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Be Careful What You Ask For (Kristof op-ed NYT)




http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/08/opinion/08KRIS.html
Title: Be Careful What You Ask For
The New York Times The New York Times Opinion November 8, 2002  

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  Welcome, cmhenry
Today's News Past Week Past 30 Days Past 90 Days Past Year Since 1996

Be Careful What You Ask For

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Republicans are really in a pickle now.

No, it's true. Just consider the picture in the fall of 2004 as President Bush battles to hold onto Congress and his own house:

• The new Scalia Supreme Court has accepted an abortion case that could overturn Roe v. Wade and abortion rights in America. The federal budget deficit has hit $400 billion, and the expanded 2003 tax cuts mean that the federal debt is out of control. This has kept the Dow below 7,000.

• The '02 election has emboldened conservatives to take hard-line positions and overshoot their mandate, just as they did under Newt Gingrich in 1994, so that more high school students now learn about creationism than about condoms. The result, once again, is rising public anger at right-wing ideologues.

• In response to huge budget deficits, states have had to slash school spending. Test scores are dropping, and a growing number of children are being left behind. Even centrists are angered by logging of old-growth forests and the administration's fervent push to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

• The occupation of Iraq is increasingly unpopular at home, with an average of one American killed there every two weeks and Iran gaining influence in the anarchic south. The catastrophic failure to engage North Korea has led that country to start up its Yongbyon reactor, churn out many nuclear weapons and test its new three-stage Taepodong 2 missile, which can reach New York.

The above paragraphs will self-destruct next year, well before they could embarrass me by being juxtaposed with reality. As Mark Twain said, the art of prophecy is difficult, especially with regard to the future. But it does seem plausible that Republicans will overinterpret their mandate (if 22,000 votes had gone differently, the Senate could have remained Democratic in January).

President Bush is, like President Reagan but unlike his father, a natural leader who is unafraid to use political capital and even borrow some from the bank. If he pushed an aggressive platform before, with a minority of the popular vote and a divided Congress, imagine what he'll seek now. Already the Republicans are oozing hubris.

(You can't much blame them. As David Letterman observed about the Democrats, You know you're in trouble when your bright young star of the future is Frank Lautenberg.)

Yet the reality is that this will be an excruciating economic climate in which to govern. New York State alone will face a $6 billion shortfall next year, and war spending and tax cuts could easily push the federal deficit to between $200 billion and $400 billion in 2004, up to a precarious 4 percent of G.N.P. Services and school programs around the country will be cut, and voters will find someone to blame in two years' time. The Democrats, out of power, won't make a convenient whipping boy.

John Ellis, a Bush cousin and longtime conservative political analyst, gets it exactly right on his Weblog: "The 2002 result is a strong vote of confidence for the Bush administration. It is not a mandate. The great danger that now looms for the G.O.P. is that it will mistake the vote of confidence for a mandate."

In his press conference yesterday, Mr. Bush gave no sign he is intoxicated by election vapors; even when goaded by reporters looking for a good story, he didn't speak dreamily about appointing John Ashcroft to the Supreme Court, drilling for oil in Yellowstone or exiling liberals to Guantánamo. The key test, though, will be in the coming weeks as we see whether he reads the soon-to-be-passed U.N. resolution on Iraq the same way everyone else does.

Mr. Bush's problem is that he has launched a diplomatic process in which he has little faith. The reality is that he went to the U.N. to get international legitimacy, not weapons inspections. So he may soon be tempted to short-circuit the diplomatic process.

The resolution, as it is presently drafted, requires Saddam Hussein to make a full declaration of his secret programs within 30 days. It's a good bet that there'll be a lot of doubt that his declaration is completely truthful, and so hawks will encourage Mr. Bush to launch a war at that time. They will urge him to announce that the declaration is false and constitutes a "material breach" — and then send the bombers.

If that happens, we could be at war by year's end. We might be paying for such hubris for years to come.




Forum: Join a Discussion on Nicholas D. Kristof's Columns (Moderated)




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