Generation gap: Why America will pay for the sins of the son

As far as I'm concerned, E.J. Dionne's columns in The Washington Post are absolute must-reads, which is why, for fear of repeating his name over and over again, I don't often comment on them here (even as they inform my thinking). But his most recent column, which you can find here, deserves our attention today, for it pits one Bush against another, the father against the son, 41 against 43.

Actually, it's more of a juxtaposition of two presidents and their fiscal policies. One Bush, the one that dislikes broccoli, saw fit to break a campaign promise and raise taxes for the sake of fiscal sanity. The other, the one that avoided Vietnam and launched the U.S. into a muddled war in the Middle East, has repeatedly kowtowed to the low-tax ideologues in his own party and in the process plunged the country into fiscal insanity.

In our own everyday lives, such fiscal insanity would have our creditors knocking down our doors, removing our possessions, and sending us into bankruptcy. In Bush's world of warmongering and business-friendly big government, it merely shuffles the burden of responsibility onto the shoulders of future generations. Such an un-Burkean thing to do -- but, then, Bush really isn't a conservative. Nor is he a liberal. He's a front for neocon idealism and corporate largesse. In other words, his presidency has amounted to waging war while cutting taxes for the wealthy and deregulating industry for the purpose of increasing the wealth of the already wealthy.

All else be damned.

While I respect 41 for putting together a coalition to remove Iraq from Kuwait and for working for compromise on the budget, that is, for acting responsibly both at home and abroad, I have no such respect for 43, his presidential descendent who has acted irresponsibly both at home and abroad.

Dionne: "Bush 41 may have made campaign promises on taxes that he couldn't keep. But when it came down to it, he held to what now seems like the antiquated view that government should try to keep some balance between what it spends and what it raises in taxes. That may not have been the best idea since sliced bread or the elimination of broccoli, but it is still a good idea."

Makes sense to me, but: Like father... not like son. It's the rebellion of 43 against 41. With dire consequences.

In this case, I'm afraid, America will pay for the sins of the son.