Bush the Teflon Man

Perhaps it was the sexual nature of Eliot Spitzer's offenses that made the shame stick. That and the fact that the former NY governor admitted he did wrong. Bush by contrast is today's Teflon man. He has been able to unstick himself from accusations of murder, lies, torture, corruption connected to his presidency not only because he didn't himself do it, but also because these crimes, by their very nature, are more complex and hard to believe. We can understand a cheating husband for example, we cannot so easily understand waterboarding. What's more, we have not escaped our love for a kind of brutality which we've convinced ourselves protects us: there has been no correction for a certain kind of rough treatment (i.e. waterboarding) tolerated by the public implicitly in the name of self-protection.

But is that it? Have you ever wondered why some folks never seem to be held accountable for their actions? That's because when someone behaves badly, resolving what to do with them can be a tricky problem. What do we do with bad people? Is it even reasonable to label someone 'good' or 'bad'? Are we each degrees of both? Does punishing a wrongdoer lower the punisher and elevate the offender? In secular terms, when/how does society get satisfaction?

For the sake of argument, let's say an offender could make amends by showing an understanding of what s/he has done and communicating that s/he would try not to do it again.

Bush has been unsatisfactory on both these points. There has been no ground given on the losses his policies have caused Americans and Iraqis or the chaos the poorly conducted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has caused in the world. He has escaped a reasonable accounting for the economic implosion of the markets on his watch and the devastating costs his policies will have on the American taxpayer.

This past weekend in Iraq when a journalist threw both his shoes at Bush, we might have felt some satisfaction. Finally, someone communicated what few have been able to get across to Mr. Bush: you hurt this country and you let us down.

He ducked once and then holding his hand up in the air to block the second shoe, in that moment, we might have seen our answer. I had no idea! But I guess I could see that shoe coming!

Later, he didn't offer much on the incident:

"it's a size ten shoe that he threw at me."

Consider a different case, former NY governor, Eliot Spitzer, brought down this year by his charm-free personality and penchant for prostitutes.

And what about his home life? Maybe this morning, his wife Silda watched her husband across from her at breakfast. He used to rush off to work, briefcase and paper in hand, barely drinking his OJ and coffee. Now she sees him lounging around the house, working out paragraphs in the bathroom, running over ideas at the kitchen table, wearing the same shirt and drawers day after day (these are my thinking clothes!). He's posting for an online magazine now; she reportedly edits his columns.

We could use a Spitzer now, with the financial industry in such turmoil. We are instead left in New York State with Senator Schumer, who's received great support from Wall Street:

"AP - A member of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., was the top congressional recipient; his campaign received $32,000 (from Bernard Madoff) during that period (2001-present). Schumer has turned over all campaign donations from Madoff to charity. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is the top Madoff recipient overall, receiving $25,000 from Madoff each year since Schumer became its chairman in 2005."

Could Schumer use some help? I think so, especially since Wall Street money is everywhere; Obama has gotten his fair share too.

I like the writer Kafka on a topic like this one. He always seems to exact a punishment inappropriate for the crime, and in doing so, shows what a tough spot we're in. (And, he has a crooked sense of humor.) Here's a line from a story about an ape who's convinced the world he is a man:

"Recently, I read an article by one of the ten thousand windbags who vent their views about me in the newspapers: they say that my ape nature has not yet been entirely repressed; the proof is supposed to be that whenever I have company, I am inclined to lower my pants to show the bullet's path of entry. Every tiny finger of that guy's writing hand ought to blown off, one by one. I, I have the right to lower my pants in front of anyone I like..."

As a student, I had a harder time reading Kafka after I learned his biography. His family is decimated by the Nazis; he suffers from tuberculosis and (by some accounts) dies from starvation. It was upsetting to me to read his work and see how prescient it was: he was attuned to the track he was on, to what could happen to anyone unjustly, and to what his community was capable of. Here Kafka writes about a fictional penal colony:

"Now justice is being done. In the silence you heard only the condemned man's moans, muted by the felt plug. Today the machine no longer manages to squeeze a moan out of the condemned man louder than the felt can stifle, but in those days the writing needles dripped an acid fluid that we are no longer allowed to use. Well, and then the sixth hour would come around! It was impossible to grant everyone's request to watch from up close..."

And without pushing this too far, it is possible to see how not so far we've come. Here, Dick Cheney's most recent comments on the merits of Gitmo prison:

"Guantanamo has been very well run. I think, if you look at it from the perspective of the requirements we had."

Cheney probably has a Teflon coat too.

Comments

[Michale32086]

@realpolitic

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Thirdly, Michale I thought you indicated you are very liberal in general? Exactly, where? I have seen you do little but defend Bush's torture policies and everything else related to Bush!
{{{{

There are 4 things that I am conservative about.

Law Enforcement, Self Defense, National Security and the joke/con that is Human Caused Global Warming(Yet The Planet Is Cooling).

On any other subject, I would wager that I am the most liberal one here..

Michale....

[sticksnstones]

" There are 4 things that I am conservative about. "

Really ???

Here's a few more you seem to have omitted:

5) Gays(too pushy and their sexual orientation may be altered by simple behavior modification)

6) Obama(something fishy about that birth certificate)

7) Organized Labor/Trade Unions( what a bunch of greedy, ungrateful whiners)

8) Secessionist Groups( as harmless as mild soap powder)

9) George Bush( will go down in history as a great president, has been a much better president than either Lincoln or FDR)

[realpolitic]

Funny!

[realpolitic]

Michale, I asked what are liberal positions and not your conservative ones. Your answers to me generally evade any substantive topics. You always pick up on something extraneous. I notice many cxonservatives here reply in that manner.

Why don't you speak about the Bush torture memos which a bipartisan congressional commision asserted may result in war crime charges or the illegal firings of the assistant attorney generals where Bush told Miers, Card, Rove not to testify to Congress? Answer to soemthing of substance and not always the trivial!

[realpolitic]

Michale32086,

Please read....

The Noose Tightens
Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and other top Bush officials could soon face legal jeopardy.

The United States, like many countries, has a bad habit of committing wartime excesses and an even worse record of accounting for them afterward. But a remarkable string of recent events suggests that may finally be changing"and that top Bush administration officials could soon face legal jeopardy for prisoner abuse committed under their watch in the war on terror.

High-level charges, if they come, would be a first in U.S. history. "Traditionally we've caught some poor bastard down low and not gone up the chain," says Burt Neuborne, a constitutional expert and Supreme Court lawyer at NYU.


Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, ....... favors the creation of a nonpartisan commission of inquiry with a professional staff and subpoena power, calling it "the only way to definitively repudiate this ugly chapter in U.S. history

"Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and author of "The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld," points out that over 20 countries now have universal jurisdiction laws that would allow them to indict U.S. officials for torture if America doesn't do it itself. The world is getting smaller for these guys," says Ratner, "and they'll have to check with their lawyers very carefully before they travel." Jail time it isn't"but it may be some justice nonetheless.


http://www.newsweek.com/id/176044?from=rss

[realpolitic]

Ms. Pollard is so correct! Bush, Cheney, and even Condi Rich are examples of the perfectly modern person. Claim a right to advance a huge agenda because of some notion of "earned" political capital, have a sense of entitlement only exceeded by royalty, and then make glaring blunders that result in foreign policy disaster and economic meltdown only to claim no responsibility in any of it. Because Bush insists on being treated like a child, with his petulance and arrogance, the media treat him that way by asking silly, childish questions letting him evade any repsonsibility. Cheney plays to type as a master Machiavellian. It is as if, they admit no responsibiltiy and are completely clueless to the harm they have done, they will convine 300 million Americans that they are beyond reproach. Sadly, I think their strategy is working.

[schatsie]

And that is why I have such a bad feeling about David Gregory, because I have not heard him ask a tough question and he even slants the questions to favor the right....

This all makes sense after you read Shock Doctrine.

[godhelpusall]

Maybe if enough republicans get really angry with Bush, they'll figure out that one of the very best ways to save themselves and their party would be to throw Bushco under a bus headed to the Hague, and publicly hold them accountable for 8 long years of immoral and criminal behavior that have left this nation and the world in a shambles of chaos, degeneration and hopelessness.

[chewie2008]

I remember many people saying in 2000 if Sharon and Bush get elected dark times would come.Both of these men brought mayhem to the world and history will not be kind to them.It already has judged one of them and the other has just gotten a little taste of (a shoe) what his legacy is.

[Michale32086]

@SeriousBlack

}}}}
"Bush had Congressional authorization for everything he did"

Based on his lies. Next argument.
{{{{{

Your argument falls apart on several fronts..

1. Two bi-partisan commissions and one UK commission determined that the Administration did not lie.

2. If Bush DID lie to obtain the authorizations, why didn't the Democrats attempt to revoke the authorizations??

Michale....

[kdogg]

After I thought all the Bush apologists had finally given up defending the undefendable, you come along. History will judge Bush poorly, no matter how much he and his sycophants work to revise the truths of what he has done. No one can argue that the war was started on false pretenses, no matter if it was an out right lie or not. There where no WMD's and the evidence to support it that there where has been proven to had been made up. The result speak for themselves. Thousands of Americans dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraq's dead, and their country left in shambles. Not even Bush's teflon will allow him to cover up and lie about what he has done.

[Michale32086]

Many said the exact same things about Lincoln in his day...

I don't know what future historians will say about Bush and neither do you.

The fact that you PRETEND to know simply displays your irrational bigotry and is not logical.

Michale.....

[TomTheAlmostUgly]

Three words: Downing Street Memos. Bush was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq.

[Michale32086]

And yet, Democrats have not taken action.

Why is that??

Michale.....

[realpolitic]

Bush did what he wanted to do and then later got congressional authorization when the cat was already out of the bag. Secondly, a bipartisan commision has just dtermined that Bush and his minions are repsponsible for torture. So according to your own statement, it is now time to prosecute them.

Thirdly, Michale I thought you indicated you are very liberal in general? Exactly, where? I have seen you do little but defend Bush's torture policies and everything else related to Bush!

[Michale32086]

@WilliamProc

}}}}
When you get a lawyer to put an addendum into an existent law, to make it look kosher, it would make someone believe that was the case?
{{{{

I am not sure what you mean??

What does that have to do with the fact that Bush had Congressional authorization for everything he did??

Michale.....

[SeriousBlack]

"Bush had Congressional authorization for everything he did"

Based on the lies he told.

BAM. Easy one. Next?

[SeriousBlack]

"Bush had Congressional authorization for everything he did"

Based on his lies. Next argument.

[realpolitic]

Bush certainly did not have congressional authorization for everything he did. At many of the Congressional hearings, Congressmen were finding out about Bush's activities for the first time. Former Attorney general Gonzalez, who still can not find work in the legal field, said "I don't remember about a thousand times" in his testimony to congress. Congressmen found out that Gonzalez and a few others tried to twist Ashcroft's arm when he was close to death in the hospital to get him to renew the domestic spying policies. Ashcroft would not do it. Bush was going to procede anyway. The top echelon of the Justice department and the FBI chief threatened to resign. It was then that Bush backed down. Congress found out much later.

If Congress is so informed about Bush's activites why won't Bush let Harriet Miers, Andy Card, and Karl Rove testify regarding the assistant attorney general firings? They claim Executive Privilege, although case has nothing to do with national defense.

Michale, because you are so woefully underinformed does not make you correct in your assertions. It only makes you underinformed and misinformed. Read the newspapers occasionally.

[WilliamProc]

Bush had national security directives and executive orders changed without notifying congress. All done and orchestrated by one of Gonzales's goons. congress always found out the next week when such occurred.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/169277
But you know this; seen your posts before. You're in that great state of denial.

[senseandnonsense]

Kafka died in 1924. If his family was "decimated by the Nazis" he didn't know it and it never affected him.

[Logan Nakyanzi Pollard - Huffpost Blogger]

Hi,

I meant that he was ahead of his time, in the sense that his work is full of observations about suffering, like starvation and other indignities that his family and others would experience in the years after his death (with the rise of Nazism). It's striking to me that he wrote so vividly about these things years before they actually happened . . . and how today his work can still have such powerful resonance for us :)

[realpolitic]

I believe many of Kafka's novels, including his masterpiece The Trial, and the Orwell novel 1984 are most telling about the atmosphere surrounding the Bush administration and their tactics. "He who controls the past, controle the future." Now Bush and Co. are into their historical revisionism phase. Conservative "scholars" are retelling the succes of the New Deal and other episodes to reframe it as a prolonging the depression. They are ideological zealots.

[TahmPain]

There is a simple explanation as to why Bush, and Reagan before him are "teflon" men. The mainstream corporate press has complete control over who is held accountable and who is not. If they want to keep something at the forefront of the news they can and they have. The Republican base is the corporations, the haves and the have mores. The corporate press is not going to disrupt their protection racket.

[dfranz]

I believe that because so many people bought into Bush's line early and then reelected him, that there is a part of the population that feels sorry for the man they once supported. His manipulation of facts and spin up to and during the war has also led to this. Some people, even though they may have changed their minds still have some trace of doubt which I think causes them to give him a pass. Bill Clinton and Spitzer were found to have moral short comings, which is unacceptable to many in this puritanical country. Bush seems to be merely incompetent or stupid and it isn't as much fun to beat up on a village idiot as to prove your moral superiority by beating up on an adulterer.

[democracy7]

Bush is far worse, he has both mental and moral shortcomings.

[schatsie]

We all know that the MSM did not cover the fact that Bush had Jeff Gannon (an internet gay prostitute) in the WHITE HOUSE 200 times according to the White House visitor logs....

Bush has done exactly what he intended...each and every time.....

[WilliamProc]

Bush's Teflon veneer is blissful ignorance! He is completely oblivious to what is happening around him, cant acknowledge his own character flaws, and believes that he he is justified in whatever he does, even if the consequences lead to death or financial ruin.

Is January 20 here yet?

[DanC45]

Yes, he refuses to face reality because then he would have to admit that he is a total failure as a President, company executive, academic, and as a human being with compassion. Bush has screwed up everything he has touched. The criminal thing is that he has never been accountable for any of his failures. He's a spoiled rich kid, whose always started at the top and inevitably ended up on the bottom...yo know that "L" shape you make with your index finger and thumb against your forehead?

Well, I think it is time he start being accountable, if for no other reaseon than he never hesitated to make criminal accountable at the gallows. Isn't there something in the bible that say, "judge not lest thou be judged?" He needs to be punished to show him what accountability is and to serve as a deterrent for following foolish Presidents.

[Michale32086]

You DO realize that Bush had Congressional authorization for every action he took, right??

Michale.....

[schatsie]

you know in light of his own shortcomings, it is so strange that he executed so many people in Texas, while getting his friend Kenny Lay his out of jail card....

[Michale32086]

If you are expecting massive changes come 29 Jan, I can almost guarantee you that you are going to be disappointed..

Michale.....

[WilliamProc]

Not nearly as disappointed as I have been over the past eight years!

[kathy001]

Thanks but we're not looking for guarantees from you. We'll just be happy that Bush will no longer be able to author more new atrocities.

[sticksnstones]

You are predicating a less than optimistic projection based on your role model, George Bush. The guy you voted for two times running has given PE Obama no choice but to initiate " massive changes " . You may find comfort in the knowledge that he will even include folks in Fringe Right like yourself when he begins to correct the damage wrought on us all these past eight years.

[realpolitic]

Michale, would you tell us about your conversations with Obama please?