CITIZEN DOCTOROW

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Citizen Doctorow
War place him at the head of the dark and threatening coalition
of faux Americans. He is, finally, the treacherous son
who dares to oppose the father. As far as Mr. Bush and his
backers are concerned, when the young people of this country
rejected the war in Vietnam, they gave up their generational
right of succession to primacy and power. They could
no longer be trusted. Neither could the democracy that
spawned them like an overly permissive parent ever again
be trusted. All the Presidents since Vietnam, from Nixon
to Bush, have been of the same World War II generation.
They will not be moved. The thrust of their government
has been, punitively, to teach us the error of our ways, to
put things back to the time when people stayed in their
place and owed their souls to the company store.
In June 1989 Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have
raised the minimum wage to $4.55 an hour over three
years. In October 1989 he vetoed a bill that included a
provision for the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortions
for poor women who were the victims of rape or
incest. In October 1990 he vetoed the Civil Rights Act
enacted by Congress to set aside Supreme Court rulings
that make it more difficult for women and minorities to
win employment discrimination suits. In October of the
next year he vetoed a bill extending benefits to people who
had exhausted their twenty-six weeks of unemployment