Love & War by James Carville

Author:James Carville
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2014-01-07T05:00:00+00:00

JAMES

I WAS RIGHT ABOUT what I said that morning when the planes hit the twin towers: it did change everything. At least for a while.

I didn’t know exactly how, but it was clear that the contours of American politics were going to be altered for the foreseeable future. Its immediate effect was pretty dramatic. The conversation, what people thought about and talked about, it all changed. You seemed trite if you were talking about environmental concerns or income inequality or schools or whatever. National security was foremost in everyone’s mind.

Politically, that change was favorable to Bush and the Republicans, no doubt about it. It conferred on them an aura of competence. As in, you may not like what they do. They may be kind of personally arrogant. But, man, they know how to get things done. They might not represent everything you believe in, but they are serious, strong, capable, hard-ass people.

I recall friends of mine at the time saying stuff like, “I’m glad Bush is in charge.” I heard Democrats say, “It’s better this way. They can do this better.” It was a pretty persuasive feeling at the time. That effect lasted for a few years. Bush’s numbers went up. Republicans had two good elections in a row, in 2002 and 2004, which hadn’t happened since 1978 and 1980.

Several things happened by 2005 that exposed just how incompetent Bush and the Republicans actually were. The White House and congressional Republicans intervened in the Terri Schiavo case in Florida, which was infuriating and offensive. Not too long afterward came the bungled Hurricane Katrina response, which along with the ongoing Iraq War debacle opened the eyes of anyone who wasn’t already a skeptic of the Bush administration.

Until all that happened, some people really thought there was a fundamental change taking place in American politics after 9/11. Ultimately, it turned out to be a temporary phenomenon. It didn’t permanently change everything, but it temporarily changed a lot.

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