"It may have been something of a pose, but Bush's macho demeanor in the interview revealed a disturbing lack of restraint, a combination platter of unwelcome traits--stubbornness, as he admits, with side dishes of arrogance and an irritability that couldn't be contained even though things are going well for him. He shows a disturbing blindness to the feelings of those around him, whether it's Letterman or those on death row pleading for clemency whom he mocks (Karla Faye Tucker) or the McCain voter... Facing mounting criticism, Bush tried to backpedal but couldn't bring himself to take back the gloating remarks....In the past Bush's supporters made much of McCain's temper. Yet they must be concerned that Bush seems more irritated in victory than McCain does in defeat." --Margaret Carlson

This behavior is not unusual in Bush, and over the years Texans have noticed how it works. When he's running for office he's on his best behavior, but when he wins he becomes insufferable. Last spring when the matter of his unpleasant behavior came up, the rationalization was that Governor Bush is a busy administrator who does not suffer fools (questions) gladly. That's his style, the explanation ran. Thinly veiled hostility was interpreted as his sense of humor, his way of joking around. Another explanation was that those who didn't accept such behavior were "disloyal," the worst thing a would-be Bushie could be. Bush communications director Karen Hughes exhibits one of the worst cases of co-dependency in the Bush camp, recently leading her to castigate Cokie Roberts, of all people, as being "disrespectful" to Bush for asking the same question twice in an interview because he didn't really answer it the first time. Folks are beginning to wonder-- if Bush can't keep his "nasty" side under wraps after sewing up the Republican nomination, what would he be like if he were to become President? --Politex, 3/20/00

"Now Mr. Olasky has even dragged me into the negative Bush campaign, writing a piece for the Austin American-Statesman implying that journalists who are critical of Mr. Bush have "holes in their souls," practice "the religion of Zeus" and are therefore hostile to the Texas governor's Christianity. The only three journalists he cites by name happen by total coincidence to be Jewish (Bill Kristol and David Brooks of The Weekly Standard are the other two). I'm sure it's also a coincidence that Mr. Olasky, a former Jew who converted to Christianity over 20 years ago, has spun this theory at a moment when Pat Robertson is targeting Mr. Rudman, the most visible Jew in the McCain campaign....

"Mr. Rudman takes a less benign view of the invective directed at him. "There's no question in my mind that it's anti-Semitism," he says. "The way they pronounced my name in phone calls! They're unhappy it's not Finkelstein." Nor did he think the Bush campaign was clueless about what was going on....[But] when Mr. Bush says he "wasn't very aware" of Bob Jones U.'s interracial dating policy when he spoke there, we still don't know if he's stupid or just politically cunning....[Bush is] pandering to racists, homophobes, pope-haters, anti-Semites...." --Frank Rich, NYT, 2/26/00

FACTS CONTRADICT BUSH REFORMER CLAIM

The bills that Texas Governor Bush signed as examples of his ability to reform show, among other things, how such "reforms" have primarily benefited his wealth backers. Craig McDonald of Austin's Citizens for Public Justic explains: "A reformer is one who restores the balance between special interests and everyday people, and he's tipped the scales in the other direction. He's a reformer who has delivered new policies, but policies that favor his top donors.''

Tax Cuts Bush got the idea for his 1997 tax cut proposal from Chris Walker, a Reaganite who ran an industry-financed tax reduction advocacy group, writes Wayne Slater in Sunday's DMN. The legislature rejected the $3 billion tax cut bill, but agreed to provide $1 billion in property tax relief. Local property taxes and increased valuations ate up that tax cut, says an analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities: "The bottom line is that most homeowners paid at least as much the next year as they did the year before." Last year Bush managed to get another $1 billion property tax cut passed, but Slater reports that 60 percert went to businesses and none, of course went to those, mostly poor, who didn't own property. Further the CPPP projected that by 2004 60% of all of Bush's tax cuts will go to businesses. While Bush has said that his tax cuts benefit lower-income people, few lower-income people own businesses.

Lawsuit Reform Since 1995 Bush has been behind changes in the civil-justice system that favor business at the expense of consumers. With campaign backing from the businesses and "tort reform groups" ($4 million from the latter) and the support of business lobbying groups the legislation he has backed curbs lawsuit filing, caps damages, and reduces "frivolous claims." While Bush says such changes have reduced business costs, those reductions have not been passed on to the consumer. For example, while the state Insurance Commission estimated a $3 billion savings during Bush's tenure, a study by the former Insurance Commissioner indicated that insurance companies were the major beneficiaries, since there have been greater profits than consumer savings.

Health Patient Protection In 1995 Bush vetoed a patient-protection bill that was not favored by the Texas medical lobby, but in 1997 he signed a number of such bills except for one that would have allowed the patient to sue an HMO. "The Texas governor considered a veto," writes Slater, "saying he feared the bill might lead to the kind of lawsuits against businesses that he had long opposed, but he eventually allowed it to become law without his signature." Today, however, Bush points to the exact bill he refused to sign as an example of his ability to reform.

Campaign Finance Reform It's generally agreed that Bush's campaign finance reform is a farce, tacked on to his list of "reforms" at the last minute in South Carolina in order to confuse those who had little idea of his record or what he has said in the past. "Chuck Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity and author of The Buying of the President 2000, noted that Mr. Bush's campaign-reform agenda in the presidential race advocates raising the caps on contributions and continuing to allow individuals to give unlimited so-called "soft money'' donations to political parties." Lewis suggests that, "Anyone who looks at cleaning up politics and sees that someone wants to increase the limits and allow millionaires to keep writing big checks, it's hard to see what reform that exactly is. [Bush] and his advisers have made a calculation that they can muddy the waters on the 'R' word and the public won't notice."

Education Reform Molly Ivins recently put the final nail in the coffin of Bush's claim to have reformed education in Texas. "Our two best moves were cutting class sizes in the early grades and starting to equalize spending between rich districts and poor districts. Putting in a system of school accountability and starting to test our kids for results were also good moves. All this was done before George W. Bush became governor -- so long before that our school scores were already going up, our minority kids were making great strides, and school accountability was well in place before he ever thought of running. Bush has been helpful on the margins of public education, but he does not deserve the credit he claims for the improvement in public schools. All those who fought and the many who politically died in those long-ago but bloody battles are entitled to resent his claims. I think especially of Bill Hobby, the late Bob Bullock, ex-Gov. Mark White, H. Ross Perot, Ann Richards' education commissioner, Skip Meno, and a cast of hundreds over the years."

How typical of George W. Bush, then, to claim the mantle of reform for helping his wealthy friends and backers, for claiming to be a reformer on the basis of successful bills that he vetoed, did not pass, or had little or nothing to do with creating, and to claim credit for things that were done by others. When it comes to Bush, he's the one in need of reforming. --Politex, 2/28/00

Twenty-four hours before the polls closed in Michigan, Texas political observer Harry Kronberg was casting a marble eye at George W. Bush's smear campaign against Mac, declaring that Dubya left no fingerprints and sent a message to the party bosses that, like his father before him, he demonstrated that he can and will do anything to win the nomination: "The vicious smear campaign against McCain was not conducted on TV. The e-mails, direct mail, whisper campaigns, talk-radio slurs and phone-banking operations were largely invisible to the rest of the country. The worst of the mess was conducted by soft-money surrogate groups so that the Bush campaign had some plausible deniability.... The governor shamelessly appropriated John McCain's reform message, even going so far as to mislead South Carolinians about his role in Texas HMO reform. While cynical on its face, the subtext was ultimately reassuring to Republicans.... But Bush's personal rhetoric stayed above the fray." (AAS, 2/2200) How wrong can one be? With the help of the Christian Coalition's Pat Robertson, the Michigan voters found Bush's fingerprints on the smear campaign and voted accordingly, leading some doubting Republican fat cats to go as far as to call for the head of Bush strategist Karl Rove.

And Bush knew he had been caught. By the time he landed in Kasas City tuesday night and got the news of his defeat, he had a statement designed to bury his smear campaign. But it backfired. First, he gathered the reporters together and loudly said, ""Let me make it crystal clear. I reject bigotry, I reject prejudice, I repudiate anti-Catholicism and racism." This statement follows South Carolina radio ads calling McCain the "fag candidate" and calling attention to his adopted black child. It also follows an attack on Mac backer ex-Senator Warren Rudman by Pat Robertson which some have characterized as anti-Semitic. Further, Robertson called him a "vicious bigot" on the basis of a statement Rudman never made in the book passage Robertson quoted, and then, when confronted by CNN's Jeff Greenfield Tuesday night, Robertson refused to acknowledge his error. It also followed a Mac ad calling attention to Bush's visit to anti-Catholic and racist Bob Jones University in South Carolina. Bush said that he was called a "bigot" in that ad. Bush uttered a falsehood and is still doing so, even though he has been corrected by reporters more than once. (Now, he is also implying that he didn't know Bob Jones was anti-Catholic and racist prior to going there, even though the AP reported last week that his aides warned him in advance and Bob Jones trashed his father when Poppy was President.) So are these specific instances what Bush meant when he said he rejects "bigotry, prejudice, anti-Catholicism and racism?" Surely you jest. Bush only repudiates the general idea of racism and bigotry, not the specifics that forced him to make the statement in the first place.

When the reporters in Kansas City asked Bush for specific repudiations of racism and bigotry rather than vague generalizations, Bush clammed up: "Asked if he repudiated the recorded message that Mr. Robertson had put out against Mr. McCain, Mr. Bush said he did not know what the message contained, then quickly switched the focus. "I repudiate the phone calls that came in accusing me of being an anti-Catholic bigot," Mr. Bush said. What about the Bob Jones visit? "I don't make any apologies for what I do on the campaign trail," he said." (NYT, 2/24/00)

In this morning's DMN Karl Rove is quoted as saying there will be no changes made in the Bush campaign strategy, suggesting that we're going to be in for more Bush smears of McCain off camera but in radio ads and telephone push polls, leading the WP's Richard Cohen to write, "Self-described as a "uniter, not a divider," Bush has managed to unite the Christian right, homophobes, zealous antiabortionists, the Rev. Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Strom Thurmond and, it has to be said in fairness, many conventional Republicans, in a coalition so right-wing that should he be elected president, the European Union might treat the United States as it has Austria." --Politex, 2/25/00

There are three kinds of hackers operating today who might want to perform a denial of service attack--thrill seekers, terrorist groups, and hostile governments. Although our relevant government agencies are worried about all three kinds, the latter two are particularly troubling. For example, some observers are saying that it's possible that the purpose of these ongoing Yahoo hacks is a testing of the system with an eye towards a more seious hack down the road. If the Twentieth Century was marked by the fear of the bomb, the Twenty-First Century will be marked by fear of the hack. The upside to our new century is the wonders of the computer, but that's the downside, too. As we become more and more dependent upon the complex interconnections between people and machines, we can be attacked through our machines. Rather, we can be attacked because we are our machines. As we move into wireless nano-computers and bio-technology, some have imagined a day when computers literally become part of our bodies, giving new meaning to the concept of the PC.

In "The Age of Spiritual Machines" (Viking), Ray Kurzweil, MIT's inventor of the year in 1988, believes we will be living such a day in 2029, a scant thirty years from now. (See pages 189-252.) Although Kurzweil mentions groups of anti-technologists who attempt to destroy the system, the governments have fought back with virus-fighting "biowarfare agencies," rapid antidotes, and laws against keyless encryption codes.Sounds pretty much like today, doesn't it? That's the point. Today, we find ourselves in an uneasy balance between a socio-political revolution based on the computer and those who want to destroy it...and us. It's doubtful that this uneasy balance will change in the future, so we'd better get used to it.

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