Rove, Rove, Rove Your Boat

Who's Listening to the President? By E. J. Dionne Jr.

The most striking poll findings after the president's speech to the nation on Tuesday concerned who watched Bush in the first place. According to a Gallup Poll for CNN and USA Today, 50 percent of those who chose to listen to Bush were Republican, 27 percent were independents and only 23 percent were Democrats.

In other words, a large share of Bush's congregation belonged to the choir. Many Democrats don't want to listen to him.

That's because everything he says we've heard before. It's a lot of rhetorical nonsense and not worth the time. I watched the Nationals beat the Pirates instead and looked over the transcript the next morning. Even the Bush drinking game is no longer fun.

There is also this: Democrats are no longer afraid to criticize Bush, as they were for much of the two years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Indeed, the reaction to the president's repeated mentions of the attacks underscored the dissipation of national unity over the past four years.

Most of us are unaffected by the irrationality of people like this guy, who seek to spread their hatred even further. The Gop Youth lives.

In the past, the mere mention of that galvanizing day would unify the country. Bush and his lieutenants gave it another shot, but his five mentions of Sept. 11 brought jeers, not cheers, from Democrats. "It shows the weak ground that they're on that they would mention the sacred ground of 9/11," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in an interview.

But people with no conscience, like Rove, try to rile the right by claiming the left were happy that September 11th happened. Ludicrous notions of hate, folks. That's all it is. They call Rove "Bush's Brain." Well, his cells must be dying, because people aren't buying his load of crap. Us common folk can see that the only people that favor death are the warmongering gops.

She was expressing a view held across her party, but she was also reflecting a critical political fact. Except for Bush's loyalists, Americans are increasingly inclined to view his Iraq policy as quite apart from the terrorist attacks. By using the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in a highly partisan way during his first term -- recall the role of Sept. 11 during last year's Republican National Convention -- Bush has squandered his ability to invoke the moment in a nonpartisan and patriotic way.

In recent weeks, administration loyalists have repeatedly expressed alarm that Americans are forgetting "the lessons of 9/11." That is not the case. It is the administration that has forgotten those lessons. They had to do with the country's capacity to come together in the face of a common threat and Bush's choice for several months afterward to act as a national leader rather than a party leader.

What are the "lessons of 9/11?" That the gops in power have no moral conscience whatsoever in that they would use this tragedy to divide a country to win votes? Don't worry, we haven't forgotten. We will remember it in 2006, 2008, and beyond.

When a wartime leader speaks and much of the country doesn't choose to listen, it's more than a political problem.

These people still won't get it. Go Hillary.