The Bush Survival Bible
by Gene Stone
Villard

Thanks to an unholy collaboration between liberal pessimism and the profit motive, "The Bush Survival Bible" practically appeared in bookstores before John Kerry finished his concession speech. The book, a collection of tidy lists of advice for Bush-bashers, promises a wee bit more than it can possibly deliver. Post-election stress disorder will need stronger medicine than this to stomach the insufferable gloating of the president and the cataclysm of GOP hegemony. Gene Stone and his co-authors deliver bravely but unevenly, and the aplomb with which they preach to the choir has plenty of doomed charm, if it's doomed charm you're looking for these days, and not a mail-order Canadian spouse.

Surely the funniest and scariest list in the book is the gem "7 Politicians More Frightening than Bush," which manages to momentarily distract the reader's mind from the fact 59 million people voted to turn the political clock back 108 years to the McKinley administration. So who makes the list? David Duke appears, as does Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), while neo-Nazi ringleader Richard Barrett tops the rogue's gallery. The Illinois GOP will no doubt be happy to see their own carpetbagger, Alan Keyes, come in at a solid No. 2. Keyes, you will remember, suggested on the eve of the election that voting for Barack Obama would be akin to committing a mortal sin. For this insight he received 27 percent of the vote. As it turns out, when you inform the voters that they are all going to hell, its not long before they tell you to head there yourself.

Although we can, and should, ridicule Keyes for years to come, there is also something we should thank him for. The spectacular failure of his candidacy keeps alive the hope that some reactionaries can't get elected no matter how many times they mention God. As we now know, the national results on this front were more discouraging.

Much has been said about the "moral values" that, according to polls, were the deciding factor for some 20 percent of voters who chose President Bush — including whether "moral values" is too nebulous a category from which to derive any accurate conclusions. Never mind the fact that "Desperate Housewives," presumably the apotheosis of bicoastal moral decline, receives its best ratings in the scarlet nation. Dismissing the importance, if not the hypocrisy, of the values bloc misses the story of the election. "The Bush Survival Bible," by skirting the motivations of Bush voters, doesn't help matters.

Three million more people voted for Bush than Kerry, and they didn't do it because they thought the President would help them find a job, or that he had done terrific work in Iraq, or that invading Iraq was a great idea in the first place, or even because another Sept. 11 was imminent. Rather, they didn't base these decisions on any hard evidence — because there is no hard evidence to support any of them. Witness voters in New Jersey — a state that actually lost hundreds of innocent people to the destruction of the World Trade Center — who, when asked which candidate would better conduct the War on Terrorism, chose John Kerry over George Bush by 10 points.

Regardless of whether "moral values" drove the Bush margin, it's clear that something did. But that something does not apparently exist in the world of empirically verifiable fact. Call it Bush's values, his charisma, his élan, his beer-buddy persona, but its conspicuous absence from the world of things that we can see and touch and reason about is what has driven liberals — fittingly — into despair.

It is this despair that gives birth to documents such as "The Bush Survival Bible," which don't actually solve the problem but, in their cheeky faux-optimism — "7 Countries to Move to," "5 Loveable Dog Breeds to Adopt," "5 Excellent Anti-Depressants" — only elide it. If Stone and company wanted to tackle the issues productively, while keeping the same format, they might have offered another list, entitled "Why 119,000 Ohioans Chose Bush, and What You Can Do To Change Their Minds."

To be fair, we do get a bit of rhetoric along these lines. The lists on activist groups to join, and on how to get involved in local politics, are valuable steps toward a grassroots solution first deployed by the followers of Barry Goldwater — culminating not merely in survival but victory. Conventional wisdom appears to suggest that in the great Get Out The Vote sweepstakes of 2004, the Democrats, despite spending enormous sums of money, still came up short. But that doesn't mean getting out the vote is useless. Approximately 52 percent of voters under 30 turned out in this election — a significant improvement over 2000 — and that demographic was the only one to prefer John Kerry to George Bush. But a whopping 48 percent of younger voters never made it to the polls. The question we should ask right now is not, "How do we survive the second Bush administration?" but rather, "Where the hell were these people?"

Democrats have been promised an internecine bloodbath — a millennial tide of mutual recrimination and savage infighting that will either cleanse the party of impurity or see it off a cliff. Or both. But the rending of garments and the gnashing of teeth has been relatively muted. Instead, we have deep denial and fantasy: Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama, or Howard Dean or Wesley Clark, or Evan Bayh or Tom Vilsack will surely emerge to rout the Republicans in 2008.

In the meantime, the president has done the impossible: he's nominated a man less committed to the rule of law than John Ashcroft to be attorney general. "The Bush Survival Bible" might have performed a service by listing every prospective appointment and every piece of legislation and every executive order to vociferously oppose, and every moderate Republican — however few of them remain — to cultivate. Instead, we have "1 Way to Tell If Bush Is Lying," "6 Reasons to Love Global Warming," "8 Games to Play with Bush's Body." If you're looking for wisdom, try the "Meditations of Marcus Aurelius"; if you're still reeling from Nov. 2, "The Bush Survival Bible" will do its best to ease you back from scared submission into something resembling an upright posture. Taking the tail out from between your legs is another matter.

"This is no time for denial, anger or stupidity," our authors write. Indeed not. Denial and stupidity are the twin calling-cards of our current administration. But don't let go of that anger just yet. Let it serve as a reminder of what remains to be done. It's true that stockings from Berkeley to Cambridge will be stuffed with "The Bush Survival Bible" this holiday season. Life will go on. He can't be elected again. We will survive. But what will we learn?

— Joshua Adams (joshua at uchicago dot edu)