Who Let the Dogs In? by Molly Ivins Page A

politics, take pity on us. Mark Russell is going to commit suicide if we elect Bill Clinton.
Saturday Night Live
will fall on its collective sword. Russell Baker will molt and decline. Mike Royko will be stuck with Chicago, and I’ll be stuck with Texas.
    Not that Texas isn’t more than enough, but Bush has been
such
a boon.
    The half-reason is foreign policy, and for none of the usual reasons cited by either Bush or the conventional wisdom.
    I don’t think Bush had do-squat to do with ending the cold war. Forty-four years of bipartisan American foreign policy and its own internal weakness killed off the Soviet Union. If any one person deserves a lot more credit than anyone else, well, they gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Mikhail Gorbachev for a reason. He was the one who put his life on the line.
    Likewise, it seems to me that Bush’s leadership during the Persian Gulf War is canceled out by his stupidity in having armed Saddam Hussein in the first place. However, I do think Bush deserves credit in an area in which he hardly ever gets it, and that’s south of our border.
    I grant you that saying his policies in Central America are better than those of Reagan is damning with the faintest praise in all of human history. And I’m willing to grant that the North American Free Trade Agreement, as now negotiated, may well result in the faint sucking sound of jobs going south. But I still say that Bush—with his “Hello, Jorge, this is George” style of telephone diplomacy—has done better than any president since Kennedy (who mostly had plans rather than accomplishments) in improving our relations with both Mexico and Latin America.
    Except, of course, for Bush’s ongoing drug-war follies. There is immensely more the United States could do to help both our neighbors and ourselves south of the border, but the beginning, the minimum, has to be what Bush has accomplished.
    He has recognized the importance of the region and given Latinos the respect they deserve and accorded them the dignity they must have.
    And for the rest? Even if Bush has finally, belatedly developed some ideas, some weak domestic agenda, what makes anyone think he would have any better luck putting it into place next term than he has in this one?
    Gridlock government will not only continue, it can only get worse with a bunch of sore-loser Democrats dominating Congress.
    As a lame duck, Bush will have even less clout. His judicial appointments won’t get any better. The rot of cynicism and corruption that infected the second Reagan term will be back in spades.
    And frankly, this Iraq-gate mess is so rank, I’m afraid Bush will be impeached over it. Not the failed policy with Saddam Hussein—that was just a dumb mistake—but the cover-up.
    Like Watergate, the initial mistake was not as poisonous as the lies that followed. The Bush administration has clearly jacked around with the prosecution of a criminal case, this immense BNL scandal out of Atlanta, and they’re going to get nailed for it. The taxpayers have been nailed for a billion bucks. Just what we need, a second-term administration totally absorbed in an impeachment fight while the economy continues to unravel.
    And if you really want to depress yourself, there’s always the possibility that Bush will croak and leave us stuck with Quayle. Although personally, I have always thought God would never be that unkind.
    As for the Perot option, damn, damn! I wish with all my soul that had worked out. I would have loved that more than anything in the world. An anti-establishment populist with no strings on him, owing no one, not having to dance with a single special interest, just going up there to do the will of the people.
    That is the dream of my life. We may never get this close again, and it is breaking my heart. I would have given my left arm for Ross Perot, and my right as well—except for one thing.
    The guy’s a wrong ’un. He is just not a democrat. The other night on television with