Text 16369, 117 rader
Skriven 2005-11-30 06:41:02 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
Ärende: all
===========
A lifelong Republican's long winter
- Joan Ryan
Thursday, November 24, 2005

As those who follow this column know, my father and I inhabit opposite ends
of the political spectrum. I have found my geographic and ideological home
in the liberal Bay Area. He is a lifelong Republican who loved Spiro Agnew
and was not among the early waves of supporters for civil rights and
women's rights (he came around).

He is one of those hardscrabble men from the Irish parishes of the Bronx
who served in Korea, supported a wife and six children on his own sweat,
never got a handout and never sought one. To him, Democrats were the
ivory-tower elites who took increasing chunks of his paycheck to support
the lazy and the irresponsible.

I wrote two columns last year about his views of President Bush. My father
has been something of a political touchstone for me, providing a glimpse of
the country beyond the rainbow flags and peace marches of San Francisco, or
at least of those parts populated by churchgoing, middle-class
conservatives.

In the summer of 2004, to my great surprise, he was so disillusioned with
how Bush had run up the federal debt and mismanaged the Iraq war that he
said he would not be voting Republican for the first time in his life.

Three months later, I wrote a follow-up. He had decided to vote for Bush
after all.

"It's terrible that in this country of so many good people,'' my father had
explained, "how an election can come down to the lesser of two evils. You
have to vote this time for who will do the least harm. Not the most good,
but the least harm."

I won't be with my family in Florida for Thanksgiving this year. I will
miss my father serving up his political views along with the turkey and
creamed onions. So I caught up with him by phone the other day as he was
heading out to Mass. I asked what he was thinking about Bush now, a year
after his re-election.

He regrets changing his mind about voting for him, he said.

"The guy's stupid," he said. "Such a disappointment. The worst
administration I've ever seen. He just sounds confused. He doesn't sound
like he knows what the hell he's doing."

As we spoke, his voice rose in volume and intensity in that way it did
whenever one of us kids did something particularly moronic. Like, for
example, when my sister and I wanted to find out if kitchen scissors could
cut a pearl in half and sent the entire strand bouncing like tiny rubber
balls across my parents' bedroom floor.

"I don't think people, myself included, were clear on how good (Bill)
Clinton was with the money,'' he said. "Why wouldn't the Republicans keep
going with that? Instead we got tax cuts and the war in Iraq. Who's going
to pay for all that? It's just irresponsible. I never thought (Bush) was
the brightest guy in the world, but to go from a $300 billion surplus to a
$500 billion deficit, or whatever it is, that's just stupid.''

He doesn't blame Bush for believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction, but he says the mismanagement in the aftermath of the invasion
is mind-boggling. Almost 2,100 Americans have been killed and more than
15,000 seriously wounded in Iraq. And now my father and the rest of the
family have a personal stake in the war: His grandson, my sister Barbara's
son, is a Marine serving near Fallujah.

"If something happens to him, what will it be for?" my father asked.
"(Bush) thought we'd go in and -- voila! -- we'd get democracy. If he just
read a book about the United States trying to get its democracy, he'd know
it just doesn't happen overnight.''

Hurricane Katrina sealed the deal for my father. As someone who has
weathered many hurricanes in Florida, he watched the president's response
to the devastation with increasing horror and bafflement.

"This guy's slow, and he's dimwitted,'' he said. "He said, 'I'm going to
let Louisiana take care of itself.' You got that woman governor who doesn't
know her ass from third base. You got his friend at the head of FEMA and
the mayor of New Orleans who didn't know anything. You had Larry, Moe and
Curly in there, and he's just waiting.

"And then he goes with that woman for the Supreme Court (Harriet Miers). 'I
know in my heart she's a good person' -- what the hell does that got to do
with it? That's just stupid. That's just plain dumb. It seems like with
Bush lately, whatever he touches turns to crap. And now we're saddled with
this guy for three more years. The only thing you can do is to get the
Republicans out of Congress next year.''

I wanted to make sure I had heard him correctly.

"I never thought I'd say this, but I wouldn't vote for any Republican, even
from Florida," he said. "We got to get the Republicans out and the
Democrats in. We got to make sure they control Congress so Bush can't do
whatever the hell he wants. You got to get the Democrats in there to knock
his brains out so he'll just be a token figurehead.''

He said that in retrospect he should have thought about last year's
election in a different way. He said he should have considered that a vote
for John Kerry, whom he strongly disliked, was a vote not for an individual
but for a Democratic administration. We needed a Democratic administration,
he said, to keep in check a Republican Congress.

He said he had to hang up. He was going to be late for Mass. I asked if he
would be offering up prayers for Bush's wisdom.

"I believe in the power of prayer,'' he said. "But it can only do so
much.''

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/24/BAGBNFTM7H1.DTL

©2005 San Francisco Chronicle 

[clip]

The old guy about says it all about the catastrophe that is George W. Bush.
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
 * Origin: Try Our Web Based QWK: DOCSPLACE.ORG (1:123/140)