It's so predictable, because we've seen it over and over (and over...) since 9/11. When Congressmen question (or disagree with) the Bush Administration, it responds by hissing some variation of "You're soft on terrorism!" or "You don't care about America!" Has the Administration suffered a creativity drain?
It's like the three-year-old who screams "I hate you" every time mom refuses to buy him a pound of gummy bears in the grocery store. It loses its sting after the first hundred times you hear it.
President Bush even did it to congressional Republicans who dared oppose him on the immigration bill in May (BN-Politics). This should have been a red flag to Republicans, but it wasn't. Instead, they've rejoined President Bush's bully fest.
The most recent soft-on-terrorism chorus came from the President and congressional Republicans, when Democrats questioned the wisdom of expanding the Administration's ability to engage in warrantless wiretapping (Washington Post 1 and 2).
They didn't lack cause to question. Due to its own track record, this Administration is not known for being truthful or open with the public -- or with Congress, for that matter. Questioning aside, the House passed the warrantless-wiretapping bill with 227-183 votes: the Senate, with 60-28 votes (BN-Politics).
Some think the Dems who helped pass the bill were actually frightened by the terrorism line. I hope that's not true, because it seems that most Americans don't buy that line anymore. Consider what we've lived through since 2001.
We experienced the McCarthy-esque chilling of free speech after 9/11. It wasn't codified, but we knew that questioning the president would likely get us branded as traitors. We also knew that President Bush did nothing to stop this.
Many journalists and members of Congress were fearful -- evident in their failure to question Bush during the Iraq war's lead up. The fear was understandable. Remember September 2002, when our President publicly claimed the Democrat-controlled Senate was "not interested in the security of the American people"? (IHT) Is this how a leader unifies a nation that just faced the first anniversary of a horrific and unprecedented homeland attack?
Despite being two years into a war that President Bush had promised would be short -- despite the obviously false proclamation "Mission Accomplished"-- our fear of speaking out didn't start to dissolve until the fall of 2005. That was when we watched desperate fellow Americans standing on roofs in a severely flooded New Orleans and later heard the President praise his questionable FEMA appointee for doing a heckuva job.
At that point, the emperor's buck-nakedness became too clear for us to ignore.
We've seen the death tolls and costs for this questionably entered war continue climbing. We've seen evidence that invading Iraq created opportunities for terrorists. Even worse, we've seen evidence that the President was warned beforehand about this likelihood (see pre-war intelligence reports).
We've seen evidence that the Justice Department has become politicized, which is the last thing a law-enforcement agency should be. Congress dutifully asked two simple questions: 1) who fired the U.S. Attorneys? and 2) on what grounds? Justice Department staff failed to answer, but documents suggest some level of White House involvement. When Congress asked the White House for answers, we watched the President prohibit informed insiders from testifying under oath (BN-Politics).
Those are just a few highlights of what we ordinary Americans have witnessed since 2001. We don't need polls to tell us that something smells funny in Washington, but the numbers suggest that we've caught a whiff.
Congress' approval ratings aren't stellar, but they didn't slip much since the Dems took over in January: from 43% to 37% (Washington Post/ABC polls). In October 2006, a month before the voters gave the Dems control, the Republican-controlled Congress' approval rating was 31%.
I don't usually focus on party-based comparisons, but they deserve mention now because Republicans have been harping on the new Congress' approval ratings -- seeming to imply that Americans felt better when Republicans controlled Congress.
The July 2007 approval ratings suggest otherwise: Republicans in Congress, 34% approval; and Democrats in Congress, 46% approval [Washington Post/ABC polls].
Given Congress' historically low approval ratings, I wonder whether 46% approval is a bad number (discussed here and here). Congress' ratings did hit the 50s after 9/11, but they've stayed below 50% since April 2003. Note that Republicans controlled Congress for all of 2005 and 2006.
I understand why Republican congressmen are nervous. They didn't expect to lose control of both houses of Congress in 2006, and they'd like to get it back in 2008. Thus, I understand why they now seem intent on making this Dem-controlled Congress seem weak, ineffective or unappealing.
But rejoining President Bush's bully squad (i.e., hurling the same accusations that we Americans now find as tedious as they are absurd) may not be the way to regain the voters' favor. It might even backfire, given that Republicans' blindly aligning with the President seems to be what compelled the voters to take congressional control away from Republicans.
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