Buh-Bye Continued

I may run out of material, or I may continue to devote nightly blog posts for the next week to saying goodbye to all that. And by all that I mean, George W. Bush, Richard Bruce Cheney, and Republicanism.

Here's the opening paragraph from Jim Kunstler's "Farewell GWB" post:

A prankish fate put George W. Bush in the oval office to keep America stupid. The nation was far from ready to see where it was going in the 21st century, and he was just the figure to keep it that way, with his void of curiosity, his allergy to reading, and his panderings to wealth-worshipping, Ponzi-loving, science-hating Jesus cultists. He goes out of office broadly regarded as an object of horror and loathing while the nation, now facing wholesale bankruptcy, struggles to imagine a plausible future, like someone who has just awakened from a cheap red wine drunk into the grip of a vicious hangover.

Kunstler goes on to indict the entire nation for our own massive self-delusion, positing that Bush/Cheney didn't trick the country into the Iraq War, we tricked ourselves.

As for his own legacy efforts, the Administration is right on top of it:

The White House Web site features an extensive recitation of Mr. Bush’s “highlights and accomplishments,” including a document titled “100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration Record.” (First on the list: “Kept America Safe.”)

I take issue with that first claim, of course, since it was the Bush/Cheney policy to do the opposite of whatever President Bill Clinton had done, including ignoring Richard Clarke and anybody not of their partisanship telling them about the threat that was 9/11. The proof of their having kept America far from same is the infamous skipping of the "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." memo. That supposed National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice kept her job after that is one for the ages.

Also from the NY Times article quoted above, on all the legacy talk by El Presidente and crew:

“They’re working hard to build their historical reputations,” said the presidential historian Robert Dallek. “Generally, presidents don’t spend the last days and weeks in office defending their record. They produce a memoir, they write a volume.

“To spend your waking hours on a defense of yourself speaks volumes about how, in a sense, defeated they’ve been.”

And, somehow, being in this particular White House might not be the same resume builder as with other administrations:

“Working on the White House staff is an honor and will always look good on a résumé,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist, who said several Bush officials had sought his career advice. “It just doesn’t look that good right now.”

Since the causes of this horrific job market can arguably be laid at the feet of this Administration and the ideology that drove it, one might call it poetic justice.

Just for the record, here's David Letterman's Top Ten George Bush moments, with #4 always my favorite, the defining moment of eight years of tragic misrule:




Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

On second thought, let it.