Bush Administration's Greatest Hits

It is that time of year when columnists, pundits, movie critics and even bloggers tend to write "Best" lists for the preceding 12 months.  This particular New Year's Eve we stand at the juncture of a truly great event, the End of the Bush Era in American Life.  Perhaps then it is fitting to reflect on some of the singular accomplishments of the Bushian National Nightmare not only of this past year, but of the preceding seven as well.

1.  The Complete Absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq:  We all have our personal favorites, I'm sure, but for me this event, this occurrence, this unbelievable fact, represents Bush's Sistine Chapel Ceiling.  I consider it the single greatest error ever made by any President of the United States in the history of the Republic.  It is difficult to get one's mind around it because you blow your own mind in the process.  Regardless of latter-day historical revisionism, the fact remains that the main, the chief, the only rationale for invading Iraq was that it constituted an act of preemptive self-defense (surely very controversial even at that) against a "clear, present and gathering danger" to the security of the USA.  Not a single cannister of nerve gas, nor a single vial of anthrax, nor a gram of weapons-grade uranium has ever been found within the borders of Iraq despite our virtual ownership of the country for the past six years.  This colossal blunder, this incomparable error in judgment, constituted the basis on which we committed the military forces of the United States with consequences which have been detailed on this blog and everywhere else for numerous years.

2.  Hurricane Katrina:  The range of Bush's incompetence is perhaps his defining characteristic.  While the American public watched the city of New Orleans drown on national television, Bush, FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security remained unaware that there was any sort of problem there. Bush breathed a sigh of relief and remarked that we "had dodged a bullet."  

3.  The Reintroduction of Torture by a Modern Twenty-First Century Democracy:  This is another of Bush's signature accomplishments.  As with Iraq & Katrina, I think it will take years, perhaps a decade, before the enormity of what Bush has done in this field can be truly evaluated and placed in context. Bush specifically approved the use of waterboarding, a form of torture devised during the Spanish Inquisition and prosecuted by the United States against the Japanese as a war crime following World War II.

4.  The Establishment of a Concentration Camp in Guantanamo: As the stories leak out, it becomes increasingly apparent that Bush, with the aiding & abetting of his consigliere Alberto Gonzales, created a legal black hole in Cuba where hundreds of innocent men who had nothing to do with a "war on terror" were incarcerated in cages and denied, for years on end, any form of challenge to the legality of their detention.

5.  The Obstruction of International Efforts to Deal with Global Warming and Ocean Acidification:  Perhaps in no other arena have Bush's innate anti-social tendencies wreaked greater havoc, and with such ominous long-term consequences, than in his obdurate, non-scientific, malicious interference with the international consensus that drastic and immediate responses are needed to deal with climate change.  He has sided with the yahoo, know-nothing idiots who have watched passively as the accelerating effects of climate change (which have tended, in nearly every instance, to be worse than the long-range predictions of the IPCC) have engulfed the world.

These are highlights, but of course any summary of Bush must be truncated to avoid rewriting something approaching the combined length of War & Peace and Moby Dick.  Historians will have to figure Bush out in the fullness of time.  One question that always perplexed me: what was Bush for?  It doesn't suffice to say he was for a "strong America," because he ignored the clear warning signals preceding the attacks of 9-11.  He wrecked the military by overusing it in unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He destroyed the nation's economy through a reckless and stupid regime of "deregulation."  He leaves behind a trillion dollar annual budget deficit for the US government, reeling safety net and health programs, and the essential bankruptcy of all 50 states.  Had he actually designed administration policy with the specific intent of damaging the safety and common welfare of the American citizenry, it is difficult to see how he could have surpassed his actual record of destruction.  75% of the American population disapprove of his presidency and are "anxious" for him to leave office.  The other 25%, of course, are clinically insane.  

So one must look out upon this vast landscape of destruction and conclude, as perplexing as the conclusion might seem, that this is actually what Bush wanted.  He wanted to wreck the country and found the best (which is to say: worst) people he could hire to help him do it.  As Sherlock Holmes instructed, in deducing the truth one must eliminate all possibilities until one is left with a single explanation that fits the facts.  And that explanation, however unlikely it might have seemed at the outset, must be the truth.

Bush in Retrospect

I try, not always with 100% success, to be a scrupulously honest man when it comes to matters of the intellect (with respect to all other forms of integrity, I concur with those who believe that when a man tells you he is completely honest about everything, immediately feel for your wallet). So when I watched President Bush yesterday at one of his rare press conferences, I had to admit that the man has made strides since his early days as chief executive. True, his eyes still dart about the room, he hunches his shoulders and stares at the podium, he mangles words with the same alacrity as ever, but his diction and even his candor seem to have improved with the passing years. He used the word "conflate" correctly, as one example. I forget the context, but he nailed it.

President Bush even makes sense if you disregard (a) all previous history of what he's talking about and (b) reality. His discussion of the energy crisis yesterday is a good example. To hear him talk, you would be hard put to identify the person who has been president for the last 7.5 years. Apparently, he "warned" us about the coming problem with gasoline and his administration has been "working hard" on alternative fuels because they've always known the remaining fossil fuels (he even used the word "hydrocarbons") are simply a transitional energy source till we get to the next paradigm (he did not use "paradigm;" let us not hope for too much too soon).

It's funny, but I don't remember President Bush, in the period between 2001 and late 2006, when the Republicans owned the government, pushing hard for higher CAFE standards for American auto manufacturers. Or seeking a repeal of the gas-guzzler tax breaks which insanely rewarded purchasers of truck-sized SUVs with accelerated depreciation while enacting enhanced tax credits for high-mpg cars. Or proposing revitalization of America's 177,000 miles of railroad right-of-way (ROW) by proposing mass electrification of freight and passenger lines powered by alternative energy. Man, imagine that! Exciting, huh? What you can do, see, is double up on the ROW (avoiding delays and freight-passenger conflict, as we have now) and then use the corridors themselves for electrical transmission lines, all powered by vast solar arrays and wind energy where conditions are favorable. We don't need to move to high speed rail right away, not yet, just inject lots of money into the rail system, which is so frigging energy-efficient. Creating millions of jobs, tons of high-tech work, transformative research.

Instead of, you know, doing what you did, Bush, and starving Amtrak from the very first days of your administration. Refusing to give it $2 billion as its new CEO requested in order just to bring passenger service up to First World standards. Nah, you'd rather spend ten or twelve billion a month in Iraq. In Iraq. So when Barack Obama gave that speech yesterday right after you finished and talked about the squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars on an unnecessary war against a country with no connection to terrorism, with no connection to any American interest whatsoever except our squandered effort to grab those hydrocarbons you're now so dismissive of -- well, you see -- you got spanked. Because there's no real answer to what Barack is saying, not if you're intellectually honest, too.

History did not actually start yesterday. The President attempts to avoid all blame for the country's predicament by pretending that his very first responsibility as President, the ordering of national priorities, is not in his job description. It doesn't work that way. In modern times, I do not expect a president, any president, actually to be versed in the arcane and sophisticated detail of every scientific, legal and economic discipline which is involved in making decisions. That's impossible and probably not even desirable. But a president does have the responsibility to figure out which few of the thousands of things the government might do with the limited resources at its disposal are actually in the national interest, and to make decisions accordingly. It does not satisfy the criteria of effective job performance to become bogged down in a marginal project somewhere in the Middle East and to spend all your money, and all your time and attention, on this one dumb idea, mainly for the purpose of vindicating yourself politically (while young men die), and to obstinately refuse to admit that it isn't worth it, that it's a mistake, that it's a classic tar baby of throwing more and more good money after bad, and that the country is suffering hugely as a result of this misallocation and colossal misjudgment.

That is Bush's legacy, and it is way too late to change it. My true sense about him is that he allowed his presidency to be hijacked by a group of dedicated ideologues, led by Dick Cheney, who are fundamentally uninterested in what you might call everyday American life. Behind every scandal plaguing the Bush years, you will find them lurking - illegal spying, torture, Valerie Plame, destroyed e-mails, defiance of Congressional subpoenas, and war, war and more war. For all his bluster and feigned overconfidence, I think Bush is a very insecure and fundamentally weak man who allowed a cynical and ruthless cabal bent on military adventures and arrogation of power to achieve a coup d'etat, and it is his weakness that has been our undoing, and his own.