Unelected prez picks right-wing cabinet
A recipe for mass anger as economy sags
By Deirdre
Griswold
George W. Bush may well go down in history as the
president who unwittingly awoke the sleeping giant in the
United States, to the consternation of the lords of industry
and finance who so eagerly put him in the White House.
It is not that his personal style is so abrasive. It is
not that he lacks for coaches and spin masters to file off
the rough edges of all his pronouncements and invent recipes
to sugarcoat a program that is poisonous to the masses of
people. This second Bush administration comes well equipped
with seasoned players in the deceitful sport of capitalist
politics. Next to them, the World Wrestling Federation looks
like Sunday school.
It is his unabashed defense of capitalism at a time when
the economy is looking downright sick and a large section of
the population is being turned off by the racism, repression,
environmental destruction and gross inequality spawned by the
profit system.
It is also his resurrection of political figures on the
far right in order to "balance" his cabinet.
Is 'bipartisan' honeymoon over before it began?
At the time of Al Gore's concession speech, it seemed that
Bush would have to temper his moves, at least for a while, in
order to quell massive anger over the vote fraud in Florida
and other states. Sure enough, his very first cabinet
appointments were meant to show that his administration was
mindful of the mood in the Black community, which had been so
shamelessly abused by the Florida authorities under the
command of his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush. And so he quickly
brought out Gen. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, two
conservative African Americans, as his nominees for secretary
of state and national security adviser, respectively.
Of course, Powell would be the first military leader to
fill this civilian post since Gen. George C. Marshall was
appointed head of the foreign policy establishment by Harry
Truman. While giving his name to the $20-billion Marshall
Plan that rescued post-World War II western Europe from
collapse--and from the very real possibility of workers'
takeovers in several countries where the left had led the
anti-fascist resistance--Marshall also presided over the
launching of the Cold War against the Soviet Union and its
allies.
Powell won the confidence of the big moneymen, and
especially of the oil billionaires who are so tight with
Bush, when he directed the war against Iraq. The Pentagon's
high-tech onslaught succeeded in disabling this relatively
modern developing country while taking virtually no U.S.
casualties.
Condoleezza Rice is another oil-connected cold warrior
who, while becoming an expert on Soviet-U.S. relations, also
found time to serve on the board of the Chevron Corp.
While Bush was announcing these appointments, the
Democratic Party leaders went along in the spirit of
"bipartisanship," which they had embraced so fervidly in
those critical days when the Supreme Court was handing Bush
the presidency. They certainly thought there would be some
quid pro quo for abandoning the struggle to recount the
Florida ballots. The media talked of Bush adding some
Democrats to his cabinet.
But then his true colors started to come out. There was
the nomination of Donald Rumsfeld to be secretary of defense;
of New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman to head the
Environmental Protection Agency; of Wisconsin Gov. Tommy
Thompson as the wolf in charge of Health and Human Services;
and, most provocatively, of former Missouri Sen. John
Ashcroft to be attorney general. Ashcroft is so notoriously
racist and anti-woman that he had just lost the election to a
dead man.
Another appointee, Don Evans to secretary of commerce, is
a long-time Bush friend and CEO of Tom Brown, Inc., a
Texas-based oil and gas company.
Rumsfeld and military madness
Rumsfeld first held the post of secretary of defense 25
years ago in Gerald Ford's administration. One of his
protégés was Richard Cheney, now Bush's vice
president. Rumsfeld was evidently picked by Bush to preside
over the Pentagon again because of his commitment to the next
generation of military madness: the National Missile Defense
system. NMD is just a new name for Ronald Reagan's Star Wars
program, known then as the Strategic Defense Initiative.
"In 1998, Rumsfeld made waves in Washington as head of the
Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the
United States," wrote the Houston Chronicle of Dec. 29. "The
nine-member, bipartisan panel concluded that the nation was
vulnerable to nuclear attack with 'little or no warning' from
emerging powers such as Iran, North Korea and, eventually,
Iraq."
The reason this made waves was because all the other
military planners and assessors had concluded there was no
ballistic missile threat. But Rumsfeld's commission proposed
a $60-billion budget to get started on putting into place an
"anti-missile" system that most people thought wasn't
necessary and wouldn't work anyway.
Furthermore, it would be in violation of the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union, the
cornerstone of all efforts to limit and cut back on the
nuclear threat. George W. Bush openly admitted that the NMD
would be a unilateral abrogation of the ABM treaty when he
called for the anti-missile system during his election
campaign.
Since the Pentagon already has far and away the most
dangerous nuclear arsenal in the world, the NMD system, if
made operational, would threaten other countries with
annihilation by removing their ability to retaliate if
attacked. Robert Aldridge, a former designer of Trident
submarine missiles, calls NMD "an aggressive first-strike
capability which is neither defensive nor deterrent."
Rumsfeld is one of those military-industrial-banking
officials who moves easily back and forth between the worlds
of government and private business. In addition to his role
in the Department of Defense, he has been an investment
banker; the chief executive officer of General Instrument
Corp., which pioneered high-definition television; and the
chair of G.D. Searle & Co., making him the second former
drug industry executive in Bush's cabinet.
Republicans love to castigate "big government" and call
for "self-reliance" and "responsibility" when it comes to
slashing social programs. But Rumsfeld finds no contradiction
in also advocating throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at
Northrop Grumman to build more copies of the B-2 bomber,
which at $2.2 billion each is the most expensive plane ever
made. He also wants to pour hundreds of millions into
Lockheed Martin's coffers to build more F-22s, the first
stealth air-to-air fighter jet, which is to be combat ready
in 2005.
These expensive weapons projects did not start with Bush,
of course. They have been moving steadily ahead during the
Clinton administration, even though there is no military
challenge in the world to U.S. hegemony. The Pentagon budget,
which dropped in the early Clinton years as superfluous bases
were closed, has been creeping up again--to $309 billion this
year.
And Clinton is not really contesting the Bush-Rumsfeld
scheme that argues for the NMD because of a supposed threat
from "rogue states." Despite efforts in both north and south
Korea to lessen the tensions on that occupied peninsula,
Clinton has ruled out a historic visit to the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea before leaving office. The
Pentagon just refused to acknowledge U.S. war crimes at
Nogun-ri in south Korea in 1950 despite a mass of evidence
unearthed by the U.S. media and the south Korean movement
over the last year.
Whitman: fox to guard the chickens
Bush's choice of Gov. Christine Whitman to head the EPA
has the big oil companies and chemical polluters cheering.
Here is another case of the fox being appointed to guard the
chickens. As governor of New Jersey, she has served well the
petrochemical industry that runs the state and has bankrolled
her political career. She is roundly denounced by most of the
environmental organizations in the state.
Her one claim to fame on the environment is to support the
preservation of some state woodlands--especially in areas
where the fox-hunting gentry like herself live.
One important appointment that has received muted press
attention is Paul O'Neill as secretary of the Treasury.
O'Neill is a former CEO of both Alcoa and International
Paper. The Financial Times on Dec. 21 called him "a virtual
unknown on Wall Street" compared to his predecessors,
Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin. So what makes this
industry guy the choice for treasury secretary?
The paper explained that O'Neill was lured from IP in 1987
by Alan Green span, who was then a director of Alcoa. "So as
Mr. O'Neill heads to Wash ington again, he leaves Wall Street
guessing what dollar policy he might pursue. He did though
offer up this clue on Thursday: 'I understand my place in
this, and that place is to let Alan Greenspan make monetary
policy.'"
Time magazine wrote on Dec. 31 that "Bush and Cheney had
only one constituent in mind when they chose O'Neill: Alan
Greenspan. And he was ecstatic."
O'Neill cultivates an image of being "interested in the
environment, labor relations and bringing down the budget
deficit." But he is also known as a "ruthless
cost-cutter."
Over the last eight years, the expanding economy has
produced the greatest profits that the capitalist class has
ever known. Greenspan and Clinton vie in taking credit for
that. When the economy turns around, however, as capitalism
always does, then the blame game begins.
Bush will be taking office when the economy is already in
decline. Bill Clinton did the dirty work for him of killing
off welfare--something Republicans had been demanding for
years but that it took a Democrat to deliver. Now the lack of
that social safety net is already leading to more
homelessness and bread lines. There will be broad and deep
bitterness if unemployment rises along with bankruptcies and
layoffs--as it always has in the past.
Because of the peculiarly undemocratic nature of the
Electoral College, magnified by the deliberate exclusion of
millions of voters--most of them definitely not
Republicans--Bush takes office under a huge cloud. He is seen
not just as a politician from the more right-wing party, but
as a robber who stole thousands of votes and got a Supreme
Court packed with his party's nominees to ratify the
theft.
It all seems a recipe for renewed struggle. Every sector
that has something to lose--the women's movement, the
oppressed communities of color, the unions, the
lesbian-gay-bi-trans community, the anti-war forces, the
movement against repression and the death penalty, all the
progressive forces--must look hard and long at how to build
unity against the reactionary pressures coming down from the
ruling class.
There is no salvation in the Democratic Party, as Gore's
predictable cave-in to Bush has shown already. But with a new
mood of militancy already having taken root in a significant
sector of the youth, and the emergence of the most underpaid,
oppressed sectors of the working class at the head of today's
union organizing drives, the prospects of building an
independent, anti-capitalist movement look better than in a
very long time.
See the accompanying articles by Monica Moorehead and
Phil Wilayto for more about Bush cabinet nominees Powell,
Ashcroft and Thompson.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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