No, that wasn't the Hindenburg blotting out your view of the sun last week. It was Vice President Dick Cheney descending upon Henderson to hit up the wealthy (or what President Bush calls, "my base") for four-figure campaign contributions and tout his Magical Cure-All Economic Elixir: tax cuts for the rich. Any confusion between Cheney and the ill-fated dirigible is understandable: Both are oversized bags kept aloft by vast amounts of unstable gas.
As our nation's leading fabulist, Cheney propagates two key Bush administration myths. One, that all-purpose bogeyman Saddam Hussein had his fingerprints all over the September 11 attacks. Two, that the rising economic tide that's levitating his friends' yachts is lifting all Americans' boats.
While Cheney may find conditions peachy-keen, those of us who have been through the constant "downsizings" that are a trademark of this decade might be forgiven for not sharing the veep's optimism. I'd be complacent too, if—like Mr. and Mrs. Cheney—I got a $5,712 income tax refund this year, instead of seeing my income sharply drop and my tax bill rocket upwards.
Cheney was right about one thing, though. He told his well-heeled Henderson audience that their income was better off being spent by them than by the government. How true. Some damn fool might decide to plow tax dollars into a no-bid/guaranteed-profits contract to some scandal-plagued outfit like Halliburton. Thank God that Cheney, who received $178,000 in deferred compensation from Halliburton last year, is insulated from such temptations.
What Bush administration officials and their court jesters, the Washington punditocracy, can't grasp is why the American public is not fawning with gratitude for a so-called "recovery" that can be seen on Wall Street but apparently isn't being felt in Joe Schmo's pocketbook. (Heck, the guvmint can't even get its own math straight: An "acceleration" in economic growth the first quarter of this year turns out to have been a slight slowdown, after some belated "revisions" of Commerce Department data.)
What the chattering classes say is that, being the peasant dimwits that we are, it's going to take a while for the light bulb to go on in our heads. On a recent Washington Week in Review, the Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey Birnbaum airily proclaimed that "people are going to have to feel better" about the economy before it starts showing up in poll numbers.
Over on ABC's This Week, GOP dominatrix Mary Matalin uttered similar, Marie Antoinette-style pensées. Would somebody smash the windows of the Beltway Biosphere and force these people to breathe oxygen for a change?
The talking heads puzzle at the "disconnect" between the Pollyanna economy Bush talks up on the stump and the harsher experience reported by the electorate. Well, since both the administration and its media courtiers are fond of fables, let me tell a little story that might explain this "disconnect" for them.
A few weeks ago, I was on a temporary job, working at a convention. The work—registration and greeting—was undemanding, pleasant and remunerative. No grumbles there. And our little workforce was a fascinating bunch. When we were asked to name our (former) occupations, it transpired that this band of day laborers consisted of: an arts importer, an events coordinator, a project administrator, a bookkeeper, a National Parks Service office manager, a New York State court librarian, two other government employees, two administrative assistants, two PR people and a Democratic convention traffic coordinator. Suffice it to say we beneficiaries of the Bush "recovery" were all grossly overqualified for what we did that weekend.
These are some of the people whose boats have been left high and dry by Mr. Cheney's rising tide. Yes, there are new jobs, ones which pay an average of $9,000 a year less than ones already wiped out. Christmas spending may have been way up at Petrossian and Tiffany's, but it was markedly down at Target and Wal-Mart, where the invisible majority shops. And if business is booming, where's the trickle-down effect? CNN reports that salary increases for 2004 will be no greater than the 3.5 percent handed out last year.
"In fact," writes former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, "the median wage for workers without college degrees continues to drop, adjusted for inflation, particularly when you consider the erosion—the steady erosion—of health benefits." (Assuming that you even have health benefits to begin with, not a safe assumption anymore.)
Back on the job, when my fellow temps discussed Our Fearless Leader, the air turned corrosive. Most had nothing but the most scathing things to say about his perceived economic ineptitude and indifference to the Average Joe. Bush can't catch that bus back to Crawford, Texas, soon enough for these folks.
Memo to the Democratic Party: Fierce discontent with Bush was not translating into enthusiasm for John Kerry. Indeed, his name went almost unmentioned. Whatever you're doing to "energize the base," it ain't working yet.
Almost lost amid the endless obsequies for Ronald Reagan was a reminder that he presided over an era of class warfare, initiated against the have-nots on behalf of the haves. As the Reagan administration was being ushered in, almost a quarter-century ago, Business Week laid it out for anybody who cared to read: "Some people will have to do with less ... it will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing less so that big business can have more."
Yes, by all means, let's sacrifice so that Ken Lay, Dennis Kozlowski, Dick Grasso, Bernard Ebbers, Jack Welch, Carly Fiorina and the rest of the kleptocracy can salt away enough dough to create what the founders dreaded: a landed aristocracy, ruling in perpetuity.
It is a bitter pill and many working Americans are choking on it. Maybe, come November, they'll spit it right back in the ruling class' face. At least we could punch a few holes in the fabric of the Cheney dirigible and enjoy the spectacle of a deflating Dick.