Thursday, September 11, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

COLUMN: Steve Sebelius

'Totality of the issues'

"Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens."

-- Singer Britney Spears, on CNN

Some desk-blotter calendars now call this Patriots Day, in observation of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. We're supposed to leave our differences behind and line up behind our duly elected leaders (or, in this case, President George W. Bush), salute smartly, and gird our loins against the evildoers.

Like Ms. Spears, we're supposed to trust our president. But this being America, a nation built by independent thinkers with a mean streak when it comes to authority, the Spears remark seems kind of ... dangerously stupid. And it does no violence to the memories of those tragically killed two years ago to question authority today.

To that end, I was intrigued to hear Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign manager Ken Mehlman explain why Nevadans shouldn't vote against his boss, based solely upon the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump issue. The president has provided leadership through war, recession and national emergency, Mehlman said. Voters, he added, "look at everything. They look at the totality of the issues."

And, at Mehlman's invitation, it might behoove us going into an election year to review President Bush's performance on the totality of the issues, and in so doing to truly celebrate our freedoms on this Patriots Day.

• President Bush declared he would decide the Yucca Mountain issue on sound science. But after what must have been sleepless minutes spent not reading reports on the problems associated with the dump, Bush signed off on it, prompting U.S. Sen. Harry Reid to accuse the president of lying.

• While the rubble at Ground Zero was still smoking, Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft pushed through the USA Patriot Act, which greatly expanded government power to snoop on citizens and foreigners alike. The loathsome law -- criticized in this space from the very beginning -- has come under so much fire that Ashcroft has taken to the road to defend it, although he declines to take questions from print reporters who may ask about the civil liberties implications.

• From the beginning, Bush favored tax cuts that tend to benefit the most wealthy, claiming that was the best way to help an economy he says was going bad in the waning days of President Clinton's administration. We've got the tax cuts, but we're also headed for more net job losses than any president since Herbert Hoover -- together with deficits mushrooming out of control. It's so much like the 1980s, if Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd were to team up and make a movie about a time-traveling sports car, heads would explode.

• In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush rightly vowed to take the fight to the terrorists and the countries that embraced them. And although 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, and although our own government has found that Saudi Arabia served as a terrorist ATM -- no fees! -- we invaded ... Afghanistan. Later, based upon intelligence that the president knew, or should have known, was highly faulty, Bush justified an invasion of Iraq.

• And despite predictions of weapons of mass destruction factories as plentiful as 7-Elevens in Las Vegas, we've yet to find a single weapon. Or Saddam Hussein. Or Osama bin Laden. (Remember him?)

In the meantime, more U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq since "major combat operations" ended than were killed during the brief shooting war that preceded the filming of the president's 2004 campaign commercial, a taxpayer-financed "Top Gun"-style landing on a U.S. aircraft carrier idling at sea.

What do we tell the families of those brave soldiers? We appreciate their sacrifice? But for what are their sons and daughters put in harms' way? No matter how hard he may try, Bush cannot offer a satisfactory answer.

• Although Bush claims no child will be left behind, he's left behind funding for his "No Child Left Behind Law." He's allowed his vice president, Dick Cheney, to hold secret meetings to form a national energy policy, and defended lawsuits trying to find out who really wrote it (hint: it was the energy industry). Corporations are profiting off the rebuilding in Iraq, as the administration fumbles diplomatically to try to get the United Nations to assist in preventing quagmire. Making war, it turns out, is much easier than building peace. Who knew? And Bush, like his father before him, supports the unconstitutional assault weapons ban, ironically allowing the residents of Iraq more freedom to own fully automatic weapons than the citizens of his own country.

Judge the president on his leadership, campaign manager Mehlman implored. That sounds fair. On this Patriot's Day, the judgment isn't kind to George W. Bush.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 383-0283 or by e-mail at ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.