Frank Rich on Bush: "You start to pity him until you remember how vast the wreckage is"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

A President Forgotten but Not Gone
By FRANK RICH
Published: January 3, 2009



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04rich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

WE like our failed presidents to be Shakespearean, or at least large enough to inspire Oscar-worthy performances from magnificent tragedians like Frank Langella. So here, too, George W. Bush has let us down. Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana whom Josh Brolin and Will Ferrell can nail without breaking a sweat. He’s the reckless Yalie Tom Buchanan, not Gatsby. He is smaller than life.

The last NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Bush’s presidency found that 79 percent of Americans will not miss him after he leaves the White House. He is being forgotten already, even if he’s not yet gone. You start to pity him until you remember how vast the wreckage is. It stretches from the Middle East to Wall Street to Main Street and even into the heavens, which have been a safe haven for toxins under his passive stewardship. The discrepancy between the grandeur of the failure and the stature of the man is a puzzlement. We are still trying to compute it.

The one indisputable talent of his White House was its ability to create and sell propaganda both to the public and the press. Now that bag of tricks is empty as well. Bush’s first and last photo-ops in Iraq could serve as bookends to his entire tenure. On Thanksgiving weekend 2003, even as the Iraqi insurgency was spiraling, his secret trip to the war zone was a P.R. slam-dunk. The photo of the beaming commander in chief bearing a supersized decorative turkey for the troops was designed to make every front page and newscast in the country, and it did. Five years later, in what was intended as a farewell victory lap to show off Iraq’s improved post-surge security, Bush was reduced to ducking shoes.

He tried to spin the ruckus as another victory for his administration’s program of democracy promotion. “That’s what people do in a free society,” he said. He had made the same claim three years ago after the Palestinian elections, championed by his “freedom agenda” (and almost $500 million of American aid), led to a landslide victory for Hamas. “There is something healthy about a system that does that,” Bush observed at the time, as he congratulated Palestinian voters for rejecting “the old guard.”

[Warpy]

1. I still pity him

because there is no way on earth I'd want to be that limited, that ignorant, or that horribly infantile.

I am grateful every day that I am not any of those men.

[Aviation Pro]

2. When the final word is written about Two Shoes (sometime in the 23rd Century)....

...it will read something like this.

"He was nothing."

[Amerigo Vespucci]

4. Ian Hunter said it best in Mott The Hoople's "Hymn For The Dudes"...

"You ain't the Nazz...you're just a buzz...some kinda TEMPORARY..."

I'm surprised someone hasn't put together a Bush montage video with that song.

[BlueJazz]

3. I love George Bush...Compared to my Feelings for those Americans that voted for him.

I'll never forgive them...

[Old and In the Way]

5. He ought to be tried for his crimes.

His failure on the 9/11 attacks, his lying about the casus belli with Iraq, his failure in New Orleans, his gross incompetence with regards to our economy....the damage he has done to us and the world is incalculable.

Sadly, he may never be held to account for his crimes, but that won't save him from being forever known as the most unqualified, unprepared, and just plain stupid person to be selected pResident. Thankfully, in this digital age, Bush won't have the benefit of slinking into the obscurity of newspapers/books. He'll be displayed in living color, as fresh in 100 years, as he is today. Generations from now, Bush will still be the gold standard for worst POTUS. I can live with that.

[gratuitous]

6. I believe I'll save my pity for his victims

I don't think he gives a good goddam about the pain and misery he's inflicted.

[DCKit]

7. Despite the cultural differences and my love of dogs....

I couldn't relate more to the shoe-thrower's insult. I got it. However, they gotta find something more filthy and low to compare Dumbya to... none of the dogs I've ever known deserves that rap and even shellfish infected with red-tide toxins has never done so much damage. Try as I might, I've never been able to compare any living thing to the intentional malignancy of the Bush/Cheney pResidency. Even the most pathological virus or bacteria doesn't act with a malicious intent.

The bad dogs I have known are a product of their environment, so I'm thinking re-education or removal is in order - if they're just going to abuse and deride them, they don't deserve to have them.

[BlooInBloo]

8. George "Smaller Than Life" Bush. 'nuff said.