The Decider

He said in 2000 he was the “uniter, not the divider.” Today, six years and some months later, President Bush tells us in no uncertain terms that he’s the “decider,” and he knows what's "best" for us.

Excuse me, Mr. President? This is just lil’ ol’ me, here, but I don’t think you do.

According to the latest Harris Interactive Poll, your “job-approval rating slipped for the third consecutive month and remains near the lowest mark” of your presidency.

This less-than-happy news comes from today’s Wall Street Journal Online, which is sure no floppy, latté-drinking liberal rag, like the LA Times or, dare I say it? the New York Times. I encourage you to take a gander, Mr. President. There are charts with a lot of numbers, but if you concentrate – perhaps right after a good workout in the Presidential Gym – I bet you can read them. They’re pretty straight forward. But don’t ask for help from your friends Turd Blossom or Unca Dick. You know what, sir? They’ll lie to you.

Not me, though. In fact, let me give you an easy summation, right from today’s WSJ story:

“Thirty-five percent of 1,008 U.S. adults surveyed in the telephone poll think Mr. Bush is doing an "excellent or pretty good" job as president, down from 36% in March and significantly lower than 43% in January. This compares with 63% of Americans who said Mr. Bush is doing an "only fair or poor" job, down from 64% in March.”

Mmm. Not lookin’ so good, sir. Perhaps you should pay more attention to the People, who don’t seem to be very impressed with your “decidin’” abilities or your take on what’s “best” for us.

First of all, Mr. President, we’re not very happy about your war in Iraq. I know, I know – we’re ungrateful. You get that way when your sons and daughters are cannon fodder.

But more to the point, sir, when you decided we needed a War on Terror, we sorta thought you were going to focus on Osama. A lot of us saw the spirit of John Wayne in you when you said, “you can run, but you cannot hide.” We were scared and boy, were we glad you stood up like a man for us.

You started out OK, Mr. President. You sent our troops to Afghanistan and righteously kicked some nasty al Qaeda butt. But just when our troops were about to catch him, you remembered you didn’t like Saddam even more than you didn’t like Osama. So you let the architect of Sept. 11 get away, sent our brave troops to Iraq instead, and told us a series of whoppers so we’d be quiet. So we’d let you have the war you really wanted. And just in case we got nervy about it, you made sure to keep those terror alert levels high. That way, we’d be scared and keep our mouths shut.

Those of us who didn’t fall for the whoppers (they were pretty bad, you know) were called “anti-American.” Our patriotism as Americans was questioned. Why, you even let your buds call us traitors. I have to admit, that worked on a bunch of us.

But you know what, sir? We aren’t any of those things. In fact, we’re just fine with catching real terrorists, and we’re grown-ups. We can deal with the fact that doing the job might get messy. We just don’t see any sense in putting our soldiers in mortal danger and blowing up innocent Iraqi civilians just so your buds can make a lot of money.

When our brave troops didn’t find Weapons of Mass Destruction you swore Saddam was saving for a rainy day in Iraq – the reason you gave for going to war – you just shrugged and joked that maybe those ol’ WMD were hiding somewhere in the Oval Office. But believe me, Mr. President, if they’d been there, they’d have stained Laura’s pretty, yellow sun-rug. You’d have noticed. Really.

I hate to say it, but we weren’t amused. We already knew there were no WMD in Iraq, unless they were the stale old chemical weapons we gave Saddam ourselves in the 80s so he could put down those pesky Kurds in exchange for keeping Iran off balance.

And we knew Saddam wasn’t anywhere close to making a nuclear bomb, too. Jeez, Mr. President – he’d hardly had time, since the Gulf War. We’d been all over him like flies on cow patties ever since he ran back to Iraq from Kuwait, his silly tail tucked. Saddam was just a lot of hot air. If you’d asked, we’d have told you.

You didn’t ask. I guess when you’re The Decider, you don’t have to.

Mr. President, your war in Iraq just went downhill from there. You’d decided, I guess, not to make any real plans about what to do with the country after you took it. As a result of that decision, Iraq has imploded into civil war. Thousands of Iraqis are being maimed or killed every day because of your decision. And darned near 2,500 of our own troops have been killed, too, and many thousands more have been so horribly injured their lives have been changed forever.

I guess you’re not losing sleep over that. After all, you got what you wanted, even if your hold on it is pretty tenuous – control over Iraq’s oil.

You’ve made a lot of other decisions since 2000 that weren’t what I’d call bright, Mr. President. The short list? Tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans. Torture. Secret wire-tapping. The slow but methodical dismantling of America’s Constitution and her incredible democracy.

You’ll excuse me, sir, if I’m not convinced of your prowess as a “decider.” I’m afraid you’re “decidin’” us right to hell.

Look at those numbers, Mr. President. They don’t lie. The People (you know, the ones who elected you and pay your salary) have “decided” we don’t like you very much at all.