If it were up to the teevee gasbag pundits, we’d be electing the most “presedential” candidate next month. But we’re not, as Barlow points out, electing Prom King. We’re electing not the package, but the package deal:
That’s because George Bush was and is a package deal. Along with the man himself, whatever his personality traits, we got a large cast of characters who, in aggregate, have been vastly more important than the hands-off President himself. We got Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Condoleeza Rice. We got Ashcroft to a fare-the-well. We got Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle. And, boy, did we ever get Karl Rove.
We got a legion of too-smart-by-half Stepford husbands with flags on their lapels, fire in their eyes, and God on their side. We got pharmaceutical companies designing our health care systems, the prison-industrial complex designing our sentencing schedules, Exxon and Enron designing energy policy, Halliburton and the Carlyle Group and the Center for the New American Century designing foreign policy, Louisiana-Pacific designing forestry policy, and Con-Agra designing agricultural policy. We got the super-rich and multinationals designing tax policy to their personal benefit, creationists designing school curricula, fundamentalists designing scientific research agenda.
I have yet to answer for myself whether things will be that different under Kerry, or if only the players will change. Patriot Act, healthcare tied to employment, and the doctrine of preemption. Coke or Pepsi?
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