Flash forward to today, to the America of George W. Bush. Fear is the coin of the realm. It’s the essence of his political currency. We may be the richest, most powerful nation in history, but you’d never know it. President Bush’s call to place 6000 National Guard troops on the Mexican border, his secret hijacking of the nation’s phone records, his warrantless spying on domestic phone and e-mail communications, his seemingly endless war in Iraq, and his threatened war with Iran all share a common denominator. And that denominator is fear.

At the moment, Bush is consumed with fear. He’s afraid that with his pitiful public-approval ratings — 31 percent and still unstable — the vaunted momentum of his first term is gone forever. While the Democrats have not yet been able to articulate a coherent alternative vision, they may capture the House and maybe even the Senate by the simple expedient of not being Republicans. It’s Bush’s fear that he is loosing the most right-wing of his conservative base that prompted him to call upon the National Guard, already shamefully overtaxed by service in Iraq and Afghanistan, to reinforce our border. The idea is as preposterous as it is transparent. Even if the idea of militarizing our border with Mexico were acceptable, his proposal is a sham. The number of troops Bush calls for is so low that if they lined up along the length of the border they would be stationed almost 600 yards apart. That’s six football fields. And even then, they’d have to be on duty 24 hours a day. That’s not a policy; it’s a bone intended to temporarily sate the most rabid of his nativist critics. And even they aren’t buying his gambit. Instead, they’re holding fast to the idea of constructing a wall along the entire US-Mexican border.

To those who opposed Bush’s re-election, it seemed that his enduring legacy would be the ongoing screwing of the poor, working people, and elements of the middle class, while erasing the distinction between church and state. But things have gone well beyond that point. Bush and his congressional Republican majority spend money like water, endangering the material prospects of future generations. They break existing law with arrogant impunity and engage in behavior so unconstitutional that in any other nation it would be called authoritarian at best, pre-fascist at worst.

Those who might bridle at the word pre-fascist should consider Bush’s claim that he is not bound to implement and honor laws passed by Congress that he thinks limit his field of presidential action. Never mind that he claims rights on a range of foreign and domestic issues given only to the courts. He also claims that as president he has the right to ignore Congress if he so chooses. That’s an embrace of presidential power so sweeping that it nullifies constitutional rule.

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Perhaps more than anything else, Bush fears the press, an admittedly less-than-perfect institution, but the only one with the independence to question the acts of the ruling Republican hegemony. Lost in the blowback from Bush’s border proposal has been the news that the FBI is seeking the telephone records of journalists from ABC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post as part of the investigation into leaks about secret overseas prisons for suspected terrorists and the first round of stories about illegal domestic spying. Even during the worst days of the disgraced Nixon administration, such actions would have been met with howls of indignation. But not so today, because Bush has cowed so many into fearing there’s a potential terrorist under every citizen’s bed. What are the prospects for democracy if truth tellers are muzzled?

President Bush does not seek to lead so much as he seeks to rule. He’s a royalist by birth and inclination. Elected by a questionable majority and re-elected by a narrow one, he uses fear and division to prosecute his agenda. He was dangerous when he was triumphant and is positively menacing now that he’s wounded. Complacency in the face of his threat is not merely foolish: it is reckless.

What the floods should tell us
The floods that have plagued Eastern Massachusetts have not taken the toll that Katrina wreaked in the Gulf Coast, but they underscore locally — as last year’s hurricane season did nationally — just how woefully inadequate the upkeep of our infrastructure is. It’s not a very sexy issue — unless your home or business district has been wasted. Governor Romney, like the striving White House wanna-be that he is, has garnered his share of national television time trying to act presidential in the face of our limited but serious damage. What the television broadcasts don’t explain is that Romney’s plans for maintaining bridges, roads, and dams are inadequate, and were dependent on federal funding that has fallen short. In Peabody, where flooding has been particularly bad, Romney vetoed flood-control plans in a move that many think was designed to undermine the re-election prospects of incumbent Democratic representative Theodore Speliotis.

Romney is a Bush-style Republican, willing to play fast and loose with public safety if it suits his narrow purposes. That’s a story that should get some national attention.