What this country needs is a benevolent dictator
Dan Brawner
January 17, 2007
As a benevolent dictator, president George W. Bush is missing one essential quality.
When he doesn't have to bother about little distractions like laws or human rights or the long-term future of the country, a good dictator can get a lot accomplished. During his oppressive reign, Italy's Mussolini made the trains run on time. Even Saddam Hussein managed to keep the Sunnis and Shias from starting a civil war under his dictatorship.
A really smart and kind dictator can cut through all the political and legal red tape and do what is best for his country. He can provide universal education and health care, as in Cuba. He can suppress crime and corruption. He can build roads whenever they were needed, not just when the government agrees to it. Of course, this is not democracy--not like we have.
We now have a democracy in which one person makes all the important decisions and the rest of us have to pay for them. In some countries, this person is known as a king. But George Bush is not a king. He doesn't get his picture on the money and he doesn't get to wear one of those spiky, golden hats. And he is obliged to wait until Congress scribbles out their laws and make their little speeches before he does what he was planning to do anyway.
Currently, opposition to the Iraq war is running about 70 percent. In the United States, you can't get 70 percent of the population to agree that humans should walk upright. So when Bush sees this kind of consensus , it ought to make him stop and think. The latest AP-Ipso poll shows Bush's approval rating has fallen to yet another record low of 32 percent. When Richard Nixon was forced to resign the presidency, following the Watergate scandal, awaiting possible criminal charges and prison, he had an approval rating of 25 percent. If Bush were caught on tape at the local preschool, eating live kittens and wearing his wife's underwear, he could count on an approval rating of 20 percent or so.
But Bush and his coven of paranoid neo-cons are barricaded in their bunker beneath the White House, making increasingly insane and unpopular plans. They had made a big deal about what the Iraq Study Group would recommend. But when the study turned out to criticize the administration, Bush promptly dismissed it. Now Congress and most of the population agree that escalating the war with more troops and more money will only make things worse. But Bush treats Americans exercising their democratic right to disagree like disgruntled employees.
Bush has announced recently that he intends to veto the bill allowing life-saving stem cell research. He has vowed to fight the farm bill that supports US agriculture and to veto the Medicare drug bill that authorizes the federal government to negotiate drug prices. The president insists we cannot afford these programs. With the war in Iraq currently costing $1.6 billion a week, he's probably right.
I'm trying to get used to the idea of living under a dictator. I only wish he was a little more benevolent.
When he doesn't have to bother about little distractions like laws or human rights or the long-term future of the country, a good dictator can get a lot accomplished. During his oppressive reign, Italy's Mussolini made the trains run on time. Even Saddam Hussein managed to keep the Sunnis and Shias from starting a civil war under his dictatorship.
A really smart and kind dictator can cut through all the political and legal red tape and do what is best for his country. He can provide universal education and health care, as in Cuba. He can suppress crime and corruption. He can build roads whenever they were needed, not just when the government agrees to it. Of course, this is not democracy--not like we have.
We now have a democracy in which one person makes all the important decisions and the rest of us have to pay for them. In some countries, this person is known as a king. But George Bush is not a king. He doesn't get his picture on the money and he doesn't get to wear one of those spiky, golden hats. And he is obliged to wait until Congress scribbles out their laws and make their little speeches before he does what he was planning to do anyway.
Currently, opposition to the Iraq war is running about 70 percent. In the United States, you can't get 70 percent of the population to agree that humans should walk upright. So when Bush sees this kind of consensus , it ought to make him stop and think. The latest AP-Ipso poll shows Bush's approval rating has fallen to yet another record low of 32 percent. When Richard Nixon was forced to resign the presidency, following the Watergate scandal, awaiting possible criminal charges and prison, he had an approval rating of 25 percent. If Bush were caught on tape at the local preschool, eating live kittens and wearing his wife's underwear, he could count on an approval rating of 20 percent or so.
But Bush and his coven of paranoid neo-cons are barricaded in their bunker beneath the White House, making increasingly insane and unpopular plans. They had made a big deal about what the Iraq Study Group would recommend. But when the study turned out to criticize the administration, Bush promptly dismissed it. Now Congress and most of the population agree that escalating the war with more troops and more money will only make things worse. But Bush treats Americans exercising their democratic right to disagree like disgruntled employees.
Bush has announced recently that he intends to veto the bill allowing life-saving stem cell research. He has vowed to fight the farm bill that supports US agriculture and to veto the Medicare drug bill that authorizes the federal government to negotiate drug prices. The president insists we cannot afford these programs. With the war in Iraq currently costing $1.6 billion a week, he's probably right.
I'm trying to get used to the idea of living under a dictator. I only wish he was a little more benevolent.