THE NEW YORKER GETS TOUGH

In a 4,523-word commentary this morning, the editors of The New Yorker have endorsed John Kerry for president. Their summary of all the many reasons underscores the need to reclaim American democracy from the coup four years ago that turned the United States into a right-wing banana republic.

After being installed as president by the U.S. Supreme Court following his loss in the popular vote nationwide, George W. Bush took office with his minions and proceeded to rule like the boss of an imperious junta. Instead of governing from the center, which would have acknowleged their lack of a true mandate, they chose to exploit their power without regard to the nation's electorate and with no intention to heal its bitter division.

"From the very day we walked in the building," Vice President Cheney told Bob Woodward in "Plan of Attack," which the editors cite, "a notion of sort of a restrained presidency because it was such a close election, that lasted maybe thirty seconds. It was not contemplated for any length of time. We had an agenda, we ran on that agenda, we won the election -- full speed ahead."

Won the election? Not by a long shot. Not even by a wolfish hair of his chinny-chin-chin.

The Supreme Court decision that halted the vote recount in Florida -- where Bush's slimmest and most questionable of margins if overturned would have given Al Gore the presidency -- was "so shoddily reasoned and transparently partisan," the New Yorker editors write, "that the five justices who endorsed the decision declined to put their names on it, while the four dissenters did not bother to conceal their disgust."

The court ignored the usual "rules for settling electoral disputes of this kind, in federal and state law and in the Constitution itself," and thus installed Bush "by fiat," which "made a mockery not only of popular democracy but also of constitutional republicanism."

It's time to throw the junta bums out.