This is a man who never should have taken office to begin with. If Al Gore had more chutzpah he probably could have pulled off an Al Frankenesque recount in Florida and won the White House. But the cards were stacked against a fair recount. Bush’s campaign manager having the final decision on the recount in Florida was the nail in the Gore presidential bid coffin. Poor Al, done in by a butterfly ballot.
But that butterfly ballot was just one of many win-at-any-cost tactics pulled by Karl Rove and company. Had they no conscience? Didn’t they realize the danger they were putting us all in by putting that village idiot in the White House? Were they just trying to prove it could be done? They didn’t stop there though. We have a new term in the English language from the “swift-boating” of John Kerry in 2004. Then there were more questionable tactics in Ohio in that election.
The country, and the world for that matter, is in the worst mess it’s been in since WWII. Make no mistake about it. I put all of the blame squarely on W.’s shoulders (and those who stole that 2000 election to put him in office). This is a president who was handed a country with a surplus in the Treasury. Now we are on the verge of bankruptcy. Bush was spending us into oblivion before the financial crisis even hit. There’s no doubt this financial crisis could have been avoided had there been some semblance of a real regulatory environment. There were many warnings coming from many well respected circles about the evils of derivatives and sub-prime mortgages. But people were getting rich and that has taken priority over all other things during the Bush regime.
We are now nearly six years into a “war” (invasion and occupation is more accurate) which was justified with lies about WMD’s. Yes, they were lies. The CIA told him that Iraq was NOT a national security threat. Then, of course, there’s torture, wire tapping, signing statements, the worst environmental policies in modern times, leaking of a CIA agent’s identity, extraordinary rendition, loss of habeas corpus, Katrina, etc., the list goes on.
Now we also have a war in Gaza. The U.S. has done nothing, zilch, zero to actively move the Middle East towards peace under the Bush administration. With Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State there has been not one peace deal, treaty, or anything resembling progress on the international front. With so many of their buddies making huge profits on war and occupation is it any wonder they seemed to give peace nothing more than lip service?
Bush has been very busy lately trying to put a positive spin on his legacy. There’s the now tiresome claim that he has kept us safe since 9/11. Let’s not forget that it was W and his administration who were asleep at the wheel when oh, so many clues were ignored that something big was about to happen. Then there’s that infamous National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that came out one month prior to 9/11 whose heading was “Bin Laden Planning to Fly Planes Into Buildings”…HELLO? ANYBODY HOME? I guess that wasn’t plain enough for the blithering idiot gang. They came right out and said that no one could have foreseen those attacks. And they said that with a straight face!
They would reprise that “asleep at the wheel and then feign shock and dismay” routine when hurricane Katrina wiped out New Orleans after many warnings that that was an inevitability if the levy system wasn’t upgraded.
Yes, he presided over the worst ever attack on U.S. soil. It was on his watch and that’s as much his legacy as the rest of this mess and I want to rub his and all his supporters collective noses in it who told the rest of us that we were unpatriotic for not supporting his maniacal policies all these years. No there hasn’t been an attack on U.S. soil since, but, don’t forget that there weren’t any attacks during the prior seven years either and that sending our troops to Iraq just made it much easier for terrorists to kill Americans over there than to come here to do it.
Dubya has a legacy alright. Just how bad history will view it will be determined over the next few years as we struggle out of all the crises he’s leaving behind. We have all suffered enough.
Good riddance, W.!
