This is the summer of voter discontent

By MICHAEL GOODWIN

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Here’s one way for politicians to know they’ve hit rock bottom: Authors don’t want a book plug from them.

The unthinkable happened after President Bush, urging patience in Iraq, cited a historian who wrote about the doubts over whether Japan would become a democracy after World War II. Instead of being grateful for a reference that might spur sales, author John Dower blasted Bush for using his book in a “perverse” way.

So it goes in the Summer of Voters’ Discontent. Like cigarettes, politicians should be wearing warning labels. From Sen. Larry Craig’s Pottygate to Hillary Clinton’s fugitive financier, from Alberto Gonzales’ fadeaway to scares over the mortgage meltdown, voters are reacting with fear and loathing to a rising tide of sleaze, slime and incompetence.

Can’t say as I blame them. The people supposedly working for us often seem to be the problem. That last week also included the two-year anniversary of Katrina, the storm everybody saw coming except the government, added a painful reminder to the sense of gloom. As Casey Stengel asked about his hapless Mets, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

No, not to judge by recent events.

It’s a national phenomenon, fueled largely by frustration over Iraq and a poisonous partisanship in Washington, where the two parties take turns shooting themselves in the foot but can’t get anything useful done. Republicans went first last week, with Attorney General Gonzales starting by announcing he was, finally, resigning, even as perjury investigations continue. Then came the report that Craig, a conservative from Idaho, admitted he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct — playing footsie with an undercover cop in a Minneapolis airport rest room.

Democratic cesspool

But gleeful Democrats, proving again they can’t take yes for an answer, soon found themselves in a cesspool of their own. It started with a story in The Wall Street Journal about how a working-class family in the San Francisco area gave bundles of money to Dems around the country. As the Journal put it in a gem of understatement and mystery, “One of the biggest sources of political donations to Hillary Rodham Clinton is a tiny, lime-green bungalow that lies under the flight path from San Francisco International Airport. Six members of the Paw family, each listing the house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. as their residence, have donated a combined $45,000 to the Democratic senator. ... In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005.”

The article noted that the donations track those made by another mystery man, Norman Hsu, who was quickly outed as a fugitive in a grand theft case from California. Thanks to the warp speed of the Internet-driven, 24-hour news cycle, his suspect donations of some $600,000 turned up on the balance sheets of many Democrats in New York. City Controller Bill Thompson, Congressman Anthony Weiner and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, among others, reported getting money from Hsu. As with the Paws, where Hsu got the dough wasn’t clear, because nobody could find any source for his wealth.

We could, of course, blame the whole thing on Eliot Spitzer, who seems to be a magnet for scandals. Embroiled in the Troopergate dirty-tricks plot rocking Albany, Spitzer got at least $62,000 from Hsu.

And the rookie governor was a major player in the tragedy that took the lives of two firefighters at the Deutsche Bank building on the edge of Ground Zero. — That neither Spitzer nor Mayor Bloomberg paid any attention to the safety violations and suspect firms on the site before the tragedy speaks to a breakdown impossible to comprehend.

Six years after 9/11, we don’t have a memorial, but we still have derelict buildings claiming more lives. How’s that for good government?

The week ended with hopeful signs: Craig resigned, Dems scrambled to get rid of Hsu’s money as he turned himself in to authorities and Bush promised to help homeowners facing eviction in the mortgage mess.

Then again, Congress gets back to work this week and Iraq is on the agenda. The political forecast says there is no relief in sight.

X Michael Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.