I have a question to ask, but it should be considered in the context of these words:

"Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening?" Iacocca writes. "Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course.'?"

He savages Bush's famous determination: "George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping," Iacocca writes. "There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty."

He accuses Bush of substituting macho for courage: "Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk."

And he scoffs at Bush's business-degree background: "Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters."

Question: How was George Bush elected president twice? And this isn't a discussion of voter fraud or Supreme Court intervention or any of the electoral details. Rather, my question is, broadly speaking, what conditions made president Bush possible? Even Iacocca voted for him in 2000, when it should have been apparent that Bush-the-man would lead directly to Bush-the-failed-presidency. At that time maybe people wanted a Republican president after eight years of Clinton. Or maybe they bought into the "compassionate conservative" message. Or maybe they identified with Bush on the level of values first, and policies second. Perhaps he was just seen as the lesser of two evils or the better of two poor choices. Whatever the reasons, the people who voted for Bush in 2000 didn't see what I saw. I saw a phony. A prep-school brat refashioned as a regular guy Texan. A repeated failure at business. Someone whose accomplishments in life derived solely from his famous family. And his attitude. People either intrinsically liked him or intrinsically loathed him. And he was given a chance by voters, though not a majority, and ascended to the White House not on his strengths, but because the Constitution was ignored in his favor. But I can't say I'm flabbergasted that people voted for Bush in 2000. I was correct in my assessment of the man, as the past six years have demonstrated, but I could not be certain of that in 2000.

The 2004 election, on the other hand, should have left no doubt. People actually voted for him again! That amazes me. I still see cars with Bush/Cheney 04 bumper stickers as if they're actually proud of their vote. These are the 30%ers who, as Atrios once noted:

The people who voted George Bush and the Republicans into office this year didn't do so because they were conned by a right wing asshole posing as a compassionate centrist. They did so precisely because he is a right wing asshole.

The point of this isn't to point out that there are people in this country who are authoritarian pseudo-fascists, bigots and misogynists. The point is, why is it somehow "normal" to be an authoritarian pseudo-fascist, bigot and misogynist? This is how I view this whole Don Imus brouhaha. The fact that the now-unemployed Imus is a racist and misogynist isn't news. After all, he's been at it for decades. Rather the reaction of his media pals is stunning. Tom Oliphant: "Solidarity forever, pal." Howard Fineman: "some of the kind of humor that you used to do you can't do anymore." And what about other high profile media figures who regularly make similar comments? In other words, why do media outlets--and not just the conservative ones--feel the need to load the airwaves with authoritarian pseudo-fascist bigoted misogynists? Is this just some perversion of the notion that news media ought to simply give the people what they want? And why is "what people want" always--always--the most low, base and ugly of humanity? I know such sentiments exist--that's not the point. Why is it emphasized, as if it is "normal?" (To wit, on NR's Corner)

These questions provide us with the answer to my first question of why George Bush is president. We all seem to believe that we got what we voted for, that there really are more authoritarian pseudo-fascist bigots and misogynists than we thought, and technically, that's true: Bush won the popular vote in 2004. But isn't it fair to say that the political environment was, shall we say, tenderized, prior to--and during--the Bush administration? That we slowly became accustomed to the rantings of right-wingers and began to accept--though not believe--their message that perversely suggested that white males of privilege were being persecuted by liberal norms? Rush Limbaugh, of course, was the pioneer in this field. Now there are Rush Limbaughs on radio, on TV, on the internet, on cable, in magazines, in newspapers and in best-selling books. We have become conditioned to the anger of the "silent majority" who is, clearly, silent no longer. And by "conditioned" I don't mean brainwashed, I mean it in the defining sense that new cultural standards have been set. And they have been set by authoritarian, pseudo-fascist, jingoistic, bigoted, misogynistic right-wing demagogues who took over and corrupted the ancient political label "conservative."

The irony here is that conservatives are supposed to be cultural elitists, not fear-mongering populists. And that explains why George Bush is president. The conservative label was wide enough to include enough people for a governing majority but the extreme elements also took on a life of their own. And even though a formidable conservative alternative media rose up to challenge "liberal bias," the complaint remained that liberal elites still ran everything and had to continually be challenged. Unfortunately, people who made decisions in the "liberal media" failed to recognize the conspiracy paranoia of the new populist right-wing and took themselves to task. Thus the drive to restore "balance" and to seed all media with conservatives--the nastier the better. And now we're supposed to be shocked that there are bigots on our airwaves? The news media slept in the bed it made. And worse, the news media can't simply be voted out of office. If we consider the news as an institution, then what lends that institution legitimacy? The First Amendment allows the news to exist separate from government but what gives it legitimacy is autocorrectional: the norms of the professional news business let journalists police themselves, and lets the public trust the news it reads. Ironically, objectivity itself has led us to our present state. And it blinds journalists from saying what is obvious to everyone and Lee Iacocca: the emperor has no clothes.

Bush is a disaster in every conceivable way. He is at best a fool who never should have been given power, at worst a threat to our republic and the world. It is a testament to our system of government that the Constitution still lives and breathes, though it is very much in peril, in my view. But you wouldn't get that impression from the news. And that is because they have internalized the worldview of right-wing extremists who are in reality a distinct minority. Media amplification makes them seem more important and more representative of normal people and that perception must change. I titled this "The Public Interest" even though I have not yet said a word about it. But it lingers throughout these words as the unspoken alternative to our corrupt news media. Our news media has a cancer and I believe it can be cured by submitting news to a simple test: does it serve the public interest? Or does it serve the needs of a minority of ideologues who do not represent the best America has to offer? Under this standard, there would be more stories about the imperial presidency because it serves the public interest. There would be no stories about Nancy Pelosi "surrendering" to the Syrians because it only serves the worldview of right-wing fanatics. Most important, facts serve the public interest, and lies never do. Sadly, it seems most journalists failed to recognize that Stephen Colbert is a satirist, because they seem to believe that reality indeed has a well-known liberal bias. And reality, most of all, serves the public interest.