The results of exit polls on Election Night 2006 showed that the voters were most outraged by "corruption," as well as the predictable issue of Iraq. This revulsion at "corruption" was more than the sordid wheeling and dealing of the Republican congressional barons. It was disgust at the moral hypocrisy and false sanctimony of the cultural warriors and the transparent fakery of Bush's imagery. The fate of the Senate turned on many contests, including crucial ones in Missouri and Virginia. In Missouri, an initiative that would authorize embryonic stem cell research that could lead to cures of many diseases divided the candidates. Actor Michael J. Fox made a TV commercial for the Democrat, Claire McCaskill. Looking straight into the camera, with no imagery other than his constantly swaying body, racked with the effects of his medication for Parkinson's disease, Fox made a simple appeal wholly on the basis of the stem cell research issue. Fox was a promising young actor whose his career came to a halt when his disease seized control of him. Now he plays only himself. Immediately, Rush Limbaugh was thrown into the breach against the new enemy. Earlier this year, he had declared, "What's good for al-Qaida is good for the Democratic Party in this country today." Mocking Fox by spastically wriggling in his chair as he spoke on his syndicated radio show, Limbaugh told listeners that Fox's jerky movements were "purely an act" and that he'd whack him "if you'd just quit bobbing your head." In the ensuing uproar, Limbaugh steadfastly refused to apologize. He depicted his mockery and physical threats as expressions of conservative conviction: "I stand by what I said. I take back none of what I said. I wouldn't rephrase it any differently. It is what I believe. It is what I think. It is what I have found to be true." As the criticism built, he acknowledged: "So I will bigly, hugely admit that I was wrong and I will apologize to Michael J. Fox, if I am wrong in characterizing his behavior on this commercial as an act."
Limbaugh's act as an embattled profile in courage continued to influence his followers. In Wyoming, the hard-pressed Republican incumbent, Rep. Barbara Cubin, after a televised debate, vented her frustrations by turning on her Libertarian opponent, Thomas Rankin, who has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair. "If you weren't sitting in that chair, I'd slap you across the face," she said. After apologizing, she explained that she had been inspired by Limbaugh's example in his attack on Fox. Cubin narrowly survived on Election Day. But, in Missouri, McCaskill ousted the Republican, Sen. James Talent, in an indispensable victory in turning the Senate Democratic. In Virginia, Sen. George Allen had planned for this race to serve as the trampoline for a presidential campaign in 2008, where he expected to become the consensus conservative candidate and thus the Republican nominee. His opponent, James Webb, had a résumé that not only included winning the Navy Cross in combat in the Vietnam War, and serving as Reagan's Navy secretary, but a career as an acclaimed novelist. His novels, based on his experience in Vietnam, are realistic, harsh and disturbing. For the beleaguered Allen and his Republican supporters, Webb's writings provided a source for out-of-context negative attacks. Scenes depicting unsettling sexual behavior were lifted to taint Webb as a pervert. Allen ran TV spots with Webb's words obliterated by huge red letters: "Censored." On Oct. 27, Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice president, who bills herself "Grandmother of the United States," but who is also an ardent conservative, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and ferocious former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities during the Reagan period (during which he established her bona fides as a cultural warrior), appeared on CNN to discuss her new children's book, "Our 50 States: A Family Adventure Across America," and to attack Webb's novels. "His novels are full of sexual explicit references to incest, sexually explicit references -- well, you know, I just don't want my grandchildren to turn on the television set," she told interviewer Wolf Blitzer. In fact, in 1981, she had published a novel, written in the kitsch softcore pornographic style of a Harlequin romance, featuring a bisexual heroine in the Old West. To wit: "The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage -- no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were." The attack on Webb as novelist failed; he narrowly defeated Allen. On Amazon.com used copies of Cheney's novel are selling for $495.
In Colorado, as Republicans tried to muster support for their candidates through a statewide initiative against gay marriage, a homosexual prostitute named Mike Jones disclosed that the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, confidant and one of the most influential backers of President Bush, a participant in a weekly White House telephone conference call with evangelical leaders, was one of his regular clients for three years and also a purchaser of methamphetamine. After initially denying the accusations, Haggard resigned from his New Life Church in Colorado Springs and issued an apology. "I am a deceiver and a liar," he said. "There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life." Haggard's self-loathing confession continued his projective campaign against homosexuality as satanic, even within himself. However personal his drama, the fallout had a political effect. In Colorado, Democrats took the governorship and a congressional seat.
At the White House, on Oct. 25, Bush summoned a gaggle of conservative columnists to the Oval Office. He confided in them his self-comparison to presidents past. "That's what makes this more difficult -- I don't know what Harry Truman was feeling like, or Franklin Roosevelt."
The day before, the White House had summoned dozens of right-wing radio talk-show hosts to conduct interviews with officials to rally the Republican faithful before the election. Vice President Cheney, interviewed by Scott Hennen of WDAY in Fargo, N.D., posed as the virile tough guy. Hennen asked Cheney if he was in favor of waterboarding detainees, an interrogation technique that is a form of torture. "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" "Well," said Cheney, "it's a no-brainer to me, but I -- for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in." For the next week, the White House issued a series of denials that Cheney had said anything about waterboarding or torture.
Rumsfeld, who had been holding forth for years about his fascination and identification with Churchill, on Oct. 26 held a peevish press conference at the Pentagon in which he said simply, "Back off." His analogies had run their course -- but by Wednesday he no longer needed them.
With their fabrication of faux identities, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were of a piece with the other cultural warriors. Fashioning themselves in the image of historical characters was ultimately fashion. Rather than the real things, they were impersonating the genuine articles. And after the judgment of Election Day, they were revealed as historical reenactors without the costumes.
About the writer
Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton, writes a column for Salon and the Guardian of London. His new book is titled "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime."
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