Enough already

Like millions of other Americans who didn't vote for George Bush, I stared with horror as thousands of my fellow citizens were ruthlessly cut down on 9/11, and made a conscious decision right then to set aside partisan differences and support this president when he struck back against their murderers.

The enemy was real, the cause was just, and the president needed my trust and support.

As silly as this sounds (even to me) in this ironic age, it just seemed like the right thing to do.

Almost from the beginning, Mr. Bush cynically abused that trust. Instead of compromising on tendentious domestic issues to secure and expand the new, we're-all-in-this-together coalition, he used his sudden popularity to ram a base-stroking agenda down the throats of a newly-compliant Congress. When the mid-term elections came around, he didn't think twice about playing old fashioned, pre-9/11 hardball to pick up a few Senate seats for the home team. And when he decided it was time to go to war in Iraq, he misled the American people about the reasons, the evidence and the costs.

Through all this, I continued to support the president's conduct of the War on Terror. Even though he was using it for partisan advantage. Even though he was needlessly damaging international alliances and institutions of enormous value. Even though he obviously wasn't always telling the truth. Again, it seemed like the right thing to do.

I guess I finally got my thank you note from President Bush yesterday when he allowed his defense secretary to stand up in front of God and everybody and call me and millions of other Americans like me -- moderate types who've offered only muted, procedural criticisms as we bent over backward to give this administration every benefit of the doubt on the big-ticket policy stuff -- Islamist co-conspirators.

Well, folks, to hell with that. And to hell with unreciprocated post-9/11 politesse.

For starters, Oliver Willis is absolutely right; Donald Rumsfeld needs to resign. When a glorified bureaucrat starts to think it's okay to blame the people who pay his salary for his own policy failures, it's time for him to go.

Second, it's time for raging moderates like yours truly to stop apologizing for the Howard Deans and Al Frankens of this world. We may not always like their tone, but they've basically been right all along -- there's just no doing business with this administration.

Finally, it's time for all of us in the mushy middle to get involved in the only way that can really make a difference -- with our wallets. Before this day is out, I'll have made a contribution to one of the Democratic candidates for president. More will follow. And when the Democratic nominee emerges, he or she will have my unstinting support.

If Iraq and the economy suddenly turn around, Mr. Bush may well win a second term. That's just politics in the real world. But at least now it won't be because I didn't do my part to help put a Democrat back in the White House.