A Tale of Two Cities — the Big Easy and the Huge Messy — Will Define the Bush Legacy

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…"
— Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”

In the immediate aftermath of Katrina – as the world learned that it was largely the poor and the destitute that got left behind in New Orleans – The Washington Post reported, “The poverty rate climbed in 2004 to 12.7 percent, from 12.5 percent in 2003 -- the fourth year in a row that poverty has risen.” After falling throughout the Clinton presidency, from a ten-year high of 15.1% in 1993 to a 27-year low of 11.3% in 2000, the poverty rate resumed its upward march during President George W. Bush’s first term. This climb has been analogous to the hike in the poverty rate through much of his father’s term (1990-92), which had then followed a near identical (to Clinton) slide in the poverty rate during the Reagan “seven fat years (1983-89)”. Coincidentally, Hurricane Andrew, which devastated the southern Florida peninsula and south-central Louisiana in 1992, had been the most expensive natural disaster in United States history prior to Hurricane Katrina. It would seem to me that the Bush Karma, which I wrote about in my recent book, “The Bush Diaries”, continues to dog this presidency.

As the President now simultaneously grapples with the myriad problems of having to manage a war abroad and a crisis of gargantuan proportions at home, he might want to come to terms with the implications of this biblical prophecy:

“Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” – Galatians 6:7

In the light of the Bush Administration’s dismal performance in the wake of Katrina, whose progress had been closely monitored and whose after-effects had been widely anticipated, it’s only logical that a majority of American citizens are expressing “shock and awe” at the gross incompetence of the Bush Administration. It might have taken President Bush seven long minutes to get off his chair in that Florida elementary school after being informed about a second plane hitting the World Trade Center, but this time around it took him closer to 7000 minutes after Katrina had made landfall to finally show up in New Orleans!

It’s quite apparent, from his recent televised address to the nation from the Big Easy, that President Bush has realized that his legacy is going to be determined by the "tale of two cities": Baghdad and New Orleans. By the end of his second term, he will have likely spent upwards of $200 billion each in the reconstruction of Iraq and the U.S. Gulf states. We all know that he, and the indomitable American spirit, will succeed in restoring the Big Easy—because throughout history Man has eventually prevailed over Nature's wrath. The more questionable outcome is going to be in the Huge Messy—will President Bush succeed in rebuilding Iraq and be able to leave it with a functioning government and an orderly society—since recovery from this disaster, one largely of his own making, is highly unpredictable. I suspect that 9/11 and the tale of those two other “Bush Doctrine-bestowing” cities, New York and Washington, will fade into the background as far as the ultimate Bush legacy is concerned—and for this the President has only himself to blame!

Desperate Maladies Require Desperate Remedies

At the outset, I must confess that I have not read Jhumpa Lahiri’s 1999 best seller, “Interpreter of Maladies”. Nonetheless, I have an interpretation for western civilization’s post-9/11 maladies that might not be palatable to its civil libertarians. Following the 7/7 and 7/21 suicide bomber attacks in London, it has become apparent that western civilization is being threatened in a way that demands any proposed remedies to be equally extreme. In the war on terrorism, Europe is fast approaching a point—which we have probably already breached in America—where freedom can no longer be considered a right but a privilege for its troublesome few. In this regard, any political solution would necessarily have to increase its focus on the wayward children of first generation immigrants in western societies.

In support of my desperate remedies reasoning, I recall a Bollywood movie from my days as a youth in India. In the movie an Indian soldier of a minority faith is faced with a classical dilemma when he needs to choose between the apparently conflicting demands of his religion and the pressing needs of his country? I remember billboards around Bombay asking ordinary citizens to vote on the matter prior to the movie’s release. Not surprisingly, the movie producers claimed that over 75% of the citizens chose country over religion! This Bollywood movie exemplifies the predicament faced by some first generation immigrants in western societies today. Given its poor record of assimilating its immigrant population, Western Europe shouldn’t be shocked to find out that a few of its first generation immigrants probably put the demands of their faith before the interests of their adopted country, which could be at cross-purposes at times.

Based on the initial reports from the 7/7 investigations, it seems that Britain’s first generation immigrant parents did not have a clue as to the terrorist proclivities of their progeny. Well, then it is about time Britain tested its “meet the parents” hypothesis. Some British children, of first generation immigrant parents, might not give a hoot about the country adopted by their mothers and fathers. However, if these misguided souls are religious fanatics, they surely must care a lot about the welfare of their diligent parents. After all, their parents did leave their native land to ensure that these ingrates lived a better life in Britain. Thus, my tough love proposal calls on Britain to pass a law that would seek the deportation of first generation parents of these suicide bombers back to their native countries.

The assumption here—while these suicide bombers might place their religion above the adopted country of their parents, they surely cannot love their religion more than their own parents—is a culturally accepted one. It’s high time that these misguided youth were made to realize that their foolish actions will force their parents to "inherit" punitive consequences. No longer will the planned murders of innocent patrons of mass transit systems go unpunished. Henceforth, these selfish and cowardly acts will additionally penalize the parents of these second generation suicide bombers. This will become a case of the sins of the children being visited upon their parents, which amounts to a rather harsh judgment in some cultures. I don’t write this lightly—my wife and I are both first-generation immigrant citizens of the United States, and we constantly pray that we have brought up our children to lead responsible, law-abiding lives in the country that we love and have adopted as our home. I hope that the deportation law that I have proposed will go a long way in stopping the madness—of this random killing of innocents by ungrateful children, who just happen to be citizens of civilized western societies only due to the accident of their birth!

PRESIDENCY AND PUNDITRY UNPLUGGED

THE BUSH DIARIES: A Citizen’s Review of the First Term
Jack Nargundkar

(Germantown, MD, July 21, 2005)— 7/7 has put President Bush’s oft-repeated claim—“We will fight the terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home” —on notice. While announcing the release today of his first book, The Bush Diaries, author Jack Nargundkar echoed a growing American sentiment relating to the efficacy of this policy in stopping homegrown terrorists:

“I suspect that both, a botched implementation of the Bush Doctrine and the media’s pre-Iraq war complacency, are responsible for our current quandary, which keeps us all in a state of perpetual anxiety with respect to our way of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! This isn’t the way it was supposed to be?”

In The Bush Diaries, Jack Nargundkar recommends that the United States commit to two critical Cs in our foreign relations, especially when it comes to Muslim nations. A foreign policy that reflects our core values and one that is applied consistently; but one that forsakes convenience by refusing to make policy exceptions for allied countries with values that are antithetical to our own.

On the evolving Iran-Iraq relationship, Jack Nargundkar writes in The Bush Diaries,

“I think that Shia hegemony as a counter-balance to Sunni Arab supremacy—if allowed to proceed as a natural evolution of the new realpolitik in the Middle East—could benefit us in the long-term, without the need for another preemptive war in the short-term.”

In The Bush Diaries, Jack Nargundkar kept tabs on what the political pundits—at The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times—had to say about the President’s policies and responded to them in real time. Some of his opinions were published by each one of these prestigious newspapers. The key difference between The Bush Diaries and other books on President Bush: Jack Nargundkar comments not only on the performance of the President, but he also critiques the media pundits who evaluate the presidency.

Jack Nargundkar has spent over 20 years as a marketing professional in the global software and telecommunications industries. As a first generation Indian-American, Jack Nargundkar brings a unique perspective to U.S. economic and foreign policy. An Executive Education Fellow at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Jack Nargundkar has a BSEE from Bombay University and an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York City.

THE BUSH DIARIES: A Citizen’s Review of the First Term
290 pp, $19.95
ISBN: 0-595-35898-5
Author: Jack Nargundkar
Publisher: iUniverse
Publication Date: July 2005
Available From: Ingram Book Group, Baker & Taylor, and iUniverse
To order: call 1-800-AUTHORS or go online at any of the following:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0595358985/qid=1123084435/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/102-5718978-7163300?v=glance&s=books

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=Xy63I1dBQR&isbn=0595358985&itm=3





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Media Contact:
Jack Nargundkar
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Throttling the Supply Side Spin

At the outset, I have to praise The Wall Street Journal editorial page for reproducing a graph that can actually be interpreted in a bipartisan manner. I refer, of course, to their cocky editorial entitled, "Windfall for Washington" in today’s paper. While gloating over this year’s "revenue surge from investment income", they also

"thank heaven for the tax cuts that have helped to spur the economy that is now throwing off higher tax revenues. As the chart shows, those revenues are now rising back to their modern average as a share of GDP, just as supporters of the tax cuts predicted."

Here is the wonderful chart—which exemplifies the meaning of the phrase "a picture is better than a thousand words"—that they refer to:

Now, as far as my eye can see, revenue receipts per this chart have been over the 40-year historical average of 18.2% in only two sustained periods: 1980-82 and 1994-2001. As readers will recall, the Reagan tax cuts first went into effect in 1981 and then again in 1986. This graph clearly shows that revenue receipts, except for minor blips in 1987 and 1989, were below the 40-year historical average not only through the "seven fat years (1983-1989)" of the Reagan presidency, but also through the three lean years (1990-92) of Bush 41. Revenue receipts then began their climb over the 40-year historical average in the "seven fat years (1994-2001)" of the Clinton presidency. After the "trifecta" of 2001—recession, Bush 43’s first tax cuts, and 9/11—hit the U.S. economy, revenue receipts plunged sharply below the 40-year historical average through the remaining three years (2002-2004) of the Bush 43 first term!

These facts are there for the naked eye to see—we have been bitten twice by the supply side bug in the past 25 years, without sustained revenue rebounds. For readers that might be interested, I have presented more empirical data on this subject in my new book, "The Bush Diaries", which is being published by iUniverse next month. Notwithstanding this year’s upward surge in revenues and OMB’s optimistic estimate through 2010, I would wait at least another couple of years before celebrating any "Windfall for Washington".