"Former Vice President Al Gore told a cheering audience last month that it was time for Americans 'to fire' President Bush in the 2004 election. That caught the attention of Bill Rentschler, a longtime Republican and a longtime reader of the Washington Spectator.

Rentschler is a political analyst and a widely published journalist whose work has appeared in leading newspapers and other publications throughout the U.S. He was named top columnist in the U.S. in 1996 by The National Society of Newspaper Columnists. He has been editor and publisher of community newspapers on Chicago's North Shore and in San Francisco, and his columns now appear in the Cox-owned Journal-News in Hamilton, Ohio, his hometown.

A graduate of Princeton, with a degree in American history, Rentschler received the Chicago Headline Club's first annual Ethics in Journalism award. He has been nominated nine times for a Pulitzer Prize, most recently in 2000, for his book on Barry Goldwater. [He is also a member of The Daily Princetonian Board of Trustees and former chairman of the 'Prince.']

He ran the 1968 Nixon campaign in Illinois, and in 1970 served briefly in the Nixon White House as the presidential adviser on voluntary action. He twice ran strong campaigns, in 1960 and 1970, for the G.O.P. nomination as a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. But as you will see below, he is by now a disenchanted Republican.

By Bill Rentschler

Prepare yourself, fellow Americans, for historic change, the most dramatic and far-reaching change in your lifetime, a sweeping metamorphosis that may alter radically the distinctive, time-honored structure of the fabled American experiment, which has endured for most of the last 225 years.

It is happening now, but many of us are unaware. Let me lead you down a crooked, byzantine path to give you my version of where we are heading.

Several months ago, the neoconservative guru and cunning political strategist William Kristol, editor of media baron Rupert Murdoch's hard-right magazine The Weekly Standard, spelled out for students at Princeton University his take on the current political state of the nation.

'Religion,' he told a Daily Princetonian reporter, is becoming 'the defining force of U.S. politics.... Beginning in 1972, cultural, social and religious divides began to become more salient, more important, in explaining people's voting behavior.'

Kristol should know. As a Bush administration insider and a leader of the neoconservative upsurge now dominant in the White House, and as a frequent TV panelist, he has been influential in assembling evangelical factions of the religious right as a core voting bloc supporting President Bush.

The president makes much of his devotion to God both in his personal and political lives, and invokes God in all his speeches, including those on Iraq. Bush and I worship the same God, but his interpretation of God's will diverges sharply from that of many--perhaps most mainstream Christians.

Opponents of the war in Iraq included Pope John Paul 11, the Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Protestant Churches, leaders of such denominations as Episcopal, Presbyterian and Methodist, and some prominent rabbis. How can that be?

Barry Goldwater had an explanation. The 30-year senator from Arizona, the vanquished Republican presidential candidate in 1964 and the acknowledged godfather of traditional conservatism, explained it to me in 1994:

'Our problem is with these neoconservatives, the radical right, the religious extremists whose interpretation is very narrow, and who want to destroy everybody who doesn't agree with them. I see them as betrayers of the fundamental principles of conservatism. A lot of so-called conservatives today don't know what the word means.'

The hallmarks of Goldwater's brand of 'fundamental' conservatism were individual freedom and equal justice--'liberty and justice for all.' He did not consider abortion or gay rights-issues of prime importance to the religious right to be either conservative or liberal, but rather political issues and matters of personal conscience.

But to hear Bush tell it, God was on his side in 'the just war' against the wicked Saddam Hussein. Former President Jimmy Carter, for one, flatly disagreed, saying that he 'became thoroughly familiar with the principles of a just war, and it is clear that a unilateral attack on Iraq does not meet these standards. This is an almost universal conviction of religious leaders.'

Bush is guided, and goaded, by his crafty, militant, extreme and seasoned cadre of advisers--Vice President Dick Cheney, political guru Karl Rove, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his staffers Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, and by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. To advance their grand scheme, President Bush has skillfully blended his religious exhortations and his decision to take the country into two wars. Although the second did end in military victory, it has left an ongoing residue of chaos and violence that may continue indefinitely.

The 2004 War

As the 2004 election approaches, the objective is to alter dramatically the face of America at a breakneck pace while keeping Bush's own approval ratings at an abnormally high level. It is this combination of wars--Bush's personal weapons of mass distraction and his wellpublicized stress on religion---that keep his poll numbers at high levels.

Bush and his entourage have aimed to lock into place their radical restructuring during his tenure in office. War has been an integral part of this grand scheme, and is critical to its success, and his re-election. War was never a last resort, as the president has so often claimed, but a virtual certainty. Everything was in place months before the massive aerial bombing began and the American troops moved in.

War demands the unthinking allegiance of the people, even as their personal problems in wartime multiply and expand. Those who dissent may be branded unpatriotic or disloyal. Without his war on terror and his easy military success against overmatched Iraq, the commander-in-chief and leader of the neoconservative movement would be an ordinary mortal with a popularity rating somewhat below 50 percent, if he were judged on domestic issues alone.

The latest poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press shows that President Bush's national rating has declined from 58 to 53 percent and his lead over a hypothetical Democrat in 2004 is down to 43 percent vs. 38 percent for an unnamed Democrat.

But as it becomes clearer day by day that we were led into war under false pretenses, and by faulty intelligence cooked by the president and his singled-minded advisers, the American people, as the 2004 election draws nearer, surely will be asking questions like these:

Was the war in Iraq really necessary? What did the American people gain? Do the Iraqi people really want and welcome a society imposed on them by American might? Can we afford the staggering outlay of tax dollars for war and reconstruction of Iraq that might better be invested and spent to meet urgent needs here at home?

Hear Pope John Paul II in his address to the Italian parliament last November: The genuinely 'human' nature of society is shown especially in the attention it is able to show towards its weakest members, he said.

How can an administration led by a president who pipes the message of Christianity ignore or treat lightly God's overriding concern for the poor, downtrodden, sickly and unfortunate, the frail elderly and helpless children? How can the president sign a huge tax-cut bill that provides zero support for the poorest families-too poor to pay taxes?

Is it not callous and detached from reality for the president to be charging around the country raising multi-millions for his re-election campaign from well-heeled, black tie contributors, and touting our victory in Iraq while American youth are still dying in that sand-locked, oil-rich nation-and while some 10 million here are jobless and struggling desperately to support their families?

President Bush clearly favors society's elite, a class into which he was born. He is said to have frittered away his years at Yale and has transformed himself from a privileged child of East Coast society into a Texas ranch hand who cozies up to ordinary people with manure on his cowboy boots. Thomas Frank, writing in the June issue of Harpers magazine, anoints Bush as the savior of his class.

The president must believe God sides with the rich and powerful, because his lavish tax-cut bonanza to that sector will do relatively little to improve the economy and provide desperately needed jobs. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert sees the enormous tax-cut package as a 'stunning example of Bush's indifference to the deepening plight of working people.'

Forget the States

The 50 states, with my Ohio high among them, are struggling and suffering severe deficits, the result of the dismal U.S. economy and federal mandates for homeland security without federal funding to back them up. This is part of the neocon game plan.

In the states most public officials have a powerful aversion to jeopardizing their careers by raising taxes, so they are slashing programs and services that benefit their state's neediest and most powerless. The reduction of federal support for the states and the poor further erodes America's distinctively egalitarian tradition.

If voters come to understand this-as many apparently do not as yet-George W. Bush's hold on the White House will, like his father's in 1992, be in jeopardy.

In his 2000 campaign rhetoric, Bush pledged new unity for the country to bring people together. Yet he is instead

fomenting deep division. The savvy veteran political analyst William Greider writes in The Nation, 'All in all, the right's agenda promises a reordering that will drive the country toward greater separation and segmentation of its many social elements.'

What's to Come?

If Bush wins a second term, he and his neocon allies will have four more years to perfect their far-reaching scheme without further re-election worries and political compromises. The path will be clear. A look backward at our history provides evidence that the first two years after George W. Bush's 2000 selection by a one-vote margin in the Supreme Court saw a greater departure from deepetched U.S. principles, policies and practices than in any prior time.

So where are we headed? What exactly are the aims of this president and his strong-willed cadre, which appears to have taken possession of his ears and brain?

• A cardinal objective is to establish an American empire spanning the globe, starting in Iraq and the Middle East, with Iran a possible next target. War continues high on the agenda. This is a far cry from the vision of our forefathers and a great many Americans today, who prefer a safe and peaceful environment where they can pursue their work and raise their families.

• Our once-closest allies are shaken, disconcerted, taken aback. Their citizens are upset and angry. The London Guardian's Roy Hattersley writes that 'neither Bush nor his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, can manage a coherent explanation of U.S. foreign policy.... Bush and Rumsfeld have only a 'boneheaded' insistence that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the world on the grounds that they perceive him to be one.... The result is policy based on the mindless certainty that might is right and that the one remaining superpower is entitled to rule the world.'

• Solidifying the power and wealth of Bush's chief political backers and contributors-the giant corporations, the extremely affluent, the evangelical right-will ultimately end, or seriously dilute, our long-held role as a nation supporting equal rights and opportunities for all.

You are gullible and naive if you believe the huge and misdirected tax cuts that the president has pressed so aggressively will rapidly stimulate the economy and produce a meaningful tide of new jobs.

The president, hog-tied by his ultra-conservative backers, and disinclined to buck them, could kick-start the sagging economy by taking action that is anathema to them and to him. For instance:

What about making realistic grants, in some form, to the millions of Americans too poor to be required to pay income taxes, at a cost that would be far less and more honorable than Bush's multibillion-dollar tax cuts for the rich? Such grants would flow out immediately to buy food and other daily necessities, thus boosting the economy at once.

What about launching a public works-type program (similar to FDR's WPA of the 1930s) to repair the long-neglected, crumbling U.S. infrastructure of roads, bridges, schools, sewers, public buildings? This would create hundreds of thousands of decent jobs.

What about a return to the slow, difficult but ultimately rewarding practice of American diplomacy? The humongous Bush tax cut will deepen the chasm between rich and poor, between rich and reasonably welloff, in essence our vibrant, bedrock middle class, destined over time to be marginalized by the neocon oligarchy. This will create in the U.S. a growing, permanent underclass and move our unique nation closer to the model of the Latin American or Arab states ruled by the few.

That will get the government out of its obligation to protect consumers and preserve the environment, and will remove the direct federal role in health care, housing, gun control and aid to the poor.

It will restrict the personal liberties of ordinary people, with the war on terror providing the perfect rationale to ignore the Constitution, crack down on and dampen dissent against government edicts and actions.

The president is nominating only conservative federal judges who will allow such intrusions on personal liberty. Bush has installed as the 'gauleiter' of law enforcement rigidly right-wing Attorney General John Ashcroft to carry out the mission of control from the top.

Who's in Charge?

The neoconservatives clearly have their man in George W. Bush. No thought leader on his own, he has been captured by the neocons who surround him and who command his awe and respect based on their seniority, experience and understanding of the labyrinthine workings of government.

Don't expect the president or anyone close to him to confirm this grand scheme. The Bush administration's reputation for candor and 'the whole truth' is questionable. In a CBS 60 Minutes commentary last December, Andy Rooney branded this the 'most secretive administration in the history of this country, and it's a disgrace, I think.'

The grand scheme of the neocons, with the total and enthusiastic embrace of this president, envisions a very different America from what we have known and what its founders bequeathed to us. There is no way I can support or accept this grand scheme for remaking the America I know and love. How about you?" (Washington Spectator, September 1, 2003)