Today, during the final weekend of the Bush Administration, let us pause a moment to consider what George W. Bush has actually accomplished. In a perverse way it is quite impressive.
1. George W. Bush has united America.
Just about all of us hate his guts. Most Americans have good reason to. Republicans will soon join us when they see the wreckage of all they held dear.
2. George W. Bush has shown America the face of evil.
Americans have always believed ourselves to be the good guys, because we said so. We have a very moral history. Bush showed the difference between saying "freedom" and acting in support of it. He is a caricature of our own worst selves, and we gradually came to understand how profoundly awful we can appear to others.
True evil really is banal. It is incurious. It is self-righteous. It is arrogant in its assumption that it is the opposite of what it appears. All this describes the 43rd President, and his Vice President. As we learned during the recent campaign it also describes his core supporters.
3. George W. Bush discredited a generation's political assumptions.
The Nixon Thesis of Conflict is now well and truly dead. George W. Bush did more than any Democrat could ever do to destroy it, and discredit it. The assumption of being surrounded was finally seen for the paranoia it was. The desire for domestic enemies was finally see for the bigotry and pettiness it was. Trickle-down economics was completely discredited, and the southern base of the party is finally seen to be the racist bunch it is.
4. George W. Bush showed that American power cannot be given, it must be taken by the people.
This is a very important lesson, one he has in common with our nation's greatest failures. Lyndon B. Johnson was given power through the Kennedy Assassination and used his mandate to go beyond where America was willing to go. Herbert Hoover practically inherited the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt from Coolidge, as James Buchanan had inherited the ghost of Jackson. When power comes to you, rather than your going to power, it's a danger signal. Remember that, always America.
George W. Bush was our worst President, but, perhaps, one of our most important. The lessons of this time will not be forgotten. They will be passed down from father to son, from mother to daughter.
Our nature has devils in it as well as angels — primogeniture, racism, class war, fear, arrogance, and ignorance. By being all these things Bush nearly destroyed the country and the world. He left it for us to pick up the pieces. Hopefully we will never see his like again.
Or at least, we'll know it when it approaches.
And his failures, which include his party’s attempt to nullify the most important parts of the Constitution — protection from government abuse — should be thoroughly documented, investigated, and prosecuted. Otherwise, the message sent is clear: become rich or better, a congressional politician, and you have lifetime immunity from everything from the law to economic accountability.
If the current Congress and prez-elect is too weak to do it, then let them meet for more than 100 days a year. Sure, the MSM will drone on and on about whether it’s necessary to investigate and prosecute Bush’s crimes, but then these are people who haven’t understood anything more complicated than Clinton’s penis in ten years. They’ve become too lazy to say or write “press conference” for something called presser, and “news conference” for something called newser. Seriously, do they think they’re going to run out of ink on the internet!