Do you feel that the disputed first Bush presidential election set America’s fate? A question posed to novelist Richard Ford by Granta. October 2007
It did set America’s fate. No question.
Insofar as the election was stolen by the Republicans, and insofar as the American electorate was sufficiently uninspired as to permit such a close race, and insofar as the two-party system (particularly the feckless Democrats) allowed a man of George Bush’s astonishing incompetence and dishonesty to become the leader of our country—insofar as all these things are true and occurred at the heart of the 2000 election, then that set of events can be viewed as a direct cause of the unthinkable circumstances in Iraq today, the cause of so much loss of innocent life, and the cause of America’s near-obliterated role as a potential force for good in world affairs.
Is all this America’s final fate? I surely hope not. It’s the fix we’re in today. And I hope we have a better, more wholesome fate than this.
But there’s no doubt about what was the initial event in the chain of events that landed us in this mess.
I remind you. Remember when ‘astonishing incompetence and dishonesty’ wasn’t so bad that last time?