What a wonderful week, particularly Wondrous Wednesday. That’s
when the Dow jumped nearly 500 points, and all credit for the near
record recovery was universally and immediately heaped on President
Bush — at least according to the mysterious media we watch and
read in our Enemy Central bunker. There on the screen was our
president, speaking about his economic vision, while simultaneously
the television ran split screen scenes from the floor of the stock
exchange, where delirious brokers waved signs — “Bullish on Bush,”
“W Stands for Winnings” — out of gratitude to the president for
his brilliance and leadership. At other moments the president’s
confident words were accompanied by superimposed ticker tape
numbers rocketing to the boost provided by his every syllable.
Anchormen and anchorettes chimed in that Bush was now
unchallengeable for 2004 and that his revivified GOP would sweep
this fall’s congressional elections. What a difference a day
makes.
A shamed and chastened team of Clinton-Gore reacted by asking
Enemy Central if it could hide away in our bunker. We turned them
down, but in the most positive way, by urging them to reappear in
public, to face the happy music, and take advantage of the new
climate of openness and honesty in our nation’s politics. If they
could speak from the heart, and tell us what they really know and
feel, we’d all benefit, and the Bush Boom would continue to echo
and improve the lives of rich and poor alike, as long as they both
shall live.
It made for an interesting, healthy and friendly competition.
Bill Clinton started it off by admitting he tried to institute
corporate accountability reforms as president, but that his efforts
were sabotaged by key figures in his own party, especially that no
goodnik philandering duo of rich playboys Kennedy and Dodd, whose
unfortunate private habits never fail to undercut their public
standing. If Democrats don’t clean up their act, he warned, his
good friend Al Gore will have no choice but to reject their pleas
that he head their ticket again in 2004.
After checking with Clinton if he now had permission to speak,
Gore announced he can take no credit for the healthy side of the
nineties economic boom. In fact, he remains depressed by the
fundamental falseness of that long episode. All the official
numbers supposedly said record growth and unprecedented prosperity,
but they were just bogus rejiggerings of fuzzy math concocted to
provide cover for unprecedented stock price manipulations and
pyramid schemes. He expressed gratitude to President Bush for his
denunciations of these dangerous and destructive business
practices, urged him to expand his tax cuts, and called for all-out
war on Iraq whenever his commander in chief feels will be the right
time to strike. In closing, he added that he’d be proud to lose
again to Bush in 2004.
At that point a demure Mrs. Hillary Clinton chimed in to add
that a Gore loss in 2004 would come as a big relief to her,
particularly since she know how difficult it was for the Supreme
Court to do the right thing in 2000 when it stopped the recount
nonsense in Florida. If her party had had its way, she
acknowledged, it would have asked Arthur Andersen, Roger Tamraz and
Marc Rich to handle the recount. But those days are over.
One good turn deserved another and another and another. Rep. Jim
Traficant admitted he’d stunk up the room even when he hadn’t
threatened to do so. Sen. Robert Torricelli he’s probably the most
corrupt senator in New Jersey history. Sen. Jon Corzine respectably
disagreed, noting that he bought his New Jersey Senate seat with
play money from Goldman Sachs — which on top of everything else
was counterfeit play dough.
He heard it, but the greatest financial figure in U.S. history
since Alexander Hamilton would not have none of it. Besides, he had
also heard that he was in the running for Enemy of the Week, and
preferred not to have to share that burden. So in short order he
denounced David Broder for sucking up to him in a recent column,
denounced the major media for failing to mention he was a key
figure at Citigroup during its footsie-playing phase with Enron,
and reminded anyone who’d listen that he had intervened
outrageously on Enron’s behalf with key regulators just as Enron
was about to be busted. So it is that Robert Rubin has turned
himself in this week as EOW. Unlike Richard Nixon, he’ll never be
heard to declaim, “I am not a crook.”
