David Limbaugh, Master Pervericator

But perhaps I'm giving him too much credit. In his latest article, Mr. Limbaugh suggests that the election may turn on the perceptions of the voters as much as on the reality of the situation. For example, the economy is doing great according to some. A glance at today's NY Times Business Page tells the story. The first story is entitled "For Wall Street Chiefs, Big Paydays Continue" and the second story is entitled "Stock Indexes Fall to Lows for the Year." So maybe a strong economy is in the eyes of the beholder, as Limbaugh suggests. If we were to accept his perception of the world, instead of the data relayed to us by our own eyes, then we'd vote for President Bush.

He then comments on Democrat opposition to the war.

"But the major weapon Democrats used to discredit Bush's performance on Iraq, prior to their orgy over the WMD issue, was the misrepresentation that we had attacked Iraq "unilaterally." Though we didn't succeed in persuading every recalcitrant nation to join the coalition, we did have scores of nations participating, making the charge of "unilateralism" objectively untrue."

This again reflects how David Limbaugh's perceptions may be at odds with reality. While he sees a unified coalition happily moving to fight Saddam Hussein, the real world notes that the United States, Great Britain, Poland and Australia provided all of the initial troops, with American troops making up the vast majority. We note that, unlike the first Gulf War, the United States is footing the bill almost completely. We note that many of the nations in the Coalition of the Willing are nations who owe us a considerable amount of money, and presumably would like to avoid having us send around the equivalent of a guy called Guido to collect.

More to the point, it is clear to any body who spends even a moment studying the Bush Administration that no nation has or had anything but a support role in formulating this policy. It isn't like the "Coalition" got together and decided what to do; Secretary Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, and President Bush told the other members of the Coalition what we were going to do; their only choice was to serve as our lap dogs or to act as independent nations and do what they felt was best (as stated above, that was not a viable strategy for some of these nations. I also don't want to insinuate that all nations disagreed with our policies; some, like Australia, may have supported our plans whole heartedly).

Anyway getting back to Mr. Limbaugh, I guess the moral to this story is just believe what he tells you to believe and everything will be ok. Sort of.