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Sept. 4 marked E-day plus 50, the 50th anniversary of the unveiling of the Edsel. It was also the day the GAO released its report on progress — or, more to the point, lack of progress — in stabilizing the situation in occupied Iraq. The coincidence was appropriate in these waning months of this Edsel of a presidency.
I can’t claim to be the first to apply automotive imagery to an administration in Washington. After Richard Nixon finally resigned, the new president reminded the nation that he was “a Ford, not a Lincoln,” and went on to live up to that analogy — in the positive as well as the not-quite-so-flattering sense. And if Gerry Ford was both as reliable and pedestrian as a Galaxy 500, George W.’s performance in office is a political reflection of what Ford (the car company, not the president) touted as the car of the future.
And tout it they did. Folks who chose to believe the advertising that led up to E-day imagined that those drop cloths in the brand-new Edsel dealership showrooms concealed a cross between a Ferrari and a Rolls with a little bit of Sputnik thrown in for style. What they got was a redone Mercury pimped out with a quarter ton of chrome, push-button gearshift in the middle of the steering wheel and a grill that resembled a chrome horse collar, or the stern-end of a heifer about to give birth.
Ford promised sleek, powerful and exciting, and delivered fat, sluggish and ugly. They sold the sizzle and forgot the steak. It was the victory of image over substance, of rhetoric over reality and it just didn’t last. Folks judged the Edsel to be a lemon without the juice for lemonade.
Just like the Edsel, what Dubya promised turned out to be a whole lot different than what Dubya delivered. He talked about fiscal responsibility and took to piling up debt faster than a college freshman with a newly minted credit card. He talked about compassion and gave us Katrina. Great job Brownie. He went looking for Osama, got lost in Iraq and can’t find his way out.
Six years into his war on terror, we’re told we have to stay the course because al-Qaida is stronger than ever — even though all bin Laden’s been able to do is send out the occasional bad videotape — committing terror by tedium, perhaps. And now, 50 years after the Edsel made its grand appearance, we have Gen. Petraeus making the most ballyhooed presentation on the state of Iraq since Colin Powell pulled the WMDs out of a hat to wow the U.N. Security Council. Just like Ford in ’57, Bush promised what he couldn’t deliver — promised what wasn’t there in the first place.
About now, if there was a Lemon Law for politicians, the Bush administration would be looking at a raft of recall notices. There are a lot of folks with a bad case of buyer’s remorse.
Yeah, I know he was re-elected in 2004. But I also remember my ’93 Taurus. I bought that car on a slick pitch and a ready schmooz, even though I had some doubts. One year and a head gasket, muffler, water pump, battery and headlight later, the transmission was slipping and the air conditioning still didn’t work. Trouble is, I had so much invested I didn’t feel I could dump it. It took a 16-year-old driver changing CDs while doing 50 mph in a blizzard to make that final decision for me.
We needed that kid three Novembers ago. We’d sunk a lot of blood and treasure into the president we had and the alternative just didn’t look all that much better. Put into automotive terms, John Kerry was a lot like my first car — a ’57 Olds, the car the Edsel was designed to compete with. It was also fat, sluggish and ugly; perhaps the only thing it had going for it was that it wasn’t an Edsel.
And that’s where the parallel gets really depressing. The Edsel might not have been the worst car ever made — though it did rank right down there — but by the time most Edsels were rusting in the bone yard, Detroit treated us to the Corvair, the Vega, the Pacer, the Pinto and the Gremlin, and that damn Taurus of mine was still way off in the future. Looking at the fall lineup campaigning to replace this Edsel of an administration, I’m afraid I don’t see a Toyota among ’em — and right now Washington needs new engineering even worse than Detroit.
Meanwhile, I may just get out and walk.
Contact Jerome Christenson at (507) 453-3522 or jchristenson@winonadailynews.com.
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Dear: Who's the disgrace wrote on Sep 24, 2007 8:52 PM: