Columnist – John Sammon
I have to write a final column about George W. Bush because I suffered so much during his eight years in office, and I’ve written over that time perhaps twenty articles condemning him. I had to watch helplessly as he attempted to dismantle the Constitution.
I can’t believe I’m writing this. Finally. Finally. We’re getting rid of this little man.
How can you sum up an administration that was so god awful, that when it wasn’t wreaking havoc, was simply incompetent? When honest incompetence was the best you could possibly hope for?
An administration that wasn’t only inept, but pathologically unlucky.
Look at the goofy smile on Bush’s face when he recently posed with his wife Laura. Here is a man who mercifully for him, is divorced from reality to the point he’s free of moral reflection or conscience. Bush should smile. He has a lot to be proud of. During his watch, he inaugurated two wars that are both un-won, and presided over the worst collapse of the economy since 1929, bringing to a crushing end, shattering, the country’s long-running love affair with the Ronald Reagan conservative legacy.
Because of Bush, conservatives have been reduced almost to what they once were fifty years ago, and to what they do best, being outsiders, out of power, who sit back and find fault with a Democratic administration (Obama)..
Bush was as much a disaster to his own party as he was to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
He recently said he has some regrets, in a losing, parting attempt to appear humble. Nothing consequential. For example, he regrets he didn’t have more White House stationary, things like that. He regrets neither his trashing of America’s image in the world as a fair nation, nor of his abandonment of due process of law.
The list of his crimes and foul-ups could fill a book. But here is a tiny after-thought of some of the worst malfunctions that could take years to repair, unless the country realizes a leader as fair and skilled as Bush was not.
Abandonment of American Ideals — In the past, before Bush, America had done some bad things, fought illegal wars, killed people, plundered the economies of Third World nations, interfered in foreign governments, assassinated foreign heads of state we don’t like. But at the very least, we maintained, some of us, the ideal that legality and humanity were desirable traits. Under Bush, all pretenses were thrown to the wind, this time openly. Half the American people went along. Bush asked for the right to torture prisoners, and set up prison camps where the guilty and the not-guilty are held in limbo forever without trial or access to an attorney, the charges against them unproven.
Under Bush, America became a full-fledged terrorist state — It’s a small thing. But symbolic. Not once has the government acknowledged the number of Iraqi dead in the Iraq War, a war started by Bush lying that Iraq had doomsday weapons. They didn’t. It’s simple. No tally of Iraq civilians killed (the actual number is over a million dead) because their lives don’t matter. Bush didn’t come to the rescue in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina because the lives of the victims there didn’t matter either. But at least people complained about New Orleans and Bush took notice. After all, even though they were black, at least the Katrina victims were Americans.
An administration that is oblivious of the lives of people is a terrorist state.
Bush proved the fallibility of American democracy, that the system of checks and balances put in place by the Founding Fathers in an attempt to limit expanding the power of the presidency beyond that which is acceptable, is vulnerable.
The system is only as good as the people running it.
In effect, under Bush, we degenerated from the hope of the world, in the direction of becoming just another semi-constitutional police state.
If Bush teaches us anything, it’s that an unscrupulous, ruthless man, and like-minded henchmen and their attorneys, can override or undercut a system that is supposed to respect legality. Bush promoted, in addition to torture, illegal wire tap spying on American citizens. Half the American people, some of whom don’t understand their rights, or care, went along with this without complaint, under the delusion of being supposedly safer. They didn’t say peep.
The Patriot Act is unpatriotic.
The very fact Bush has to leave the White House is proof of a sort that the system still works. But he chipped away at it for all he was worth.
Bush was like Nixon in Watergate.
The difference is, he got away with it.
Copyright 2008 Sammonsays.
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‘Bushed’ — More Bush Delusions
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The Architect: Karl Rove and the Dream of Absolute Power
Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly: This bold follow-up to journalists Moore and Slater’s bestseller, Bush’s Brain, takes a provocative look at how Karl Rove used George Bush’s various campaigns To make their case, they draw on a wide range of materials, including interviews and reportage done by other journalists to demonstrate how Rove mobilized his party’s base, forging an unlikely alliance between religious and economic conservatives, while mounting targeted assaults on gays and lesbians, trial lawyers and labor unions. Yet in this narrative, his bid for a complete realignment of American politics begins to derail with the failure of Bush’s Social Security reform plan, the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, the failed nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and, most significantly, the implication of Rove in the leak of CIA employee Valerie Plame’s identity. In this damning but scattered account, Rove remains an elusive, almost inhuman figure, despite short digressions about his relationship with his gay stepfather and his weekly brunches with members of the White House and RNC teams during the reelection campaign. The result is a compulsive page-turner that’s bound to be divisive. (Sept. 12) From Booklist: Moore and Slater, authors of the best-selling Bush’s Brain(2003), take a scalpel to dissect that brain in this probing look at the personality and political strategizing of Karl Rove. They offer a portrait of a bright, cynical, and manipulative man bent on maintaining Republican political dominance for generations to come. Himself an agnostic, Rove has masterminded a strategy that has helped to broaden the Republican base beyond its pro-business, anti-government heritage to appeal to devout evangelicals. In a calculated effort to weaken the Democratic base, Rove has engineered plans to use the antiabortion stance to attract Catholics, the anti-gay stance to attract black churchgoers, and the pro-Israel stance to attract Jews. Moore and Slater trace Rove’s fingerprints on the Bush campaign for Texas governor, where he honed his skills at surreptitious campaigns to smear opponents, often with hints at their sexual orientation. The authors reveal that while gay bashing has figured prominently in Republican campaigns, many of their insiders are gay. Moore and Slater also detail Rove’s connections to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff as well as Rove’s involvement in the orchestration of the war in Iraq. The authors maintain that these tactics are all part of a scheme to maintain Republican dominance of all aspects of American government for the next 30 years. Riveting investigative journalism. Vanessa Bush |
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