have agreed to let telecommunications companies culpable for illegally spying on American citizens off the hook—just as Bush requested. And Nancy Pelosi, the increasingly annoying Speaker of the House, removed a provision from the war funding bill that would have required Bush to consult with Congress and win its approval before starting a war with Iran.
This isn't bad driving. This is bait and switch, a con game.
If Congress is collectively useless, the current crop of presidential candidates is downright depressing. With the exception of Sen. Chris Dodd and Reps. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, none of the candidates will commit to a firm withdrawal date from Iraq. No matter who is elected from this bumper crop of bad actors, America is looking at eight more years of Bush-Cheney "permanent war" policy, of triangulating, waffling, pandering to an imaginary "moderate American" and groveling at the feet of Wall Street and corporate boards.
Based on these numbers, do you feel tricked or treated, America? Or do you feel cheated?
In that AP-Ipsos poll above, the superstition that respondents most admitted to holding (at 17 percent) was that good luck comes to anyone who finds a four-leaf clover. Too bad winter is coming on. Otherwise I'd encourage American voters to head to the nearest meadow and get down on all fours. Then I would tell them to crawl.
Somewhere out there is a four-leaf clover with your name on it. The chances of finding it are at least as good as the chances that this Congress and the next president will give us back the sort of nation the overwhelming majority of us want.
