Bush bashing has once again come back in style. This time though it’s less angry, more intelligent and a lot funnier.
Political campaigning for the November 2008 elections has begun, and while candidates are not yet starting negative campaigning (at least against the other party), it’s not the candidates that are reminding us of the shortcomings of the current administration, it’s the liberal columnists and overtly political publications that don’t want you to forget the Republican slip ups of the past four years.
Slate Magazine has an illustrated guide to Republican scandals, in case voters have forgotten or couldn’t keep track. There are illustrated buildings within Washington, D.C. and other sites where political scandals have happened (like Halliburton) with the angry and embarrassed faces of those who’ve blundered in office hovering over the buildings.
There is a red telephone illustrating eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency, a Polaroid-style picture of the iconic image of a tortured prisoner in Abu Ghraib hovering over the Pentagon. There is a cockroach that represents the filth at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. (The astronaut in flight over the NASA building is bit of a stretch to relate to the recent Republican lapses in judgment – maybe.)
Over the White House there are pictures of Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Armstrong Williams, who apparently was paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to promote the No Child Left Behind Act,while two other commentators were being paid by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote Bush’s Community Healthy Marriage Initiative.
At the bottom of the page there are tags including “sex, conflict of interest, politicking, “Gonzales & Co.”, Snooping, Big Business, Abuse of Executive Power, Press Manipulation, Secrecy, Karl Rove, Favoritism, The Hammer, Military, Prison and Lobbyists. When readers scroll over the tags, the corresponding face is highlighted and devil horns crown the perpetrator – a bit childish, but certainly funny.
Slate is actually making it fun to reminisce about the 24 scandals (I didn’t remember that many either) that occurred in such rapid succession within the last year or so of the Bush administration.
Liberal columnists are also cashing in on the popular fad, with The New York Times columnist Frank Rich slipping into his May 13 piece, “Earth to G.O.P.: The Gipper is Dead” paragraphs devoted to some of the Republican boo-boos that have taken place since Bush’s re-election.
In his column, he chided the current candidates from the Republican Party for idolizing former president Ronald Reagan’s ideology, while darting around the issues of the current administration. During the Republican presidential debates, Rich noted that the candidates evoked Reagan’s name 19 times, while only mentioning Bush once.
So if you’ve already forgotten that former FDA commissioner Lester Crawford “recently pled guilty to conflict of interest and false reporting” for owning stocks in the companies he was supposed to be regulating in the FDA, or you can’t remember why the press is currently grilling World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, then refresh yourself!
Yes, voting season isn’t exactly right around the corner, but this kind of comprehensive coverage doesn’t come around very often.
Lauren Williams is a senior journalism and political science major and the opinion editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
