federal government had unloaded whole sectors of infrastructural expenditure, including education,
on the states. "We do not come to [Charlottesville] to rattle a tin cup," said Blanchard. "Butcannot afford to have our education revenues 'bled' by the federal government. Over the past we
decade, the federal committment to education has declined from 2.5% of the federal budget to less
than 1.8%. If education is to become a national priority, you and the Congress should reverse that
decline." [fn 19]
Ironically, the best perspective on Bush's "education summit" eyewash came from within his own
regime. Obviously piqued at the bad reviews his previous performance as Reagan's Secretary of
Education was getting, Bush Drug Czar William Bennett told reporters that the proceedings in
Charlottesville were "standard Democratic and Republican pap --and something that rhymes with
pap. Much of the discussion proceeded in a total absence of knowschools." ledge about what takes place in
By the autumn of 1989, Bush was facing a crisis of confidence in his regime. His domination of
Congress on all substantive matters was complete; at the same time he had nothing to propose
except vast public subsidies to bankrupt financial and speculative interests. Except for exertions toshovel hundreds of billion of dollars into Wall Street, the entire government appeared as aparalyzed (^)
and adrift. This was soon accentuated by colossal upheavals in China, eastern Europe, and the
USSR. On Friday, October 13, timed approximately with the second anniversary of the great stock
market crash of 1987, there was a fall in the Dow Jones Industrial average of 190.58 points during
the last hour of tsufficient financing to carry out the leveraged buyoutrading. This was triggered by the failure of a labor-management group t of United Airlines. The stage for this failureo procure (^)
had been set during the preceeding weeks by the crisis of the highly-leveraged Campeau retail
empire, which made many junk bonds wholly illiquid for a time. The autumn was full of symptoms
of a deflationary contraction of overall production and employment. For a time Bush appeared to be
approaching that delicate moment in which a president is faced with the loss of his mandate to rule.
October has been one of the cruellest months for the Bush presidency: each time the leaves fall,
each time the critical third-quarter economic statistics are published, a crisis in public confidence in
the patrician regime has ensued. In two out of three years so far, the reaction of the Bushmen has
been to lash out with international violence and mass murder.
October, 1989 was full of anxiety and apprehension about the economic future, and worry about
where Bush was leading the country. Included in the many mood pieces was an evident desire of the
Eastern Liberal Establishment circles to spur Bush on to more decisive and aggressive action in
imposing austerity at home, and in increasing the rate of primitive accumulation in favor of thedollar abroad. A typical sample of these October elucubrations was a widely-read essay by Kevin (^)
Phillips (the traditional Republican theoretician of ethnic splitting and the Southern Strategy)
entitled "George Bush and Congress--Brain-Dead Politics of '89." Phillips faulted Bush for his
apparent decision "to imitate the low-key, centrist operating mode of President Dwight D.
Eisenhower. But imitating Ike in the 1990s makes as little sense as trying to imitate Queen Victoriain the 1930's." [fn 20] Phillips pointed to the way in which Bush was restrained by his evident
committment to continue all of the essential policies of the Reagan years, while denying the
existence of any crisis: Bush did "not seek to identify national problems because in doing so, [he]
would largely be identifying [his] party's own failings." "The Republicans at least know they have a
problem on the 'vision thing,'" Phillips noted, while the Democratic opposition "can't even spell theword." All of this added up to the "cerebral atrophy of government." Phillips catalogued the absurd
complacency of the Bushmen, with Brady saying of the US economy that "it couldn't get much
better than it is" and Baker responding to Democratic criticisms of Bush foreign policy with the
retort: "When the President is rocking along with a 70 per cent approval rating on his handling of
foreign policy, if I were the leader of the opposition, I might have something similar to say."