np congratulations

[David Morris]

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/11/good_riddance.php

Today [yesterday] being the day America chooses a successor, it's
worth reflecting for a moment on the abysmal leader we have right now.
I think an issue like asking whether or not George W. Bush is the
worst president we've ever had gets a little too imponderable
considering the historical issues. I mean, say what you will about
Bush, but unlike many American presidents he didn't believe in
slavery. That said, by any kind of absolute standard the man is an
appalling moral leper. He's not a good man outmatched by
circumstances. And he's not a bad man getting through by cunning and
pragmatism.

He's inept, a buffoon. But also perverse — reveling in the idea of
inflicting death and destruction on others, avoiding military service
in a war he supported when he was of the appropriate age, while
claiming to envy the experience of the soldiers he's sent to be maimed
or killed in a war there was no need to fight. He's presided over an
incredibly rapid decline in the government's fiscal position in order
to funnel more money to the wealthiest Americans at a time of growing
inequality. On his watch, the country suffered the most catastrophic
terrorist attack in its history, and he's been relentless ever since
that day in trying to turn his own inability to keep the country safe
into a political bludgeon to wield against his opponents.

A major American city was nearly destroyed, in part because of the
predictable incompetence of his clearly unqualified appointees. Bush
has taken eight years' worth of time when we could have been getting a
jump on our energy/climate problems not content to do nothing, but
fanatically determined to do everything he can to make the situation
worse. Even if we act as rapidly as possible following his departure
from office, tens of thousands of people will likely die as a result
of his actions on this front. The costs of his 2002 farm bill in terms
of American public health and global poverty are beyond my ability to
calculate. One could find a redeeming feature amidst the wasteland of
Bush-era policymaking, but it would be difficult. It's tempting to see
the horrors of the Bush administration as mostly reflecting a largely,
more impersonal rot — some fundamental decay of the conservative
movement. But the truth is that Bush could very plausibly have been a
much better president. He could have taken foreign policy advice from
his Secretary of State, Colin Powell. He could have taken
environmental policy advice from Christie Todd Whitman. He could have
taken economic policy advice from Paul O'Neil. The results of an
administration animated by figures like that probably wouldn't have
thrilled me, but they would have been much, much better than what we
got. But instead, we got what we got. Not because the political
coalition of which Bush was a part was so rotten that nothing else
could happen, but in large part because he was so rotten that he drove
or suppressed the best elements of his coalition and spread the rot
around.


On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 10:04 AM, Michael Bailey
<michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> credit where credit's due, Bush's speech on the topic wasn't half bad