HOOVER AGAIN?

American voters have two choices: Bush or Bush-lite: To win in 2004, Democrats must confront the hard right (Hugo Young, August 19, 2003, The Guardian)

It's one of the more extraordinary spectacles a political scientist, or journalist, let alone a professional politician, could encounter. George Bush is running his
campaign from the same fringe position as the one he has adopted for his presidency.

This is a hard-right administration offering virtually no concessions to the soothing niceties that might make it more electorally attractive to voters who are not Republicans. Its tax policy is grotesquely loaded against the masses and in favour of the rich. Its bias on the environment unfailingly comes out on the side of the big commercial interests. It is daily tearing up tracts of policy and practice that protected the basic rights of people snared in the justice system. It is the hardest right administration since Herbert Hoover's from a very different era. And, which is the point, delights in being so. There is no apology or cover-up.

Herbert Hoover was, of course, a liberal, not a conservative. If Mr. Young wants to compare George W. Bush to a truly conservative president, Calvin Coolidge is a wiser choice. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 19, 2003 6:39 PM