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Spare the rod, spoil the party Saturday, Oct 29, 2005 By Doug Thompson Arkansas News Bureau What a week for President Bush. How much better off he'd be if Kenneth Starr had persecuted him. I'm completely serious. The president and everybody else would be better off if Congress had applied 1 percent of the scrutiny to George Bush that it lavished upon Bill Clinton. For one thing, Arkansas might have finally turned Republican by now. Our little hamlet in the Mid-South has a unique perspective on the past 13 years of presidential history. We've seen a ghastly double-standard in presidential accountability over the past 11 of those years. We've seen it up close. Arkansas was probably on the brink of going Republican like the rest of the South in 1992. Then Bill Clinton ran for president. Then he won. In 1994, Republicans gained control of Congress. Our little state got to play host to special counsel Kenneth Starr. We got to watch a full-scale MaCarthy-style GOP witchhunt. It was an ugly sight. It became even uglier when somebody finally handed Starr something, even if it was just a stained dress from escapades in the Oval Office. Then President Bush took office in 2001. Practically every week since, we've heard something on TV or read in the paper that made us think, "Wow. If Bill Clinton had done that, they'd have deep-fried him." The Whitewater real estate deal was investigated like Halliburton should be. Lying about sex with an intern in the Oval Office resulted in an impeachment attempt, as if it was as serious as lying about reasons to go to war. We wondered, "Where's the outrage?" If a former male gay prostitute had turned up at White House press briefings to throw softballs for the Clinton administration, what would the reaction have been? What would the response have been to rape and torture at American-run prisons in Iraq, or the lack of WMDs? Where was the heat when Bush the Younger needed some? It might have straightened him out. This government was designed on the princle of checks and balances. Congress' failure to check and balance President Bush practically let this administration's meltdown happen. I'm not arguing for a Democratic majority in the next election. A Republican majority with a mind of its own will do. Recently, organizers of the Washington County Lincoln Day Dinner announced that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich would highlight this year's event. Gingrich certainly had his faults, but he was never anybody's lapdog. I can't help but wonder now what George Bush's presidency would have been like if somebody with Gingrich's fire had been speaker. Even moreso, I'm sorry that Bob Dole or somebody resembling him wasn't Senate Majority Leader. The GOP finally got control of the White House, the Senate and the House. At this precise moment, each leader was a dud. Meanwhile, back in Arkansas, we're supposedly still waiting for the state to go Republican. If the GOP doesn't elect Asa Hutchinson as governor a year from now, I'll start wondering if the shift will ever happen. I've covered enough Arkansas elections to know that voters here despise hypocrisy more than anything else. Arkansans won't forget the difference between the way the GOP treated the last president, who was from here, and this one. ------ Doug Thompson is a Fayetteville-based reporter and columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau and The Morning News. His e-mail address is dthompson@arkansasnews.com. |
