I was just agreeing with user Molly last night about this very thing.

Dixie

Op-ed

JOAN VENNOCHI
Fearmongering, Bush-style
By Joan Vennochi, Globe Columnist | May 31, 2007

GEORGE W. BUSH complaining about political fear mongering is like Lindsay Lohan complaining about out-of-control celebrities.

Look in the mirror, and either one would see the object of their disdain.

Despite the irony, the president is criticizing opponents of his immigration proposal for taking a page out of the Bush political playbook.

"If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the bill's an amnesty bill," Bush griped. "That's empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens."

He is obviously blind to yet another consequence of the Bush doctrine. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Live by fear mongering, die by fear mongering.

The late Lee Atwater earned the credit or blame for teeing up the modern GOP campaign formula -- that is, to whip up the conservative base with hot-button social issues and scare enough voters in the political middle to achieve victory. Bush's political guru, Karl Rove, gleefully followed the Atwater template, using wedge issues like abortion and gay marriage to fire up the base. The strategy nurtures a politics of extreme rhetoric on the right and left, along with a resistance to finding middle ground on a range of issues.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Republican fear mongering focused chiefly on portraying Democrats as weak on national security and soft on terrorism. In doing so, the GOP conveniently overlooked the fact that Bush was the president who received the Aug. 6, 2001, briefing titled, "Bin Laden determined to strike in US." And, the voters overlooked it, too. Bush won reelection in 2004 by attacking John Kerry's war record, and, by extension, questioning the Democrats' ability to keep the country safe. In essence, he won via scare tactics and empty political rhetoric, the same tools used against him now in the immigration debate.

Bush continues to use them himself, most recently against Democrats who tried to attach timelines for troop withdrawal to the Iraq war funding legislation. A withdrawal date is a surrender date, said the White House; if you tie funding to a withdrawal timetable, you are against the troops. Scare tactics work. The Democratic-controlled Congress eventually sent Bush a bill that funded the war, minus any timetable for troop withdrawal.

But, you reap what you sow. The president who was supposed to be a uniter chose instead to be a divider. The divided have turned against him, and not just from the left. Now that Bush's approval ratings are falling below Richard Nixon's and Jimmy Carter's, Rove's divide-and-conquer strategy is coming under public attack from conservatives, too. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who apparently harbors far-fetched presidential aspirations, recently criticized Rove's "maniacally dumb" 2004 strategy, telling The New Yorker, "You can't be a governing national party and write off entire regions."

More to the point, you can't hope to achieve compromise on an emotionally charged issue like immigration without political capital in your own party, or without good will from Democrats who now control Congress because voters turned against your policies.

Had Bush not spent his entire presidency reducing complicated issues to fear-inducing soundbites, the country and Congress might believe more in the general principle of compromise. Had Bush spent more time uniting instead of dividing, American citizens might be willing to engage in a rational discussion about the realities raised by 12 million illegal immigrants. They might also see value in an immigration bill that counts a Republican president; Republican Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain of Arizona; and a liberal icon like Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts among its proponents.

Instead, the immigration bill is under attack from all sides. Liberals dislike the emphasis on admitting immigrants with certain levels of education and job skills. But the most virulent opposition comes from the right, which stands against any path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in this country. Conservatives use one word to undercut the bill's backers: amnesty.

As proposed by the Senate, illegal immigrants who want to become citizens would first have to pay back taxes and fines. That is not amnesty, the president insists.

Or, as Bush tried to explain this week, "Amnesty is forgiveness for being here without any penalties. That's what amnesty is. I oppose it. The authors, many of the authors, of this bill oppose it. This bill is not an amnesty bill."

For once, Bush is the one trying to present nuance.

Now, that's scary.

Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com.

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