Blues for Bush

That poll showing that a majority of Americans no longer consider Bush trustworthy is enormously significant. This is the man, after all, who campaigned on the promise that he would "restore honour and dignity to the White House." Paul Krugman has been penning devastating pieces in the New York Times on a weekly basis, detailing the mendacity and dishonesty of the Bush administration, but, astonishing though this may sound to the rest of the world, until very recently, most Americans continued to consider Bush honest and trustworthy, and it was this belief in his fundamental decency that formed the basis for his popularity.

It was this perception that allowed Bush to escape responsibility for the continuing economic downturn. It was this perception that allowed Bush to exploit the fear and hatred generated by 9/11 to persuade the US public to support the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It was this perception that allowed Bush to escape unscathed from one fiasco after another.

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The one-two punch of cashiered Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's tell-all memoir, in which he revealed Bush was as incompetent and mendacious as his political adversaries have long maintained, and the bombshell admission by chief weapons inspector David Kay that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, appear to finally, at long last, have shaken the American public's misplaced and mystifying faith in their president's credibility.

Now that Bush's defences have been breached, everything is on the table. The last couple of weeks have swirled with the resurrection of the story that Bush went AWOL from his national guard unit in 1972-1973 and never satisfactorily completed his tour of duty.

Bush's national guard service record has always been questionable, but the US media has, by and large, never pursued the matter as diligently as they would have had Bush been a Democrat. The fact that Bush received preferential treatment to be admitted into a unit of the Texas National Guard that operated as a sort of underground railroad to keep the sons of the rich and influential out of Vietnam (other members of the unit included the sons of Texas Senators Lloyd Bentsen and John Connolly and several members of the Dallas Cowboys football team) has, perhaps unsurprisingly considering their cravenness, never been considered particularly newsworthy by the US press corps. Bush has never been excoriated for ducking out of fighting a war he professed to support, though, of course, the press corps famously raked Bill Clinton over the coals in 1992 for ducking out of fighting a war he did not support.

That Bush apparently never even bothered to finish his national guard tour of duty has long been public knowledge, but it is only recently that the media has begun to focus on the issue and give Bush a hard time about it. The evidence is sketchy -- a sort of Rorschach test for how you view Bush.

To supporters of Bush, the incomplete records indicate that there is no evidence Bush did not fulfil his duties. To those who consider Bush dishonest and untrustworthy, the lack of available documentation suggests equally clearly that his guard record has been scrubbed, that he did not complete his service as required, and that there may be even more damning evidence of misconduct hidden beneath the surface. This is why the number of Americans who now consider Bush untrustworthy is significant.

Whether the matter of Bush's national guard service will ever be satisfactorily resolved remains unclear. But there is no question that the resurrection of the issue has cast Bush in a poor light, specially in comparison to Kerry, who opposed the Vietnam war but fought anyway out of a sense of duty to his country, and was decorated for extreme gallantry in the face of the enemy.

Bush's teflon is beginning to wear off. Due to the lessening of his credibility, charges that would previously have slipped off him are now beginning to stick. The American public is growing increasingly weary of his rosy speeches on economic recovery which are so starkly at odds with the facts before their face. Americans are now no longer willing to accept the administration's bald-faced deceptions about matters such as the economy, the ballooning deficit, the irresponsible and deceitful budgets which do not include the billions needed for post-war reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the deteriorating situation in Iraq.

The latest blow to Bush comes from Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, who claims that he has rock-solid and irrefutable evidence that Bush paid for a girlfriend's abortion in 1970s (back when abortion was illegal in the state of Texas). This is not to say that there is anything wrong with abortion, but if this allegation proves to be true (and it certainly looks like Flynt has the goods), it once again demonstrates the depths of Bush's hypocrisy and mendacity, and will inflict devastating damage to him with his hard-right core constituency which considers abortion a mortal sin.

But it would be a mistake to count Bush out quite yet. The administration controls the news cycle and so it should not be hard for them to manufacture a couple of months of positive news in the run-up to the election in November. The capture of Osama bin Laden would alone most likely propel Bush to victory in November.

Bush has amassed a formidable campaign war-chest which he will use to try to paint John Kerry as an unreconstructed Massachusetts liberal with no political convictions (the fact that these two charges are mutually exclusive never seems to deter Republicans who unsuccessfully tried to use the same tactics with Bill Clinton) or to paint North Carolina Senator John Edwards (if he wins the nomination) as a greedy trail lawyer (Edwards made millions in private practice suing doctors and HMOs for negligently destroying people's lives) who is too callow and inexperienced for the presidency.

The negative campaigning has already begun. Last week Kerry was forced to deny the rumour that he had had an affair with a young AP reporter. A doctored photograph showing Kerry sharing a stage with Jane Fonda at an anti-war rally in the 1970s received prominent coverage by the major news publications before it was discovered that the picture was a fake. The Bush administration has already signaled that it intends to use Kerry's founding of the anti-war group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, to try to depict Kerry as an anti-American peacenik, his Purple Hearts and Silver Star notwithstanding.

Kerry for his part, though he has yet to sew up the Democratic nomination, and is facing a surprisingly formidable challenge from Edwards now that Howard Dean has dropped out of the race, is made of stern stuff and welcomes the challenge. To reports that the Republicans plan to spend millions attacking his liberal voting record in the Senate, his opposition to the Vietnam war, and what critics contend is his equivocal and uncertain vision of American foreign policy and the US role on the world stage, Kerry has three words which he believes that the Bush administration understands very well: "Bring it on!"

It has long been apparent that the 2004 US Presidential elections are the most crucial to ever have been held in that republic. Never before has so much been at stake, both for the American public and for the world. Never before have two such starkly contrasting visions of what America should stand for both at home and abroad been in the balance. In this context, the recent signs that the shine is finally wearing off of Bush's presidency and that he is vulnerable against either John Kerry or John Edwards, are noteworthy. Come November, the US is going to have a real election on its hands. If you thought that the 2000 presidential election was ugly, you haven't seen anything yet.

Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.