Unlucky Planet?

For the past couple days I've been getting a strange vibe that President Bush's luck is going to turn in 2004. I say that very advisedly, because I think Bush is ten times luckier than Pierre, and because I still think he's going to carve up Dean like a Christmas ham. But there's been this sneaking something in the air, which at first I chalked up to the slow news week. Now I think I've figured it out: It's the man-on-Mars mission. I have a copy of a 1989 Atlantic City Press that I used in packing during some apartment move of yore and now keep around for curiosity's sake. The top-right, large-type headline: "Bush proposes manned mission to Mars." (I thank Ron Bailey for pointing out that this proposal was actually timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the moon landing.)

Now I don't want to read too much into this, and as Bailey has indicated, President GW Bush's proposal this week is essentially an election year bargaining chip that will undoubtedly be disposed of in good time. But whenever I see that '89 headline I think "Hah! Man plans, God laughs." The forlorn hope, the feebleness of promised joy, the reminder of what a sad sack George HW Bush was at heart (not least because he actually had to work hard to make it to the top). George W has enjoyed such great success by systematically destroying every piece of his father's legacy that I worry any time he seems to be walking the family path. (I'm sure GHWB was only using Mars as a bargaining chip too.) For his sake, I hope this Mars announcement wasn't a portent of things to come. The last thing GWB needs in an election year is a hugging and understanding moment with dear old dad.

Comments

[Dan]

George W has enjoyed such great success by systematically destroying every piece of his father's legacy.

George HW Bush had a legacy? He's always seemed like the Republicans' answer to Jimmy Carter -- a President who was called upon to do very little, and still bungled it.

The only three things that stick out in my mind about the first Bush presidency are: an unfinished war in Iraq, a clueless Vice President, and his famous (in certain circles) remark about how atheists shouldn't be considered citizens or patriots.

His son finished the war, has a shrewd VP, and was nice enough to acknowledge -- in front of the Southern Baptists, no less! -- that many good Americans are aren't religious. He probably still thinks I'm going to Hell, but it was a nice thought. So I guess mark me down as someone who's happy to see the legacy of George HW Bush get brushed aside.

[B.P.]

Don't forget the Americans with Disabilities Act. Oh, and the aversion to broccoli bit, which is the one thing Bush the first really got right.

[Player]

Tim, hush your mouth man! Talk like this will cause my Bush Re-election futures to drop in value!

[Vic the Appraiser]

The "bad luck" W is facing is that his man-on-the-moon-and-mars plan is a perfect encapsulation of his grotesque fiscal irresponsibility.

I say this as somebody who supports having the government send people to the moon, by the way. But the guy is outrageously fiscally profligate, and this program, I think, clearly conveys that message. We're running half-trillion-dollar deficits, and the IMF is warning that we risk turning into Argentina, and is response is...to fly people to Mars.

Gotcha, chief.

His opponents will have a field day with it.

Tim's right - Dean, if he's nominated, will be crushed like a grape. But the Mars thing isn't going to help.

[ed]

I like broccoli. Steamed, a little butter and garlic. Good eatin'.

[Josh]

I'm as pissed at Bush's financial profligacy as anyone, but the extra $1 billion to NASA is to the Medicare prescription plan as my salary is to the thousands of six-figure earning septuagarians' whose drugs I'm going to be buying.

[clear]

This piece has no news, no useful information. It's pure idiocy.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Space is the place.

[Douglas Fletcher]

I think Bush is going to win because of people like me. I can't remember ever voting for a Republican in my life, but after three years of watching the jackass corps of the Democratic party pretend that 9/11 was a "tragedy" and not a blood-curdling act of war and mass murder, they've lost me for years.

[Steve in CO]

Douglas,

An act of war to be sure. But whom, praytell did we attack? We have reacted to 9/11 as much like we had bombed Switzerland for Pearl Harbor.

Steve

PS Sorry for the tired, if logically sound analogy/rebuttal.

[R C Dean]

We have reacted to 9/11 as much like we had bombed Switzerland for Pearl Harbor.

How so? Our first response in the current war was to attack the country sheltering those who perpetrated the attacks, Afghanistan. I don't recall Switzerland sheltering any Japanese aicraft carriers.

Our first significant engagement in WWII was to attack North Africa. The connection between North Africa and Japan could hardly be more tenuous.

The US hasn't attacked any neutrals in its current war, so the analogy to Switzerland fails on yet another point. Afghanistan was certainly not a neutral in radical Islam's war on the West, and we had been at war with Saddam's regime for 12 years.

Yeah, Steve, your analogy is certainly tired - the weaker you are, the quicker you get tired, after all. It is neither logical nor a rebuttal.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Let's make that 2-plus years.

[s.m. koppelman]

Saints preserve us, Mr. Cavanaugh. When you drop the Suck-style pop-culture riffs, you're quite the scold, aren't you?

GHWB's legacy?

[twistedmerkin]

First it was man-on-dog. Now it's man-on-mars. What's with these sexually deviant republicans? Have they lost their sheep?