The LA Times’ Robert Scheer raised a point today that I’ve been thinking about for a while.
Don’t say you weren’t warned. Yes, you, that otherwise reasonable centrist voter who might be tempted to cast a “what the heck” vote for George W. Bush. Don’t kid yourself that the Cheneys, Ashcrofts and Rumsfelds who mold Bush’s thoughts will suddenly moderate their radical vision for remaking the world or dampen their attacks on our treasury and civil liberties. It won’t happen: Reward their rampage of the last four years with a new mandate to rule and they will only be emboldened.
I not only think this is true, I think it’s a point that doesn’t get emphasized enough.
The last four years, despite all the recklessness and failures, have been Bush on his best behavior. He knew he’d be running for a second term, so he acted in such a way as to make himself more appealing and popular to as large an audience as possible. In a second term, unencumbered by political burdens and the accountability of an election, Bush will be less reserved. He would, in other words, have no reason to hold back.
For many of us, this may sound absurd, since Bush has already acted in such a radical fashion for so long. But therein lies the point: Bush has been almost fanatical about his conservative domestic and international agenda the past four years, but the man we’ve been watching has been restrained.
I mention this because a second Bush term could, believe it or not, get considerably worse. He governed as a hard-line conservative after coming in second in the last election; imagine for a moment how he’d approach dissent and compromise if he actually won this time.
As David Greenberg recently explained in the Washington Monthly, we’d likely see an escalation of “anything goes” politics to levels unseen in recent memory.
If the public were to award Bush a vote of confidence on the basis of his first-term record, it would amount to a ratification of the ruthless style and philosophy that have underpinned Bush’s presidency–what Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention called “the politics of anything goes.” … [T]o award Bush another four years — provided he really wins this time — would signal that a majority of Americans not only tolerates but endorses his anti-democratic style. And it could be interpreted by Democrats as a lesson that resistance is futile.
[…]
Should Bush win a second term, the politics of anything-goes would only intensify — because it would no longer be seen as controversial…. Fifteen years ago, conservatives put forth the “broken windows” theory of crime. If small street crimes are tolerated, the theory went, neighborhoods begin to accept them as normal and the result is more lawlessness. The same thing will happen if a democracy tolerates Bush’s ruthless behavior as business as usual. If voters validate this modus operandi, it won’t just accelerate; it will cease to draw even the modest level of scrutiny and outrage that the administration’s transgressions have attracted so far. Failing to protest these breaches of the norms that govern political conduct will encourage more such violations.
Historically, second-term presidents have gotten cocky and overreached: Franklin D. Roosevelt with his court-packing plan, Nixon with Watergate (which began in his first term), Ronald Reagan with Iran-Contra. But no law of history decrees that the system always corrects itself. With no independent counsel and no Democratic Congress to investigate, with a press cowed into submission, with a court system loaded with Federalist Society apparatchiks, who will restrain Bush’s ruthless agenda? Only the people. And the only time they can do it is on Nov. 2.