A Comedy of Tragic Proportions

So, I watched President Bush's primetime address a few nights ago. For the first time in my life, I witnessed a U.S. President present his solution to a national crisis in a manner of complete futility. Undoubtedly, the economic crisis facing the U.S. is a serious subject, but the fact that the President lacks any form of credibility or power to connect with Americans is a sad reflection of the past eight years. I don't want to talk about the financial situation, I'll just get angry and rant about some half-baked plan to deport corporate executives and seize their assets in the name of Truth, Justice and Apple Pie. The tragedy of the Bush Presidency is the topic du jour.


Hmm, no flagpin on the left, COMMUNO-FASCIST!!! Ok, official White House portrait photoshoppers are good, but he looks worse in reality after 8 years...

Defining moment of the Bush Presidency: 9/11/2001 (duh)

Nothing significant was supposed to come out of the Bush Presidency. All signs pointed towards him joining the legions of Presidents that enjoyed relatively quiet terms. Furthermore, his 2000 campaign was constructed around applying "compassionate conservativism" to the economic and diplomatic accomplishments of the previous three White House occupants.

"If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that."

Hard to believe that George Bush actually said that. I call that prophetic rhetoric. So, Bush got a curveball tossed at him; past Presidents have dealt with worse under more dire conditions. In my opinion, President Bush's biggest failure was the appointment of his cabinet (with the exception of Colin Powell). Numerous members of the cabinet took advantage of the aftermath of 9/11 to implement some personal pet projects ranging from surveillance programs to vast military restructuring to a resolution of the Iraq Liberation Act.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001 drastically altered the direction of his Presidency. The following seven years would be defined by war, the Patriot Act, Neanderthal diplomacy (a great cultural term, but it turns anthropologists' hair gray) and a tax cut n' spend budgetary policy. By the halfway point of Bush's second term, his credibility was shot as well as any chance of establishing a legacy apart from aforementioned accomplishments (immigration, healthcare, social security, and the latest crisis all lost causes).

I personally hate it when I hear about the pre-ordained judgement of George W. Bush's historical legacy. It is, in my opinion, a misuse of the power of historical judgement. Decades of perspective are required to properly judge a leader's historical impact. We can, however, gleans two things from the Bush Presidency. First, he is very unlikely to be counted among the greatest U.S. Presidents (Lincoln, FDR, JFK, etc.). He will probably end up in that strange historical Limbo of Nixon, Wilson, and Truman. The second and perhaps the most unfortunate result of the past seven years has been the destruction of the conservative party platform (it's all cyclical anyway, Repubs are on the downswing).

Update:

I know I promised to avoid the issue, but today's nonsense in the Congress is simply unbelievable. The details of the deal were in place and, as of Sunday, agreed upon in a bipartisan fashion. America is completely handicapped by partisan squabbles. Democrats and Republicans are equally culpable and repugnant. A crisis of this magnitude could not have occurred at a worse time in American history. I fear that our leaders are incapable of solving the problems in America. In my opinion, the best vote that could be cast this Fall is a vote to remove incumbents.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned