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But Bush will never figure out how to get away with this stuff the way Clinton did. He needs to take a page out of Clinton’s Big Book of Charm. Now, there was a guy who knew how to win people over. Whatever you thought of him, he was likable, smart, funny, and down-to-earth. He knew that the American people want to believe in their President. He discovered that saying something was the same as doing it. If you said you were for a clean environment, that was good enough—you didn’t have to do anything to make it a clean environment. Hell, you could get away with polluting it more, and most people would never know the difference. You could say you were pro-choice and then preside over the largest wholesale closing of abortion clinics since the procedure became legal. (What’s the point of being pro-choice if, in 86 percent of the counties in America, there is not a single doctor who will perform an abortion and not a single woman who can get one?) Clinton learned that by talking a good feminist line, he could arrange it so that not one feminist leader would decry the order he signed in 1999 to deny federal funds to any foreign group that discussed abortion during consultations. Everyone thinks that was Bush’s idea! That’s how smart Clinton was. And that’s why he got all the women’s groups on his side—because he said he was with them.

So that’s how you do it. Say one (plausible) thing; then do another. Or do nothing.

The point of all this is that our real problem, ultimately, isn’t Bush—it’s the Democrats. Bush would be paralyzed if the Democrats started behaving like a true opposition party. Bush wouldn’t even be there had one Democrat in the House stood up and challenged the votes of the electoral college. But no one said anything.

And for the better part of Bush’s first year, it’s Democrats who have been Bush’s willing and necessary partners to madness.

Start with the Bankruptcy Reform Act, which will make life much harder for working people who need to file for bankruptcy. Instead of having their debts expunged, this new law, passed by both houses of Congress and signed by Bush, will now force those who have lost everything to remain indebted to banks and credit card companies—and find ways to pay them off. In other words, millions will never crawl out from under the rock of crushing debt.

This bill was passed with the support of thirty-seven Democratic senators—including every single female Democratic senator—all of whom sided with the banking industry instead of with America’s working families. In an ironic twist, it was the million aire Democrats in the Senate—Kennedy, Rockefeller, Corzine, Dayton—who voted against this repressive piece of legislation.

Bill after bill that came from the Bush-occupied White House to the Congress found scores of Democrats with open arms. The Bush tax cut bill passed overwhelmingly with Democratic support, even though the bill was designed to benefit the richest 10 percent in the country.

Democrats have also backed Bush on his bombing of Iraq and his aggressive actions toward China. In August 2001, the crowning moment of this collaboration came when the House voted to approve drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness. Thirty-four Republicans had already jumped ship and said they would vote against their own party on this issue. That was stunning news to those who were concerned about our environment. But the joy soon subsided once the vote was taken—and thirty-six Democrats voted in favor of the Bush plan.

The saddest spectacle in this orgy of Democrats sleeping with the enemy was the way they approved every single one of Bush’s cabinet nominations. Some appointees had the unanimous support of the Democrats in the Senate; even controversial ones, like John Ashcroft, picked up a number of crucial Democratic votes. And not a single Democratic senator was willing to filibuster the way a rabid Republican would have if a Democratic President had selected such a fringe radical as Ashcroft