Backstory: Bush discovers Nevada; let's discover him

By Michael Green

When unrelated events lead to the same conclusion, they become related. For example:

• The Nevada Democratic Party convention approved a platform plank proposed by state Sen. Bob Coffin calling for George W. Bush's impeachment.

• Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge visited Las Vegas and announced that Nevada can expect $37 million for counterterrorism and that Las Vegas is "a very high priority."

• Interior Secretary Gale Norton made it to the last hour of a three-hour summit with Rep. Jon Porter and others on Lake Mead's future.

• Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Mary McGrory, a Washington institution for half a century, died at age 85.

Coffin's proposal sailed through, apparently in part because the convention was a bit disorganized at the end--a situation hardly unique to my fellow Democrats. But it also reflects proper and popular disgust with the Bush maladministration. As Coffin said, "Look at the standard about impeachment that's been set by this Congress--lying about an extramarital affair--and look at how it could be applied with lying about the reason to go to war." Besides, when Clinton lied, he noted, "nobody died because of it."

Clinton sent troops into harm's way and faced Republican charges of doing so to divert attention from his peccadilloes, large and small. Of course, when Bush does the same, if Democrats even murmur, Republicans accuse them of lacking patriotism or covering up Clinton's crimes.

Nothing better demonstrates Bush's immorality than the Sept. 11 finger-pointing. Republicans tried to slime ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and terrorism expert Richard Clarke over their charges against the Bush administration. They have been more careful with Bob Woodward, once their court stenographer, perhaps because he belongs to a media that have done their bidding for so long.

Woodward's new book underscores previous reports that Bush wanted war with Iraq despite no evidence of a connection to Sept. 11--and whatever the question about weapons of mass destruction, that ultimately is the crime that Bush and his cohorts committed. It was as though Abraham Lincoln chose to respond to the South's attack on Fort Sumter by invading Brazil.

Coffin's plank suggests some Democrats have learned from their mistake of misunderestimating Bush, to use the Rug's (he lies like one) terminology. Many consider him stupid. He's no intellectual, which may well be a point in his favor. But he's shrewd enough to have been elected president...well, to have become president.

Bush's shrewdness--which he shares with his vice presidential nanny, his syntactically challenged Defense secretary and the other chickenhawks with whom he hid when he had the opportunity to be on the receiving end of some of the shrapnel still in John Kerry's body--lies in his contempt for the public. When he argues against government regulation and for personal responsibility, he hopes we will surrender our responsibility and let him and his gang of thugs run the country.

He hopes you won't notice the timing of the $37 million for Nevada's homeland security and the administration's sudden interest in Lake Mead. The booty comes only months after Las Vegas was allegedly a terrorist target during the New Year's celebrations and authorities here had as much luck getting straight answers from Ridge's department as Jon Ralston would have getting invited to Oscar Goodman's for dinner. As for the lake, it's so low that some of Goodman's former clients may surface, and the administration has been good enough to notice.

Perhaps we can use some of the $37 million to erect barriers against nuclear waste coming into the state. After all, it's a threat to our security. Coincidentally, it might not be coming here if Bush hadn't added Nevadans to the list of victims of his lies by saying one thing when he ran for president in 2000 and the opposite after five ethically prostituted Supreme Court justices installed him in the White House. And the number five is significant: It's also how many electoral votes are available in this battleground state. Our four mattered enough for Bush to lie in 2000. He's doing the same in 2004.

Bush has enjoyed largely a free pass from the Washington media, and certainly from Southern Nevada's dominant journalistic voice. This adds to the depth and significance of the loss of McGrory, whose columns were noted for

pithily and succinctly expressing liberal opinions rooted in her careful reporting and wise use of facts, and she died without a peep from some local news outlets noted for expressing opinions without any resemblance to facts.

For right-wingers to support Bush so blindly is unsurprising, although many of his supporters are such good and decent people that it's hard to understand how so many of them can vote for someone so amoral. For Coffin to have the guts to tilt at the windmill of impeachment also is unsurprising, but he could have called for Bush's indictment for murder for causing every unnecessary American death in Iraq. Perhaps an enterprising prosecutor somewhere could honor Mary McGrory's memory by doing something for the cause of truth and justice. That's as likely as columnists who worshipped her being pithy and succinct.