Column: A New Bush?

House Republicans are either experimenting with evidentiary methamphetamine smuggled in by Ashcroft over at Justice, or they're wandering about in a psychotic daze made possible by flushing their Thorazine each morning. It's plain that each is in need of his or her own Nurse Ratchet, standing guard and enforcing medicinal duties for the nation's good. But with Ratchet, R.N. gone, our boys are definitely off the wagon. Like the lead characters in another flick, Animal House, they launched a laughable attack on the forces of sanity last Wednesday by moving to cut taxes---again. These congressional John Bulushis (who in the movie, as I recall, wound up as a U.S. senator) understood their act was futile, but it had the decided merit of brown-nosing their political base of the Fortune 500 and 30 million or so of the chronically vapid.

Of course, House Republicans have been off the wagon ever since The Man From Crawford rode into town with the admittedly Byzantine tax code in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. Last summer's fiscal butchery was performed in the name of dazzling concoctions, each quickly, inexplicably, and eerily morphing into a different beast: It's for short-term growth; No, it's for long-term growth; Well, it's to force spending restraints; Gee, it's to level our overused playing field; No, no, no, it's for the poor single mothers of our land--well, to a degree. You name the pretense. If the White House liked it, it used it. The entire budgetary dance was a comedy of Highland jigging and reeling, W. style.

But, as I've always maintained, the moment one thinks the Right has hit the absolute bottom of irresponsibility, it somehow manages to pull another bandicoot out of the hat. Only this time they sunk to the belly-heaving level of striving to fatten the rich again so soon--and worse, in the guise of patriotism. According to our D- legislators, more alms for the wealthy--which they'll only tuck away--will mystically stimulate the economy and thus assist financially in our holy war against evil. More budget axing and plutocrat pocket stuffing is simply the patriotic thing to do, they said. The tribal instinct of rabid patriotism never has managed to hold its own against rational thought, but should America ever declare victory in its just struggle against terrorism, the"ism" of"patriot" as now practiced will have been sullied beyond redemption.

Wheeled out by the GOP, the tax-code dessert cart over which dandified robber barons may ooh and aah is a kind of perverse wonderment. Oddly, the $100 billion stimulus package is only 15 percent stimulating and 85 percent numbing. Naturally--yawn--the bill is--yawn--woefully insufficient in helping the unemployed and working poor--double yawn. It's a nice treat for others, however. For example, one provision would repeal the corporate minimum tax. That being rather namby-pamby by modern conservative standards, corporations could also reclaim their minimum taxes paid since 1986, the tax's year of origination. The combined effect would cost working taxpayers more than $25 billion this year, with 13 percent of the loot going to just seven corporations. The top boys at IBM wouldn't lose any sleep after walking off with $1.4 billion of it, though. After all, gilded monogrammed note pads have gotten so ridiculously expensive. Relief is dreadfully needed.

In contrast to all this silliness, during World War II FDR signed an executive order capping after-tax salaries at $25,000. The cap applied to only one of every 50,000 Americans and was overturned by Congress in 1943, but its intent was authentically patriotic in symbolism: we were all in the war together, most were suffering from draconian rationing, and the fat cats had plenty as things stood. A few years later between two hot wars and in the midst of a cold one, Truman declared that"tax relief … ought to go to those who need it most, and not those who need it least, as this Republican rich man's tax bill did when they passed it over my veto on the third try. The first one of these was so rotten that they couldn't even stomach it themselves." It's a good thing for Harry that he's not around to see what can be done by more imaginative right wingers, such as that cerebral rival of John Maynard Keynes, ex-bug killer Tom DeLay.

Nevertheless, the House stimulus package is essentially impeccable in two ways. First, it likely ain't goin nowhere in the Senate. Republican knowledge of that adds a dollop of hypocritical icing to the bill's absurdity--always a nice touch."A little overreaching" was the understated opinion of one GOP leader. The odds are Tom Daschle will unstaple the mountainous imbecility and use its pages to line his donkey stall. Even dumb donkeys appreciate the use of stuff like this. The degree to which Team Daschle pulverizes the bill should provide an indication of how firmly the usually gutless Democrats have unseated the children of Lott. I'm no Democrat, but at least at times they've provided a bearable alternative to the party of corporate pimping. If Daschle's henchmen weaken in conference, the Dems deserve to be haunted by the Ghosts of Progressives Future--and devoured by them.

The bill's other virtue is, simply, its lesson in how never to run a country. Normally befuddled Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill must have misplaced his talking points and was left to honestly assess that the bill was only"show business." But White House spokesman Chesire Cat Fleischer was johnny on the spot in Honesty Control Central. The president, he said, was"very pleased" with the flimflam.

To those pundits who looked into W.'s soul in mid-September and foretold of a new man full of down-to-earth grit, all I can say is they themselves were full of a malodorous substance that rhymes with grit. Let's face it. Bush is an inveterate ideological flake, comforted daily by rippling rings of even flakier economic advisors. So far all he's learned on the job is how to clench his teeth in lieu of smirking.

P. M. Carpenter is a writer, student of history, and professional artist. His artwork site is: http://www.geocities.com/pmcarpen2000