Bushed
My Mom used to say she was ''bushed" when she was exhausted. After eight years of George W., we are all bushed. Since Obama was elected, Bush has gone from lame duck to last year's turkey - no longer of any interest. His much belated attempt to publicly discuss his feelings about his occupation of the Presidency has generated about as much interest as the screen on a dead TV. Johnny Carson as Carnac used to hold up to his forehead what was announced as the last envelope, while the audience professed bemused relief. Your computer screen now holds the last Sense article about Bush during his usurpation of the Presidency, and we should all express profound relief.
Speaking of turkeys, I love the picture of the turkey and Bush. So do a lot of people - it is the number two hit on a Google image search for "Bush". Consider that if the turkey was named "Bush", the caption "Bush and Turkey" would work both ways.
More seriously, Frank Rich wrote an excellent column about the Bush Presidency a couple weeks ago, which contained this succinctly profound sentence: "The discrepancy between the grandeur of the failure and the stature of the man is a puzzlement." I highly recommend you read the column.
An early article I intended to write for Sense was literally on Presidential stature - the height of our Presidents. After the continuing debacles of the Bush Administration, the subject seems trivial, but this link to a list of US Presidents in order of descending height is still interesting to see.
One of my professed interests in the Bush exit is to see who he pardons. After he is gone and the information on pardons becomes known, I may write about that. Investigations into Bush Administration abuses may get some future play at Sense, but the attitude here toward Bush is going to be mostly "good riddance".
posted by Tom Blake | 9:04 AM
2 Comments:
Tom,
I agree we are all bushed by W's 8 terrible years. Frank Rich's column is profoundly sad to read. But for two reasons.
The first reason is the obvious condemnation of W's two terms. We are too close to it now, but we all have a hard time suggesting a more failed president. Consider LBJ. His failure was the Viet Nam war. But, unlike Bush, he did not start it. He just failed to end it. He is still remembered for successful domestic policies, so he is not the total failure that W is.
How about Nixon? He resigned to avoid impeachment. He was guilty only of burglary, a far cry from the murderous policies of Bush in Iraq and Cuba or of LBJ in Vietnam. He also has a good domestic legacy on enviromentalism and health care.
How about Clinton? Clinton's legacy was damaged by Monica, but what a tempest in a teapot! I wish Clinton would have admitted early on to sexual sins and told the country to get over it. As it turned out, Clinton did not hurt anyone. Monica and Hillary are doing fine and he is having a ball now. He did hurt the presidency while he was in office, but that is small potatos compared to what Bush has done.
We could consider other failed presidencies: John Quincy Adams, Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Cartert, but none of them come close to the failure of George W Bush.
Now, the second reason Frank Rich's column is sad. He blames the whole debacle on Bush. What about Hillary's vote in support? I'm not picking on Hillary. Obama was probably lucky he did not support Bush. Most of the country was behind Bush. Entrenched politicians like Hillary would not stand up to him. Bush led a failure of the whole country. Tom, only you and I stood against the Irag war. That's an exageration. But those of us who stood against the war were politically nameless people.
The fact is that the country as a whole failed. Each of us individually was responsible for Bush's failed policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only a few spoke against the Iraq war until it's failure became obvious. Politicians, the media, and special interest groups failed to alert the public to the debacle.
On another subject, I do not blame W for the tanking of the economy. I blame Congress and former Congresses for oversight failure. W was only repeating Ronald Reagan's mantra that government is the problem. We have recently been reminded that removal of reviews and controls will allow criminals to corrupt financial markets. Only they really aren't criminals because Congress did not pass laws tight enough to catch them. Free market ideologues have prevailed also allowing criminals to control the financial markets.
Will Obama fix this? If we are lucky, he will fix 10% of the problem.
John from Phoenix
John, we agree on the fundamental that Bush is the worst. But again I have a harsher take than you on Nixon. He was guilty of more than burglary. The Wikipedia article on Watergate reminds us of the scope of the wrongs Nixon authorized and tried to cover up. He also lied to the American people about having a plan to end the War, and then after elected, he proceeded to escalate and expand it. I previously responded here about Nixon and environmentalism. I don't know what you think he did to improve the health care system.
LBJ not only carried on in Vietnam, like Nixon he greatly escalated it. I am just finishing reading "Taking Charge", the transcriptions of the LBJ tapes for the first year or so after he became President, and it is clear LBJ knew Vietnam was going to be a losing proposition, but he could not figure out how to get us out without losing political points at home. Democrats like Hillary, who voted to give war authorization to Bush, did so for political reasons, though they may have envisioned some kind of "victory" in Iraq, unlike the result in Vietnam.
Post-Vietnam Democrat politicians, like Obama, and now maybe the majority of Americans, do not have as much difficulty opposing foolish military excursions. Obama is lucky he came on at the right time, and so are we. I think the majority of Americans, including many who voted for Bush, now realize that we should not be rushed into unnecessary wars, that unregulated markets do not work as well as wisely regulated ones, and that the protections of our Constitution are actually a fundamental part of what this country stands for.
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