Bush's illiberal reign

I disagree with Chase Cooper in nearly every one of his columns, particularly in his improbable attempt to paint President Bush as a liberal in his Nov. 14 column. Contrary to Mr. Cooper’s assertion, we liberals do not cheer “big government and runaway spending” for their own sake. Rather, we value expansions of government influence that raise quality-of-life standards for all Americans – a goal that stands in stark contrast to President Bush’s entire record.\nMr. Cooper gives President Bush broad credit for the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform law and the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate regulation bill. However, the Medicare bill is deeply flawed, and the President has been suing the federal government since 2002, seeking to gut the very McCain-Feingold law he signed. Sarbanes-Oxley, which Mr. Cooper refers to as “the biggest governmental expansion of (its) kind since FDR’s ‘Great Society’” (note to Mr. Cooper: The “Great Society” was Lyndon Johnson’s achievement, not FDR’s), was prompted because of the misdeeds of corporate executives who were top contributors to the Bush campaign. Bush’s willingness to increase government spending to fix his own personal mistakes is far from laudable.\nMr. Cooper also expects liberals to be overjoyed that President Bush “reduced the injustice of the government’s seizure of private wealth” by repeatedly cutting taxes. Anyone who wishes to see true “injustice” should visit the still-devastated Ninth Ward of New Orleans or visit the 2,000 graves of Hurricane Katrina victims, and should note that the levees there are still not rebuilt because the revenue-starved government is powerless to do anything about them. If the poor and homeless remain in harm’s way, perhaps it’s time for the rich to experience a little more “injustice.”\nFinally, if there is any truth to Mr. Cooper’s unlikely assertion that “Dennis Kucinich probably has more people loyal to him than Bush,” it is probably owing to the difference in magnitude between their failures. Congressman Kucinich, during his tenure as mayor of Cleveland, left the city bankrupt; President Bush, on the other hand, has morally bankrupted our nation.