Arrogance is All He Has
by Morrie Friendly

Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2001-- WASHINGTON (APJP) -- George the Lesser, appointed occupant of the Oval Office, has no mandate.

He lost the popular vote by more than half a million votes.  He would have lost Florida had a full, accurate and investigative count of ballots not been stopped by his political allies on the Supreme Court.

And, according to a privately conducted poll obtained by American Politics Journal, his approval numbers are hovering near 40 (and more like 30 in urban areas).  Suddenly, cable news and talk radio are avoiding poll numbers altogether, as if they might have a toxic effect on the candidate they threw their weight behind.

Without the mandate of a majority vote or public support, and without legitimacy in the eyes of American citizens and the world, the handlers of George the Lesser are simply pretending that such situations do not matter.

Case in point: most Americans support reproductive rights.  The last genuinely elected President, Bill Clinton, had been a champion of these liberties, going so far as to order the federal government to fund family planning programs abroad that provided, among many other services, medical assistance for women who wished to terminate their pregnancies.

Yesterday, the Bogus POTUS issued an executive order to quash these funds.  This move, orchestrated by his handlers, outraged most Americans who follow the issue -- but it certainly brought haughty glee to his anti-choice allies, especially those in the hard-right evangelical pseudo-Christian community.  But this should come as no surprise: Snippy's "inaugurable" address seemed so chock-full of code words aimed at ultraconservative pentecostals and televangelist addicts that it was obvious that he was not addressing the nation, only his narrow constituency. 

That Little George's bosses made this decision on the 28th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision is nothing less than the height of obnoxious arrogance.  With one simple move, they also turned their Puppet Prince into a hypocrite: he has attempted to cast himself as a unifier, yet his first high-profile move could not be more divisive, especially given the emotionally charged atmosphere surrounding the issue of reproductive rights.

Perhaps the lesson of history is lost on the people controlling Mr. Bush: that those who sow the seeds of arrogance often find themselves with an abundant crop of backlash too large to manage.