*** ORBUSMAX GUEST OP/ED ***

Clothing the President - By Jon Eekhoff

July 21, 2004

The Republican Party needs to put an old story on their summer reading list, Hans Christian Anderson’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. Most of us remember this story as one about a ruler who became so drunk with power that he allowed himself to walk out in public wearing nothing but a smile on his face. All of the people could see that the Emperor was wearing nothing, but no one said anything to him. Finally a little boy stood up and announced what everyone already knew, “The Emperor is naked!”

Our Emperor is about to walk out into the 2004 campaign season wearing nothing but his record as president and it is time for someone in the Republican Party to stand up and say, “The President is naked!”

So far Bush’s re-election campaign looks more like a campaign about John Kerry than George W. Bush. Most of his recent campaign ads spend all of their time discussing John Kerry’s voting record and say nothing about what Emperor George has been up to these past three years. Bush and his advisors must know by now that they have accomplished nothing and need to start slinging mud before people discover they have a nude president.

The War on Terror would have been an excellent garment to cover all of Bush’s flaws, but that garment has slowly been stripped away by a number of miss-steps and continued senselessness in Iraq. Undoubtedly the administration will continue to attempt to spin the war into something noble and righteous, but as more and more information becomes available about the run-up to the war and to the handling of the war, fewer and fewer people are going to be swayed.

Instead of clothing the President in garments of achievement Bush and his advisors have been doing all they can to keep the American people focused on the illusionary threats to family values and homeland security and focused away from issues of real importance to families like health care, poverty, the environment, and education. Without a record of positive movement on real issues Bush is being forced to run an increasingly negative and fear-filled campaign.

Fear has become Bush’s best friend. Fear is fueling Bush’s campaign and fear (Bush hopes) will keep the American people from noticing he is standing before us completely nude. So far this campaign of fear has come in three forms: Fear of Kerry, fear of eroding family values and fear of terrorism.

The fear of Kerry campaign is one in which Kerry’s voting record will be scrutinized and pulled apart in order to distort his service as much as possible. Although this type of campaign is frequently used in all of our elections, the one huge advantage Bush has in this kind of campaign is that he has no voting record. As governor of Texas and as president Bush never has had to cast a vote. Kerry has a long record of voting and that record can and will be distorted to make the American people fear Kerry.

The fear of eroding morals is nothing new for the Republican Party. Family values has been the catch-phrase for this movement for the past twenty years and Bush has added gay marriage to the list of things destroying our moral fiber in the United States. Spinning these personal issues into ones to be feared has gained the Republican Party a zealous following among the religious right. Evil and fear are closely related in Bush’s mind and in the minds of many of his followers. This focus on the evil in others certainly takes the focus off of the incompetence of the President. What has this president done to improve the living conditions of families in the United States? It is far easier to point your finger at gays and claim they are the reason that America has lost its way than to actually solve the complex problems related to American families today.

The fear of terrorism has been, and will be Bush’s most effective tool in pursuing re-election. What we have to fear is unclear, but we are reminded frequently that we should be fearful. Our color-coded fear index moves up and down when reports or chatter warn us an attack is eminent, at the same time, we are reminded how safe our war on terror is making us. Orwell called this ability to hold two opposing ideas in your head and believe them both at the same time doublethink. Are we to feel safe or fearful? The President with no clothes is asking us to feel both. We are expected to attend events and have a good time, but we need to keep an eye out for suspicious characters and report anything out of the ordinary. If the war on terror is going so well and we have destroyed Al Qaeda’s ability to launch an attack, why do we need to be constantly on guard? Maybe it is because the war on terror is going as well as our ongoing war on drugs. Neither of these wars can be won with aggressive action alone, we need to look at the root causes of terrorism and drug addiction; once those issues are dealt with these wars can be won.

Bush’s nakedness becomes more and more apparent to those watching him parade down the street and the time is coming when one small voice will announce what everyone already knows.

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Jon Eekhoff is a teacher in Western Washington, and one of the 5 greatest basketball players to hail from Lemoore, California.