FRAMESHOP:FRAMESHOP: BACK TO THE FUTURE!!

When President Bush assumed despotic power over America, yesterday, he framed the issue in the logic of the "History" frame:

Over the past few months the debate over this bill has been heated, and the questions raised can seem complex. Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat? Every member of Congress who voted for this bill has helped our nation rise to the task that history has given us.    Some voted to support this bill even when the majority of their party voted the other way. I thank the legislators who brought this bill to my desk for their conviction, for their vision, and for their resolve.

Why mention history at this particular moment?  Because for President Bush, the law he signed giving himself the power to arrest any American simply because he deems them to be an "enemy combatant"--this law is really about winning the 2006 and 2008 elections.  President Bush has ended 230 years of Democratic rule so the Republican Party can hold a majority in the Congress and the Senate.

Over the next week and likely over the next two years--Americans will be slapped in the face over and over again with this "History" from from George W. Bush.  Never mind that President Bush's war and occupation of Iraq is repeating the mistakes made during the Vietnam war.  Never mind that history.  The history President Bush will talk about forever is a history designed specifically for campaign fundraiser speeches.

"The Democrats voted to not give me absolute power," the President will say to America.  "And history will show that these Democrats were wrong."

This "History" frame represents the madness of this new King George who is now amassing and abusing power for one purpose and one purpose only:  to win elections. 

Back To The Future

The "History" frame is a variation of the "Path" frame that Bush likes to use when talking about Iraq.  By talking about history, President Bush is trying to distract Americans away from the present moment.  And this is the clever misdirection in his remarks, yesterday:  by using the word "History," President Bush was framing his Declaration of Despotism in terms of "looking back." 

Bush wants Americans to imagine that we are all in the future looking back at history--that this moment we are living in which the President has assumed total power to arrest anyone for anything, this is not really happening now, it is something that has happened a long time ago in the history of an imaginary future.

In other words, for President Bush to convince Americans that his Declaration of Despotism is neither illegal nor immoral, he must convince us all to go:  Back to the future!!

In the future, the despotic George W. Bush is not really a President who assumed total power because he was power mad or because he was following a cynical plan to win elections by cashing in the Bill of Rights.   No,  with perfect 20/20 hindsight in his pretent future, President Bush saved America from the destruction of the Democrats--no wait!  Scratch that.  President Bush saved America from the terrorists.  And I say that in the past tense--"saved" instead of  "is saving" because remember:  we are talking from the perspective  of the future looking back into history.

These temporal acrobatics are a clever way of restating a very old and very wrong approach to governing:  The end justifies the means.

And how do we get out of it? Well, to deal with the history frame, Progressives need to do everything they can to stay focused on the here and now: The Bill of Rights, Iraq, and oversight.

First, Talk about what the new law means for ordinary Americans, the knock on the door in the middle  of the night, powers of the a king given over to President Bush by a smiling Republican Congress.  The only thing standing between each and every one of us and a knock on the door that takes us away in the middle  of the night is:  the benevolence of the ruler in chief, George W. Bush. To fight the "History" frame, in other words, all Progressives need to do is to move the discussion to the Bill of Rights.

Second, talk about Iraq.  Iraq!  There was a time when the President and the Republican Party wanted to talk about Iraq.  They wanted to say that the terrorists would detonate nuclear bombs in our cities if Americans voted for Democrats.  But now, the occupation of Iraq has become so bad, so violent, so out of control--that Americans are now begining to insist that the only way out of the mess George W. Bush and the Republican Congress created is to elect the Democratic Party to the majority in Congress.  And so the last thing President Bush wants to talk about is Iraq.   Now, he wants to talk about terrorists and torture and the future--anything but the danger and mess of the present.

Lastly, talk about the absence of any checks and balances on the President's new powers.  The danger in the Declaration of Despotism is not just the total power it gives the President, but the total abdication of any oversight powers by the smiling Republican Congress.

Iraq, the Bill of Rights, and oversight--if Progressives can stay focused on these two issues, then the President's cynical efforts to frame the debate this week should fail.

© 2006 Jeffrey Feldman, Frameshop