The Decider

Another of George Bush's "legacy project" themes, in response to the fact that he leaves office as one of the most unpopular presidents, ever: "When you make tough decisions," he says, "you're gonna get criticized."

No, sir. Incorrect, sir. It's when you make WRONG DECISIONS!!!! ARRRGGGGHHH!!!! Get a frickin' CLUE!!!!

Is there a term for someone so free of the need for introspection, so unable to process facts that shine ill upon him? Narcissist seems too genial, egotist a collossal understatement. Seriously. The man has a defect in his thought processes. His meninges are armor-plated, rejecting any flow into his central nervous system of doubt, reflection, or self-correction. He's impervious to fact, unable to conceive of ever being wrong. There's gotta be a word for it.

As one who beat himself up if a bandage didn't look perfect, much less if a patient had even the tiniest surgical complication, it's literally beyond my understanding.

Remember The Pain

More than once commenters on this blog have questioned why I continued to harp on George Bush. He's leaving after all. Get over it.

Get over it? Will our country get over it? That's the real question, a positive answer to which is far from certain. And as the Bush brigade is mobilized now to rewrite history to promote his "legacy," it seems more important than ever to be sure they fail. How ironic, if the only success of the Bush years were the inducement of forgetting of his catastrophic failures! In this short attention span era, where news fades as fast as the next story appears, where people care more about Joe The Plumber than Joe The Biden, where a strong and free and inquisitive press has been (permanently, for sure) replaced by the likes of Sean Hannity and owned by Rupert Murdoch, it's not at all unlikely to happen. George who?

Which is why Bob Herbert's column in today's NYT is required reading. He says, in part:

"When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don’t think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry — a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches — over the damage he’s done to this country.

This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job."

Read the whole thing: it says nothing new, I suppose, but it catalogs well and forcefully why we need never to forget, and why, if there's any justice at all in this indifferent universe, the very least George Bush will get is our ongoing scorn; and he ought to be continually aware of it, for as long as he lives.

Not that he'd care.

[Update: I don't hold Bob Shrum in particularly high esteem, but he's occasionally right on, as in this.]

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