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No More Bush to Kick Around
NO MORE BUSH TO KICK AROUND....James Fallows on the Bush press conference earlier today:
I think even people who oppose the Bush Administrations policies would find it somewhat harder to dislike him viscerally after this performance — rather than getting angrier the more they see him, as with most of his appearances over these last eight years....Everything in his posture, expression, and body language — even his emphasis on the word defeat in talking about the 2008 results — indicated that he has taken in the fact that things have not gone well.
I haven't yet watched the press conference myself, so all I can say is: I sure hope Fallows is wrong. It's human nature, of course, for anger over a botched job to recede with time, and perhaps it's also true that anger naturally morphs into other, more complex emotions anyway. How many people today are really angry at Herbert Hoover?
Still, I sure hope that the public doesn't forgive Bush for a very, very long time. To this day I don't understand how such a manifestly unqualified candidate got either nominated or elected in the first place, and the damage this man-child has done to the country during his eight years in office is hard to even put into words. If Barack Obama is lucky, he might — might — by 2016 be able to get us back to where we were in 2000. The last eight years have taken us backward by almost every metric that matters, and as he heads off to Texas, hopefully never to be heard from again, Bush will go down in history as one of the very few presidents to have left the country in demonstrably worse shape than when he got it. It's an elite group indeed.
Now it can be told: The Bush II administration came to fruition as the result of a sinister secret program that stretches back to the 1930s. But it's not what you think.
Bush W is actually the victim of a nefarious brainwashing program that began in his childhood ? a quid quod pro of Faustian dimensions that resulted in fantastic wealth for the Bush family in exchange for their first born. The indoctrination intensified during Junior's carefree days at Yale (Skull and Bones) and proceeded apace during his "service" in the Texas National Guard -- those "undocumented" years. It was brought to completion by a circle of faux evangelists just before Bush was elected Governor of Texas.
As a result of decades of mental reconstruction: GWB, the poor thing, was truly "born again" and ready to be made President. In our time, the lead operatives of this project were Karen Hughes (code name: The Amazon) and Karl Rove (code name: The Embryo).
In short, the whole Bush Presidency was a diabolical left wing conspiracy (hatched up by the FDR brain trust) -- the object of which was to create a future Republican fuck-up whose incompetence would be so profound, whose idiocy so uncontestable, who wreckage to the nation so patent and complete, that the backlash from his administration would result in a near socialist state (even, they chaffed, the possible election of a "Negro" ? an outcome of which progressive action alone could not have achieved in another two hundred years.
The forces of good owe Bush a perverse debt of gratitude as the a first elected Manchurian Candidate.
It's an interesting question whether Bush was in fact a big success for his particular constituency. Hasn't the Republican party since Reagan been mostly about one thing ? big tax cuts for the rich? On that score, Bush was a success and the "financial crisis" we're in now seems to be mostly a result of really rich people at the top of financial companies running off with the store while the cops weren't looking. Another success for the Republicans.
So from the perspective of those who funded his campaigns, Bush has to look pretty successful. Bad for the country overall, sure, but good for the people who put him there. You can bet Bush has a nice future in store giving pricey speeches at country clubs.
And if it worked for them before they'll try it again, as soon as memories fade...
I heard a bit of the conference on the radio, and it occurred to me that Bush is just indicative of the problem with Republicans in general. The core of Republican party is rotten. McCain proved no better than Bush once he became the leader...
Fallows is likely to be proven wrong. I think Bush is a loathsome, contemptible idiot whose very appearance is enough to make me want to vomit. And, while I don't think my reaction is typical, I don't think it's exactly unique.
Does Dubya seem to be slurring his words? He really appears to be borderline drunk on second and third viewing... especially after the 30 second mark and well into the Q & A.
Ode to the departing Bush
Let a thousand shoes be tossed,
May the vapors of hell sting his nostrils,
Let Texans rise in anger and push him into the sea
May a thousand blossoms bloom from the spot where he vanished!
I'm still pissed at Reagan.
Tho, I can't say I'm as pissed at Hoover... At least he built something with his time. What'd Bush Jr do? He destabilized the middle east.
Not really a great legacy.
Kevin is being grossly unfair to Hoover. Hoover was a decent man who made many mistakes. Bush is a mean-spirited creep who advanced only his own political goals.
Kevin owes Hoover an apology.
Kevin pondered: "To this day I don't understand how such a manifestly unqualified candidate got either nominated or elected in the first place ..."
There's a straightforward, one word answer: crime.
Bush was never "elected".
Both the 2000 and the 2004 elections were blatantly stolen with massive voter disenfranchisement, intimidation and fraud in Florida and Ohio respectively. And in the case of the 2000 election which put Bush in power, the theft actually failed, and the Cheney-Bush crime cartel had to turn to a bunch of corrupt, partisan Republican hacks on the Supreme Court to violate their oaths of office and install Bush in the White House.
Kevin says "I sure hope that the public doesn't forgive Bush for a very, very long time."
I would hope that the public would not forget that Bush came to power through a stolen election -- a monstrous, treasonous crime against the republic -- for a very, very long time. Like, never.
However, it would seem that "sensible liberal" bloggers are just as inclined as the corporate-owned media to help the public forget this basic fact.
For me, that last Q & A sums up all I need to know about GWB. To wit: Either the desire to deceive and/or the unwillingness to know.
Q = You arrived here wanting to be a uniter, not a divider. Do you think Barack Obama can be a uniter, not a divider, or is -- with the challenges for any president and the unpopular decisions, is it impossible for any president to be a uniter, not a divider?
A = I am disappointed by the tone in Washington, D.C. I've -- I try to do my part by not engaging in the name-calling and -- and by the way, needless name-calling. I have worked to be respectful of my opponents on different issues.
...
Fallows is just being thick.
Fallows sympathy for Bush is just another example of how we no longer have the will to enforce any standards of behavior on our elite.
Mike
Not only can I not forgive him, I can't forgive Americans who voted for him twice.
I can forgive Americans who voted for him only in 2000.
His friends say he's a nice guy, but I just see a petty, mean-spirited little bully.
I, for one, still want to retch when I see that miserable little toad.
Was Commander Codpiece Stunningly Stupid or Cleverly Evil? I believe that question will be debated down through history and will never be satisfactorily answered. Was he used like a roll of Charmin by Cheney or did he knowingly set out to discredit government and surrender the American economy to lawless piracy? Was he manipulated like the organ of a passed out drunk, or did he deliberately anally rape all non-millionaire Americans and their environment?
That question will be his legacy. It will never be satisfactorily answered. Mysteries are always more interesting than settled facts. It's already a settled fact that he leaves the country much worse off than when he came to office. The only thing we don't know is whether he meant to.
SecularAnimist and cowalker nail it.
Bush Handlers, Inc. = mob crime.
Wake up folks, that deep pain you feel is your anal orifice after 8 years of abuse with a nail filled broom stick.
Seriously, you people are very, very dense.
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats." - H. L. Mencken
He's an ass.
I think Bush is an arrogant narcissistic idiot. I blame the Republican party for allowing this guy (and Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin to follow) for elevating arrogant narcissistic idiots to such a level of importance.
Bush isn't the problem as much as Republican ideas and impulses are.
But thinking about what he's done to this country, I find Bush revolting.
Hating Bush gives him too much credit as having been in charge of what happened during his administration.
He was a figurehead, selected by Rove (not the other way around) because he looked like a regular guy and could get elected. Then Cheney and his people took over. Bush went along for the ride never questioning his "team".
Better to ask questions about where democracy is going in the age of television than to focus on GWB as the source of all the evil that was committed in his name.
If you're going to watch any of it start at 26:30 and listen to the question from Mike. Bush basically admits to ordering detainees tortured in the pursuit of 'connecting the dots.'
'What i would worry about is the constitution of the united states and putting plans in place that makes it easier to find out what the enemy is thinking.'
'We started putting policy in place, legal policy in place, to connect the dots and all of a sudden people are saying "How come you're connecting the dots?"'
I need to go throw up.
On a serious note, I don't think Americans need to be angry, bitter, etc. What we need as a society is to ACTUALLY LEARN from this dreadful experience. Electing a bona fide regular guy was a bad idea. Say what you want about Bush 41, he knows policy and he has at least SOME intellectual firepower, which is something Bush 43 seems to lack in the worst way.
One thing that Clinton noted is that he thinks one of the keys to being a good/great modern day president is intellectual curiosity. Time and again Bush demonstrated that he doesn't give a crap about stuff that doesn't interest him.
Bringing it full circle, let us an American people never again allow a dimwitted person who lacks intellectual curiosity and promotes opaque and shortsighted policies into that once-great office. Simply put, let's be pragmatists, not idealogues.
First, take a deep breath and a stiff drink. Now draw up a list of Bush's major initiatives and count how many of them Obama is planning to keep. We'll start with domestic policy: tax cuts (at least some of them), no child left behind (yes, in some form), Medicare presecription benefit (yes.) Now foreign policy: war in Afganistan (yup), war in Iraq (it will be ended but largely on terms that Bush himself signed off on. And if you think of Bush's main initiative as being heavy military involvement in the Middle East, it looks quite solid). Now for security policy: domestic spying (absolutely, given the bill that passed Congress). So the only big changes I can come up with are in extraordinary rendition and torture (but keep a close eye to make sure that we don't just outsource it back to our allies). And finally global warming, where we will presumably do something. When you quantify it that way, you see that Bush's legacy is actually pretty solid - which will probably lead to a re-evaluation once his personal unpopularity is forgotten. After all, that's pretty much what has happened to Nixon over the last decade.
Sure, I get caught in a snow storm and I'm pwned by my peers. Argh!
I'll repeat what I said earlier - Bush is a dry drunk. If you have been lucky enough to have never seen one so far in your life, well, take a look, there one is, a text book case.
He can't identify his emotions, so he puts on the fake labels that have been handed to him such as "disappointment."
The guy just ain't sincere and most people smell it a mile away. The worst part is that, like many drunks, he believes his own lies. To have any hope of getting better he'd have to admit to himself all his failures and he won't do that. He thinks he can't do that but the truth is that he can do it. He chooses not to do it. That is what the recovery from alcohol is all about. That is the twelve steps to sobriety.
Years from now we will understand the complexity of the neural network that is the human mind and we'll know exactly what is going on in his brain.
Until then we are stuck with the wisdom of the ages and use words like drunk and dry drunk and alcoholism and character.
What do you mean "forgive?" He's a war criminal with the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents, you know, human beings with as much right to live as you or I, on his hands. Let's burn him in hell for a thousand years, and then we can discuss "forgiveness."
I couldn't listen - I got mad at him saying "we are facing an enemy that is ...". He is so narrow minded that he hasn't noticed we have many enemies, and they don't all act the same, or have the same motivations.
It's the whole Axis of Evil thing, where everybody opposing us is Evil, and being Evil is the only thing about them that matters.
Time will not lessen the utter contempt and boundless embarrassment that Bush brings out in me every time I see/hear him speak publicly.
And at no time would I have ever had a beer with him.
"How many people today are really angry at Herbert Hoover?"
I don't really know but I do know that thanks to Amity Shlaes and assorted nutjobs there are people whith fresh and deep-seated anger at FDR.
So I guess the answer is it depends on how good the anti-Hoover propaganda is.
JimB, I agree with your analysis -- except for one thing: By far the most important thing Bush did was to invade Iraq. Approaches to getting out of Iraq don't count -- once you've made a mess, you do have to clean it up a bit. But the decision to invade has no parallel in the new administration (not yet anyway), and it alone is sufficient to damn Bush's administration IMO.
To this day I don't understand how such a manifestly unqualified candidate got either nominated or elected in the first place...
Bush's capturing the White House had nothing to do with criminal activity. If you're serious about using the word "steal" doesn't it follow that the Democrats would have been justified in getting the military to back up a counterclaim to bar Bush from taking office?
In America, controversies get decided by courts, and in 2000 the GOP had a more sympathetic court than the Democrats did.
The real reason this manifestly unqualified man become president was our non-parliamentary system. In a Westminster-style polity, Bush would never have become his party's leader in the legislature, because you have to exhibit a basic level of intelligence and competence -- over a number of years -- to do so. The American system is uniquely vulnerable to the siren call of the little-known heroic figure riding in on a white horse.
Vas und relief! Never again need worry about reading Fallows who was rather a clod any way.
To this day I don't understand how such a manifestly unqualified candidate got either nominated or elected in the first place, and the damage this man-child has done to the country during his eight years in office is hard to even put into words.
Exactly, but if the country had really learned anything, the last election wouldn't have even been as close as it was.
At least Hoover made a decent vacuum cleaner.
The American system is uniquely vulnerable to the siren call of the little-known heroic figure riding in on a white horse.
Exactly. The only thing I would add is that the Republican Party has realized this and is actively taking advantage of it and cultivating such figures (Reagan, Bush, Shwarzenegger, Palin -- and, in supporting roles, people like Joe the Plumber).
My mother still felt anger, actually more contempt, for Hoover when she died last year. Guess there can't be too many others left.
Rest her soul, we need the late Molly Ivans to sum up this article on the little.........from Texas. Much less be on third base thinking he hit a home run, he shouldn't of been in the ball game in the first place
Jasper wrote: "Bush's capturing the White House had nothing to do with criminal activity."
Wrong. In 2000, Florida governor Jeb Bush and Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris engaged in a criminal conspiracy to deliberately, fraudulently, disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible voters -- who were overwhelmingly African-Americans and overwhelmingly Democrats -- by falsely identifying them as "felons" and having them purged from the voter rolls as ineligible to vote.
This was a crime. It was not quite enough, though -- as subsequent independent reviews of the Florida vote proved, even with tens of thousands of eligible Democratic voters prevented from voting, if every legally cast ballot was counted in accordance with long-established Florida election law, Al Gore still won.
That's why the Bush machine had to turn to the courts to prevent all the votes from being counted.
Jasper wrote: "In America, controversies get decided by courts, and in 2000 the GOP had a more sympathetic court than the Democrats did."
Wrong again. The GOP did not have a "sympathetic court". They had a group of corrupt, partisan Republican hacks on the US Supreme Court who were willing to egregiously, sneeringly violate their oaths of office to prevent the legally cast ballots of the people of Florida from being counted and install Bush in the White House. This was also a crime.
Of course, since the gangsters and thugs of the organized crime operation known as "the Republican Party" controlled both the Supreme Court and the US Justice Department, neither of these heinous crimes against the American people and the US Constitution were prosecuted.
But they were, and are, crimes nonetheless. And Bush would not have become President without these criminal acts.
To this day I don't understand how such a manifestly unqualified candidate got either nominated or elected in the first place....
That's not a very nice thing to say about Mr. Obama.
When people tell me Bush is the worst president ever I actually end up defending the guy... I mean, "worst" is a superlative, so you have to think it through and you realize Buchanan, Pierce and Harding set the bar pretty high.
But worst president to serve more than one term? No one else even comes close.
The man buried in Grant's tomb can rest easy, he just moved up a notch.
Brian! Maybe you was misunderestimated too.
I don't think it's possible to recover financially from Bush in eight years, the math just doesn't work. Note that we have not even recovered from Reagan's huge deficits. That's one reason I became an active Democrat, to fight back on behalf of future generations.
"How many people today are really angry at Herbert Hoover?"
Very few. Why? Not just because Hoover left office in March, 1933. It's also true that Hoover continued being a concientious public servant after that: his retirement went some way to rehabilitating him. Offhand, I recall him being involved in government reorganization after 1945, and spearheading the hunger relief in Europe as well. He also helped get Presidential pensions passed by Congress (to help out Truman, who had nothing to fall back on after leaving the White House).
Does anyone really think George W. Bush will (or can) do ANYTHING positive with his retirement? Anything to rehabilitate his reputation? Of course he won't. He hasn't the slightest idea how.
Now it can be told: The Bush II administration came to fruition as the result of a sinister secret program that stretches back to the 1930s. But it's not what you think.
Bush W is actually the victim of a nefarious brainwashing program that began in his childhood a quid quod pro of Faustian dimensions that resulted in fantastic wealth for the Bush family in exchange for their first born. The indoctrination intensified during Junior's carefree days at Yale (Skull and Bones) and proceeded apace during his "service" in the Texas National Guard -- those "undocumented" years. It was brought to completion by a circle of faux evangelists just before Bush was elected Governor of Texas.
As a result of decades of mental reconstruction: GWB, the poor thing, was truly "born again" and ready to be made President. In our time, the lead operatives of this project were Karen Hughes (code name: The Amazon) and Karl Rove (code name: The Embryo).
In short, the whole Bush Presidency was a diabolical left wing conspiracy (hatched up by the FDR brain trust) -- the object of which was to create a future Republican fuck-up whose incompetence would be so profound, whose idiocy so uncontestable, who wreckage to the nation so patent and complete, that the backlash from his administration would result in a near socialist state (even, they chaffed, the possible election of a "Negro" an outcome of which progressive action alone could not have achieved in another two hundred years.
The forces of good owe Bush a perverse debt of gratitude as the a first elected Manchurian Candidate.
Watching it now on PBS, the idea that he somehow seems contrite or to have even realized in a meaningful way the significance of the fact that things haven't gone well seems to be a fantasy to me. The man is spending most of his time talking about how he doesn't care about being popular, as if somehow that is ultimately what's wrong.
Seriously, you people are very, very dense.
Posted by: daCascadian on 01/12/09
Yes, but at least we were educated by the bestest educational system in the world and we're informed daily by the bestest news people in the wholest world.
C'mon, get with the program.
Scrolling down the comments, I noticed one other person who noted that Bush appeared somewhat inebriated. His cheeks were flushed, he didn't appear to control his composure, and he was being defensive with the press. Of course, he's almost done and doesn't really have to control his composure as he's not running for re-election.
And I have to agree with JimB above. Obama already went back on one of his promises (ending Bush's tax cuts even though we need that money from the rich people) and closing Gitmo may turn out to be nothing but a gesture if they don't close down the CIA's rendition network. I'm not holding my breath with regards to Obama's administration. I mean come on, one minute he's promising 2.5 million jobs now he's promising 4 million. Jeebus!
I watched the presser because I ALWAYS watched Bush's pressers.
I have a great longing to watch him finally blow up completely and totally melt down and I can say that I saw it "live".
Well, we've reached the end of eight years and he never did fulfill one of my fondest hopes.
He was totally without any remorse - or for that matter, comprehension - of the enormous mess he has made of our once-great country. Whether he's a "dry-drunk" or just psychotic, he just doesn't begin to understand ANYTHING.
We have eight wasted years behind us...
Fallows has been in China too long.
The Bush Legacy... Iraq! And 8-years of lies, incompetence and corruption! Worst president, Ever! Worst presidential administration, EVER!
"To this day I don't understand how such a manifestly unqualified candidate got either nominated or elected in the first place"
Really? I mean...really? It's as simple as two little words. Bill. Clinton.
He spent most of his Presidency undercutting his own party and ripping out its ideological heart. He made an awful lot of Democrats feel disgusted with themselves for supporting him. And because he got away with it, he left a lot of people with a desire to repudiate him in the only meaningful way they could.
Disagree with the reasons folks voted for Bush and why the poltical establishment bent over for him in 2000, but don't be willfully ignorant about why it all happened.
Mike
I'll not forgive him for a very long time, or until he apologizes and admits his many grave errors... which is two ways of saying the same thing.
I just wish he could realize how terrible he has been as President. I want him to lie awake at night for the rest of his life in horror at what he did to this country. I don't agree with Fallows - he still just doesn't get it, is still smirking and joking.