Reality Bites: The Bush Remake

[Bennet Kelley]

Reality Bites

The Bush Remake

In the 1994 comedy Reality Bites, a group of recent college graduates struggle with the clash between the world of their imagination and the world as it really is; with the lead character questioning, “why things just can’t go back to normal at the end of the half hour like on the Brady Bunch?” In the 2006 remake, however, the movie is transformed into a tragedy as the setting moves from Houston twenty-something’s to the Bush White House, where President Bush continues to wait for Brady Brunch resolutions.

Throughout his administration, President Bush has governed based on an ideologically predefined world. For example, tax cuts were always the answer, regardless of whether we had a budget surplus or deficit or if the economy was in a recession or recovery; and, of course, Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was behind 9/11 and must be deposed.

In 2006, however, reality bit hard as all of the White House’s delusions and propaganda were finally overwhelmed by the desperate reality of the situation in Iraq . Approval of Bush’s handling of the Iraq War fell from 41 percent in December 2005 to 27 percent this month, as the chasm between the chaos in Iraq and White House propaganda became obvious.

For President Bush, such gnawing realities were not limited to Iraq as White House delusions and propaganda were exposed by harsh realities throughout 2006. For example, in a telling statement during a 2001 joint press conference with President Bush after the fall of the Taliban, Russian President Putin warned that the Taliban was not defeated, but had made the strategic decision to abandon Kabul and, as a result, “we should not be deluded on that score. Quite a serious amount of work is still ahead.”

The administration’s ideological obsession with Iraq, however, required that it divert resources and attention away from the “serious ... work” in Afghanistan. In 2006,the consequence of this decision became apparent as the Taliban came back — killing more coalition troops this year than during the first 18 months of the war and taking control of substantial territory — pushing the nation towards a “tipping point.”

President Bush also deluded himself into believing that he could prevent the two remaining members of the “axis of evil” from advancing their nuclear weapons program by essentially doing nothing. The Bush administration adhered to its ideological aversion to engaging either country and, instead, foolishly relied on the leadership of other countries to protect it. That strategy might be fine for Luxembourg, but it is reckless for the world’s sole superpower, and we now face greater risk because of a nuclear North Korea and, potentially, Iran as a result.

At home, President Bush still clings to the cake-and-it-too tax cut economics his father once labeled “voodoo economics.” As retiring Senator Jeffords explained, this administration’s “belief that tax cuts will solve any problem is uncompromising, unyielding, and, sadly, undeterred by past experience.” While Bush chose to ignore the reality of record deficits, voters did not as it was a factor in independent voters abandoning the Republicans in the 2006 election.

The Bush administration also chooses to ignore, suppress or alter scientific conclusions that are inconvenient, most notably its continued insistence that the fact and causes of global warming remain uncertain. The Bush administration maintains this position even when the National Academy of Sciences joined the science academies of the G8 nations in declaring that “there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring” and is primarily attributable to the use of fossil fuels.

This year, however, Al Gore’s award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth exposed this issue and the Bush administration’s failure to act despite warnings of “serious adverse societal and ecological impacts by the end of this century” to millions of movie-goers. As a result, polling indicates that global warming is now viewed as the nation’s top environmental problem and was important to the decision of half of the 2006 voters.

Last week’s release of the findings of the Iraq Study Group, whose first word are “he situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating,” was a fitting coda to a year in which the Bush administration’s delusions repeatedly were overwhelmed by reality. The significance of the report extends beyond Iraq, however, because the administration’s response will be an important test of whether President Bush will emerge from his ideological cocoon and address the real world or instead continue to dangerously wait for Brady Bunch resolutions.

In the movie Reality Bites, the characters eventually grow up and face reality. We can only hope for the same in this tragic sequel.

Bennet Kelley is the former national co-chair of the Democratic National Committee’s young professional arm, publisher of BushLies.net and a columnist with the Santa Monica Daily Press.

Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press