The Enfeebling

George W. Bush is the smallest President in the history of the United States. His tininess of character was settled once and for all with his final press conference yesterday, the last in a record few for any modern President. His entire sentiment was devoted to, of course, himself:

"In terms of the economy...look, I inherited a recession, I'm ending on a recession."

"Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake."

"You don't get to have information after you've made the decision, that's not the way it works."

"Not having weapons of mass destructive was a...significant disappointment."

"Why me? Oh the burdens and what not. Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch? It's just pathetic, isn't it. Self-pity."

This press conference is an historical document that will be studied throughout history, as fascinating as watching Richard Nixon for total human pathology. But unlike with Nixon, there's no real intellectual threat running under the procedings. It's just a freak show.

George Bush made very many bad decision, but the worst decision he made was his Vice Presidential choice. Richard Bruce Cheney may be the man most capable of running roughshod over the bureaucracy of democracy in modern U.S. history, but with this choice Bush essentially confined himself to the secondary role, not so much The Decider as The Approver. Like some fantasy notion of kings of yore, he believed that he did not have to worry about anything but the top-level choice itself, not how it might be carried out, not how the information brought to him by his ministers might be cooked, he was most certainly in charge but he didn't always have to be present.

In fact, better that he be less present -- less waking hours, less office hours, less working days. Less time answering questions from real journalists on the spot, less dialogue with the broader swathe of American people, less development of our foreign alliances. Less oversight over those who might rape our treasuries, less respect for the Constitution. Less concern about how his policies, both domestic and foreign, might affect the real lives of others. Less grammer.

Less popular.

Ultimately, less presence.

I've said before that the most damaging thing that the Cheney/Bush Administration did to America's perception by the world was that it showed the world our ass. By that I mean, it showed our limits, both moral (torture) and, simultaneously, militarily, completely shown up by the assymetrical war fought right after the Iraq War. Now countries know how to stop us. And if they get an A-bomb fast enough, they can stop us (Korea, now Iran?) before we even suit up.

Maybe Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove were the power, but at some level America is defined for four to eight years by its President. This feeble one enfeebled out country.

Thank goodness that the one coming in is sportin' a six-pack.