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Tuesday, March 09, 2010

And the swell of the drumbeats continues
Posted by Jill | 4:54 AM
Ah, how they miss the codpiece, the broken sentences, the blotched complexion of the drunk off the wagon, the penis-size anxiety of the bantam-rooster swagger, the bluster into wars based on complete lies, the utter certainty that driving the country off a cliff was the right thing to do.

First it was Chris Matthews broaching the subject of "Bush nostalgia":



Now it's Stanley Fish in that Public Enemy #1 of teabaggers everywhere, the New York Times:
Analyses of how this has happened are plentiful and varied, but most agree that it had something to do with the summer of 2009, when the town meetings that seemed a good, nicely democratic idea in the spring turned into a recruiting device for the angry crowds that would become the Tea Party.

At the same time, Bush profited from the fact that he kept a low profile and didn’t snipe at his successor, a task left to his vice president, who therefore took upon himself the enmity and scorn previously directed at his former boss. Dick Cheney was, in effect, a lightning rod, and he was joined in that function by Sarah Palin, who slid neatly into the slot Bush had occupied in the mind of all good liberals for eight long years. Hatred and contempt of Palin is now the favorite pastime of those who have abandoned the cowboy from Texas and transferred their obsessive animus to the belle of Alaska (who, I say again, is more formidable than many in both parties believe.)

Meanwhile, Bush’s policies came to seem less obviously reprehensible as the Obama administration drifted into embracing watered-down versions of many of them. Guantanamo hasn’t been closed. No Child Left Behind is being revised and perhaps improved, but not repealed. The banks are still engaging in their bad practices. Partisanship is worse than ever. Obama seems about to back away from the decision to try 9/11 defendants in civilian courts, a prospect that led the ACLU to run an ad in Sunday’s Times with the subheading “Change or more of the same?” Above that question is a series of photographs that shows Obama morphing into guess who — yes, that’s right, George W. Bush.

And now, right on schedule, Bush has resurfaced (just as I imagined him doing a year ago last September ) to join Bill Clinton in a humanitarian relief effort. He is officially a member in good standing of the ex-presidents club, and the longer he lives the more his reputation will be burnished. To be sure, his post-presidency resume is still thin, but we can expect it to be beefed up by good deeds, ceremonial appearances and the activities that will surround the building and opening of his library at Southern Methodist University. We’ll see Bush the tour guide and Bush the patron of historical scholarship and, perhaps, even Bush the seminar leader.

And the judgment of history? Well, I’m not that foolish, but I will venture to say that it will be more nuanced than anything the professional Bush-haters — indistinguishable in temperament from the professional Obama-haters — are now able to imagine. He will not go to the top of the list, but neither will he be the figure of fun and derision he seemed destined to be only a year ago. You heard it here.

Yes. George W. Bush's reputation will be burnished, because Americans have notoriously short memories and they care more about who's going to win American Idol than they do about how their country has been turned into an oligarchy in which they don't stand a chance.

George W. Bush drove the entire country off a cliff, and Barack Obama was allowed to become President because the oligarchs knew that there was nothing he or anyone could do to fix it. And things are going to be so bad in the future that Americans will long for the days when a POS Cape Cod was a half-million dollars because the banks were built on nothing. That three thousand Americans died because George W. Bush was asleep at the switch will be long forgotten in favor of the guy with the bullhorn at Ground Zero. In fact, they'll think 9/11 happened on Obama's watch, because of people like Dana Perino and Rudy Giuliani and Mary Matalin insisting unchallenged that there were no terrorist attacks on Bush's watch. They'll forget about the lies, the surveillance, the remarks about being a dictator. They'll forget about the appalling boorishness he showed overseas, and how he turned this nation into a laughing stock -- a giant bully to be alternately feared for being batshit crazy and loathed for being stupid. They'll forget because things are going to be so bad in the future as a direct result of what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney set in motion, that the years from 2001-2008 will be regarded as the good old days.

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3 Comments:
Blogger jurassicpork said...
No, Bush just sniped at his predecessor time and time again.

Let's not forget, if Bush was still in power, we wouldn't even have a debate on health care. We wouldn't be in two wars that cost per annum what health care would be for a year.

Record tax cuts for the wealthy, an impotent SEC that allowed one massive scandal after another while whistling past the graveyard of the economy, constant lies to the American public, the disappearance of a major US city and complete lack of responsibility, constantly having to raise the national debt ceiling? Over 4000 flag-draped coffins arriving at Dover AFB in secret?

Nostalgia over what, exactly?

Blogger Kevin Hayden said...
Ever since Bill Clinton spoke eloquently at the funeral of Richard Weasel Nixon, I realized the elite would always be elite, holding forth on their theories about elites and using, as proof, the affection of both toadies and people too young to remember (or too old and demented) to evidence the obvious love 'everyone' has for all elites.

And people will predict this and say "I told you so" despite the tens of millions of folks around who would, if they had an opening to do so, punch the living shit out of the monster or at least effect a citizen's arrest of such a heinous war criminal as Bush.

In simplest turns, perfectly reasonable people with no lifelong animus towards any other will go to their graves hating Bush for his crimes as much as they hated him in November 2008. But all those millions will be dismissed in analyses like these because they don't fit the narrative.

So let them promulgate their fantasy. Maybe it'll cause such a hated man to let his guard down and he'll get a bloody lip by some manner other than self-inflicted while inebriated.

What I feel about Obama has zero bearing on what I feel about Bush. And Bush belongs in the same mass grave with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Duvalier, the Shah of Iran, Khomeini, Hussein, etc.

Blogger Terrye said...
I miss Bush every day. Of course that has something to do with the raving loons, Pelosi, Reid and Obama.

Democrats are not capable of introspection. They think that if Clinton signed the Iraqi Liberation Act, that has nothing to do with liberating Iraq. Oh no siree. They think that if they turn Frannie Mac and Freddie Mac into their own personal slush funds that has nothing to do with the meltdown..No siree, they are pure as the driven snow.

Bush at least tried to do something about the credit problems, he at least tried to keep his word. He did keep this country safe for years.

The liberals just create their villains out of insurance companies and oil companies and coal companies and bankers and no matter how badly the screw up, they blame others.

Bush never blamed Clinton or the Democrats in Congress, even when they deserved it. I miss him because he was an honest decent man. Something in short supply in DC these days.