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There’s a time for every proverb under Heaven: a time not to change horses in midstream and a time when it is absolutely necessary to change horses, because the one we’re on has taken us into the raging waters of a stream we never should have entered and doesn’t have enough horse sense to change course.
Changing Horses in the Middle of This Stream is Imperative
By Robert S. McElvaine
“Don’t change horses in midstream,” the saying goes. For those, like George W. Bush, who have certain “principles” from which they will not deviate, no matter whether they working, that saying may be applicable to the current election. To them, it matters not whether the stream is one worth crossing or whether the horse is capable of reaching the other side. Like the “Big Fool” in Pete Seeger’s song, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” they just shout “push on” as they drown. But for people who consider evidence, it is necessary to examine both the horse and the stream in which we find ourselves before deciding whether changing horses is wise or foolish.
Yesterday, after a confetti cannon fired prematurely at a Bush rally in New Hampshire, a befuddled President Bush had another of the Freudian slips that have become his trademark. “My determination is wrong – uh . . . strong,” the self-professed Great Leader stuttered. Just so. Mr. Bush is all determination, no facts, no common sense, and all wrong.
The second Bush administration is the most incompetent in memory. Bush and his aides are totally incompetent in foreign policy, in taking us into an unnecessary war with no plans to win the peace, in economic policy, in healthcare, and a host of other areas. In fact, there is only one area in which they are competent: running political campaigns. There, the same qualities that have led to disaster in all areas of government have proved effective: refusal to change course, lying, and misrepresentation of their opponents’ positions.
Is that a horse we should continue to ride?
The Only Thing Bush has to Sell is Fear Itself
How can the President have the gall to charge that John Kerry is trying to use scare tactics about Social Security to win? Fear itself is the only thing that George W. Bush has to sell. Of all the terrible things he has done, probably the worst is the way he has used the September 11th attacks for his own political purposes. He wrapped himself in the flag to disguise the fact that he is, without his resort to the last refuge of scoundrels, an emperor completely without the clothing of any positive achievement in his presidency.
President Bush and his administration have people throughout the country thinking they may be hit by a terrorist attack, when in fact in most parts of the country a person is more likely to be struck by lightning—twice on the same spot—than to be the victim of a terrorist attack.
One of the great ironies of this election is that the few places that are really likely to be targets of terrorists attacks—New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, to name the most likely targets—are voting solidly Democratic, while the vast interior of the country, where truly the only thing they have to fear is fear itself (as FDR put it in 1933 in words that are so applicable to 2004, “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance”), fearful people are supporting Bush because they think they will be safe from terrorist attack if he wins. They’re right about that. They’ll be safe from terrorist attack no matter who wins.
The Nature of the Stream into which this Horse has Taken Us: “Isolated Internationalism”
George W. Bush must be defeated. The future of our nation is at stake. This year’s election is the most important in my lifetime. The reason it is so important is that the Bush administration has taken our nation on a radical detour from our traditional policies and that detour endangers us all.
Prior to World War I, the United States generally followed a policy of isolation from the rest of the world. Woodrow Wilson changed that policy when he took the nation into the European war. Wilsonian internationalism was rejected after the war and most Americans reverted to isolationism until World War II. Many Midwestern Republicans remained isolationists after that war, but American presidents from Franklin Roosevelt through George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were internationalists, realizing both the need for the United States to be involved in the world and the desirability of forging broad international coalitions.
George W. Bush is neither a traditional isolationist nor an internationalist. Rather, he is what might be called an “isolated internationalist.” He will engage with the world, but only by telling other nations that they must do whatever he demands.
Bush thinks of himself as Good, which is Very Dangerous
Surely Mr. Bush doesn’t think himself to be evil. He thinks the opposite, which is much more dangerous. He believes himself to be acting for God, and so incapable of error. When he has been asked to identify a mistake he has made, he can’t do it, because he thinks he is doing God’s work and so is incapable of error. Nothing is more dangerous than the combination of such a belief with extraordinary military power.
Actually our horse in Mr. Bush’s War—the American military—isn’t the problem. What we need to do is change the person holding the reins in midstream—get rid of the man who foolishly whipped our horse into a treacherous stream where he is (and we are) drowning.
But, to return to the customary image of the horse in midstream, when we find ourselves astride a horse that has taken us into a stream we never wanted to enter and should never have entered and the horse is drowning and doesn’t have enough horse sense to change the course that he has followed into deep, swirling waters both in Iraq and on the economy, we better have more sense than the horse and try another mount.
{ Robert S. McElvaine teaches history at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, is the author of Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History, and is currently completing his first novel and screenplay, What It Feels Like . . . . Website: http://evesseed.net/}
AUTHOR'S PHOTO AVAILABLE AT: http://home.millsaps.edu/~mcelvrs/McElvaine-headshot.jpg
Contact information:
Robert S. McElvaine
Elizabeth Chisholm Professor of Arts & Letters
Chair, Department of History
Millsaps College
Jackson, MS 39210
e-mail: mcelvrs@hotmail.com
Web: http://home.millsaps.edu/~mcelvrs
http://evesseed.net/
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