This morning on NPR, Morning Edition played a clip from George Bush interviewed on the “Today Show” or “Good Morning America”.
He used a term, “my government.” that he’s used several times before. It makes me want to pull my hair out. In some ways I’m not surprised that through pure idiocy or arrogance (who will ever know?) the man actually believes it is his government. But I’ve never heard anyone challenge him with a simple question like “is it your legislature and your judiciary?”. And this is the real scandal. The media is either equally ill-informed about the Constitution or believes that this is the reality of the post-911 US.
Over the last 7 years I’ve heard him say this over 1/2 a dozen times. Am I alone here?
Please share widely!
i take that to mean his assemblage of toadies, his administration. we also hear of “blair’s government”, etc. it may be more common to hear the word “administration” used, but i think the idea is the same. i see no need to get riled up over this.
In Westminster systems, the prime minister typically speaks of “my government”. Not so much in our system. I’m just hoping that if this is indeed Bush’s government, he takes most of it with him on January 2oth.
It should be his administration. We don’t have a parliamentary form of government. It may seem like a small difference, but it’s simply not his government, like it might be Gordon Brown’s. The Congress is a separate and equal branch of the government as is the judiciary — although we sometimes have doubts about this.
as i see it, english is a wonderful, varied and bountiful language. if the rethug in chief has finally figured out a new way to express His Specialness after 7 years, i say good for him. no executive left behind! he has mastered synonyms! bully for georgie! but even if i agreed with you, and he was somehow really trying to imply that the whole federal government was of, by and for him, well…him saying so isn’t going to make a difference. it’s his pen strokes that i care about. you know, the legal and quasi-legal problems he has set in motion. unless you think someone is taking his Word as Law, i say let him live in his delusion. it just makes him look more the fool. the world knows the truth. and so does he.
but does the world really know the truth? Aren’t you a little afraid that this isn’t only his delusion but that, in fact, much of the electorate actually accepts the unitary executive just as they’ve accepted that the President’s only prerogative is to defend Americans against all enemies foreign and domestic (from the military oath) rather than to protect the Constitution itself?
yes
no. if you replace the phrase “much of the electorate” with “a sliver of the electorate”, then the answer is yes. if the answer to your 2nd question, as you stated it, were yes, then we wouldn’t be seeing the HUGE dem involvement and the PATHETIC repub showings in the primaries. the whole country has not learned its lesson with bush, but a wide swath most certainly has.
but certainly the media and an alarming number of Congressional Democrats have pretty much gone along with the Bush/Cheney narrative.