Class warfare?
Dionne, E. J. Jr.
OF SEVERAL MINDS E.J. DIONNE Jr. CLASS WARFARE? It depends on which elites you attack Be wary. By offering certain facts here, I may, accord-ing to President George W. Bush, make myself guilty...
...A lovely bit of class warfare was the former President Bush's assault on his 1988 Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis, for representing the views of the "Harvard boutique...
...But if setting up a teacher and a firefighter against "rich trial lawyers" is not class warfare, then Karl Marx is the current editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial pages...
...Because Nevada had such high malpractice insurance rates, Jill, who was eight weeks pregnant at the time, was having trouble finding a doctor "that's got to be really frightening to a young mom" and eventually got one by traveling an 1 hour and a half to Arizona...
...And you couldn't help but feel for the young couple...
...Its centerpiece is an end to taxes on dividends, which will cost the government about $300 billion over the next decade...
...2003, Washington Post Writers Groupon Post Writers Group...
...I understand the politics of economic stimulus, that some would like to turn this into class warfare," Bush told reporters in early January as he was giving them a tour of that very nice ranch he owns in Crawford, Texas...
...Arguing for limits on medical malpractice awards in a North Carolina speech last July, Bush told the story of Jill and Chet Barnes of Las Vegas...
...You know you're dealing with class warfare when an "elite" is set up against "the rest of us...
...Jill is a student teacher," Bush said, "and her husband is a fireman...
...God forbid we look at the details of exactly who benefits most from this administration's policies...
...In 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle divided the world into "two cultures, the cultural elite and the rest of us...
...Yes, there is a lot to be said about the malpractice issue...
...Alas, they don't...
...Detect a pattern...
...No slouch as a fundraiser himself, he chided Ann Richards, his opponent, for going to California to raise money from the "liberal elite...
...Oops, I committed class warfare again...
...The Bush sons learned from a master...
...It would be easier to respect this attack on class warfare if the president and his allies disavowed such belligerency themselves...
...Bush merged some of these categories in 1994 when he was running for governor of Texas...
...Everything I have just said is politically incorrect because it involves a kind of warfare of which the president most definitely disapproves...
...It didn't take long for Bush to describe the villain of the piece...
...They just play a different kind of class politics by demonizing those elites who are not on their approved list of corporate chiefs, oil millionaires, heirs to large fortunes, and the like...
...Now if I were in the president's position or in the position of the wealthy contributors who lavishly financed the campaigns of his political friends last year I wouldn't want anyone to talk about class, either...
...Years ago, Harold Lasswell, the great political scientist, suggested that one of the fundamental political questions is: "Who gets what, when, and how...
...Republican class warfare is not confined to trial lawyers...
...The president has proposed an economic "stimulus" plan that will certainly stimulate the very wealthiest Americans...
...Class warfare around cultural issues is wonderful...
...That same year, the president's brother Jeb, running for governor of Florida, defended his views by declaring: "These are mainstream ideas, ideas that matter, whether the intellectual elite in this state like them or not...
...With so many Americans losing their jobs and their health insurance, with senior citizens getting clobbered by prescription drug costs, with money short for educating kids, you would think we could find better ways of stimulating the economy...
...It distracts attention from the grubby details about how certain economic policies may benefit a rather small group of Americans who just happen to be the wealthiest Americans...
...The president, for example, loves to bash the rich if they got that way by being trial lawyers...
...By offering certain facts here, I may, accord-ing to President George W. Bush, make myself guilty of "class warfare...
...He declared that "what we want is quality health care, not rich trial lawyers...
...The 80 percent of households earning less than $73,000 a year will get less than 10 percent of this stimulant...
...It happens, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, that roughly half that money would go to people earning more than $350,000 a year, the top 1 percent of Americans...
...It's a question we're not supposed to ask anymore...
...That's not how I think...
...Almost daily, Republicans attack privileged groups: "the cultural elite," "the Hollywood elite," "the intellectual elite," and, of course, "the liberal elite...
...George H. W. said he quite liked the speech...
Vol. 130 • January 2003 • No. 2
