Bush and Cheney meet Sir Isaac Newton

[babylonsister]

Bush and Cheney meet Sir Isaac Newton
by Alan Bisbort | January 15, 2009 - 8:32am



Isaac Newton's third law of motion says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. While some Americans may feel that we are not subject to any laws of science, this one, at least, seems to also hold true in the laboratory of politics. The eight years of stupidity that defined the Bush presidency is its living proof.

The media myth-makers have lately been spinning a tale about "an enormously popular president" who was felled by a hurricane that "no one could have foreseen." Yes, that's the sum total of their argument: Katrina is to blame for the fact that Bush, Cheney and their Congressional enablers wrecked America. Everything was just hunky dory until Katrina hit; then everything went downhill.

But Katrina was just one of many instances of Newton's law in action. Just prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bush's approval ratings were already falling, and were never higher than the low 50s. Before Osama bin Laden turned him into Captain Codpiece the Conqueror, Bush was perceived by Americans as a lazy bum; within his first six months in office he'd broken the record for longest vacation by any president. After the attacks, Bush's approval ratings saw an equal and opposite reaction. That is, after he came out of hiding and stood on the pile of rubble with his bullhorn, the ratings soared to 90 percent.

Seldom had the nation been so united behind a president, and never had the rest of the world been so united on America's side. Even Iran condemned the attacks and, with their more moderate ruling elements behind President Mohammad Khatami in ascendancy, came forward to provide intelligence that helped the U.S. in the initial assaults on the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Bush squandered that unity. He demonstrated Newton's third law of motion again on Jan. 29, 2002, in his State of the Union address, during which he jabbed his middle finger at the world and declared Iran, Iraq and North Korea the "axis of evil." As Max Rodenbeck writes in a recent piece in the New York Review of Books, "This sudden, sharp escalation of rhetoric shocked Iranians profoundly, leaving proponents of warmer ties dangerously exposed."

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