W.'s Stiletto Democracy ...Maureen Dowd

This is a bit old, but I'm sure many haven't seen it yet (I hadn't), and MoDo always nails the perspective on White House politics (antics).

<excerpt>
02/27/05 "New York Times " - - WASHINGTON -- It was remarkable to see President Bush lecture Vladimir Putin on the importance of checks and balances in a democratic society.

<snip>
"I live in a transparent country," Mr. Bush protested to a Russian reporter who implicitly criticized the Patriot Act by noting that the private lives of American citizens "are now being monitored by the state."

Dick Cheney's secret meetings with energy lobbyists were certainly a model of transparency. As was the buildup to the Iraq war, when the Bush hawks did their best to cloak the real reasons they wanted to go to war and trumpet the trumped-up reasons.

<snip>
Administration officials went so far as to cancel a town hall meeting during Mr. Bush's visit to Germany last week after deciding an unscripted setting would be too risky, opting for a round-table talk in Mainz with preselected Germans and Americans.

The president loves democracy - as long as democracy means he's always right.


<entire article> (excellent)
http://207.44.245.159/article8173.htm

I hope she has good home security and maybe a couple of bodyguards.

wrote about the same thing today...in the Sun-Times, it was a good piece...
Bush a hypocrite to lecture Putin

March 4, 2005

BY ANDREW GREELEY

Suppose that Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Canada and announced that the United States was retreating from its principles of freedom since the World Trade Center attack. The United States, he might have said, has denied due process of law to some American citizens. It has established a concentration camp in Cuba. It has tortured prisoners, indeed often and in many places. It denies aliens the right to trial by jury -- indeed, it acts like the only ones who have Mr. Jefferson's inalienable rights are American citizens, and not always.

Then he says, while I'm at it, there are a lot of flaws in your democracy. You certainly don't think your Electoral College is democratic, do you? Neither is your Senate, with its disproportionate representation of smaller states. Rhode Island is as big as California? Gimme a break!

And what about your gerrymandered congressional districts (presumably he knows about Elbridge Gerry) which guarantees the re-election of incumbents, especially if they are conservative Republicans? What about Tom DeLay's open theft of Democratic congressional districts in Texas? Is your House of Representatives all that democratic?

And all the capitalist dollars that are poured into your campaigns? And the false attack ads aimed at the character of an opponent? And the endless spinning of the truth so that it no longer means anything? Would Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison approve of that?

more

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel041.html

I like the way he wrapped it with "conservatives in a nutshell":

The answer is that his conservative base expected, indeed demanded that he criticize Putin. Probably Karl Rove, his gray eminence, insisted that he do it. Conservative Republicans don't really believe that Russia has changed. They're waiting for Russia to renew the Cold War. They expect a Republican president to be ''tough'' with the Russians. Russians are still the bad guys, and Bush should ''crack down'' on them. For Bush, lecturing Putin on the failures of Russian democracy is a no-lose situation. He doesn't lose any votes in Russia and solidifies some votes in the United States. He enhances his cowboy image in Europe, but what's wrong with that?

Why not be rude and crude and patronizing? Why not act like an evangelical minister preaching to South American heathens? Why not act like the campus evangelist who tells Catholics that they are not Christian? Why not act like a Catholic bishop refusing the sacraments to a political candidate?