Washington, Lincoln, Bush
Here's a desirable "learning outcome" for first grade students in the public schools of Georgia: being able to answer the question, "How are Washington, Lincoln, and Bush alike?" In their classrooms, Georgia's 6-year-olds "will compare and contrast information about Washington, Lincoln, and our current president. This information will be recorded on a Venn diagram."
I don't know how many other states require this Venn diagram to be created, or whether first-grade teachers will accept -- as information for the place where the three presidents' circles overlap -- commonalities like not having gills, possessing opposable thumbs, or putting on their pants one leg at a time.
But I do know that George Bush loves to say what he has in common with Washington and Lincoln: how little it matters what people say about him today. "I don't think you'll really get the full history of the Bush administration until long after I'm gone. I tell people I'm reading books on George Washington, and they're still analyzing his presidency," he told 60 Minutes. At Camp David, he told ABC's Charlie Gibson, "I tell people I read three books on Washington last year, and if they're still writing on the first guy, the 43rd guy isn't going to be around to see it... I spent a lotta time reading about Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln had no earthly idea that the Gettysburg Address was a great speech.... You know, history, it's just, it, I, I've always felt that there needs to be a long leash to history. That you can't judge an administration, immediately. And, particularly one that has pushed hard for some big ideas, like, like, my administration has done."
Ah, yes, those big Bushie ideas. Tax cuts in wartime, the unitary executive, signing statements, waterboarding, gay-baiting... You can almost imagine a first grade exercise that teaches them. Put a circle around the ones that don't belong:
A. American Revolution.
B. Civil War.
C. Iraq War.
A. Beware the baneful effects of the spirit of party.
B. The party lash and the fear of ridicule will overawe justice and liberty.
C. Democrats are terrorist-loving cut-and-runners.
Bush, of course, takes the long view of his place in presidential history. No one who saw this fly-boy swagger beneath the "Mission Accomplished" banner (on the USS Abraham Lincoln, no less) is qualified to characterize that act as one of the most loathsome, preening, hubristic degradations of the presidency in all of American history because... well, because none of us is dead yet! It'll take a hundred years, and a hundred books, before people have the perspective needed to acclaim his guitar-strumming indifference to Katrina as just what our glorious Republic needed from its POTUS at the time. His flying back from a Crawford for a midnight signing of the Terry Schaivo bill? Why, the only presidential historians who can call that one correctly (a victory for the rights of the undead? a miracle of long-distance diagnosis?) will be the great-great-grandchildren of kids in first grade right now.
I have no difficulty imagining the future historians who will rank W right up there along with the Father of Our Country and Honest Abe, rather than way down there with Warren Harding and Franklin Pierce. After all, the servile savants already beatifying Bush on Fox News, right wing talk radio, and in The Washington Times are as likely to pass their genes and memes down to future generations as is slime mold, and the Snopes clan that inherits the earth in Faulkner's dark vision. And as someone who lived through the Nixon terms, and then the Nixon funeral, and the Reagan terms, and then the Reagan funeral, I'm all too familiar with the press's fondness for the revisionist airbrush. De mortuis nil nisi bonum: speak only good of the dead.
The thing I'm having trouble imagining, though, is the scenario for America's future that George W. Bush thinks will ultimately make him look good. Does he really believe that future historians will look back at his Middle East record as the happy tipping point between radical-fundamentalist-jihadist-extremism and freedom-is-on-the-march? Or does he secretly hope that the tragedy looming in that region's future will be blamed not on him, but on his successors who inherit his broken crockery? Can he really imagine that his contempt for checks and balances, and for the Bill of Rights, will one day be compared favorably to Lincoln's boldness in saving the Union? Or does he believe deep down that the fact he ended up not being impeached will in the long view of history more than outweigh any pesky lefty aspersions about his abuses of power?
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Marty Kaplan : This is absolutely the most laugh out loud funny article I have read in a long time ! I'm crying, I'm laughing so hard !
The US economy is ruined because of this crappy war, which drags on and on, for folks who could care less about us. 911 had nothing to do with it. We can't afford gas to travel, our whole town's business economy is on the lowest level.
Student loans have dried up. Ignorant and ridiculous gaffes are heard daily from our President's mouth. I am embarassed by his stupidity. This Administration will go down in history as the time of the Dumbest President in history. The VP is plenty guilty, too.
History is written by "winners". Because rightist Reaganism has been winning since 1980 and has not been discredited, historians may yet "normalize" the hideous legacy of (in Mike Malloy's terse appellation) the "rat-bastard" in chief.
The Democrats are making three classic mistakes, all variations on one other:
1) trying to beat something with nothing;
2) believing that "change" can happen without seriously and persuasively disputing your opponents philosophical premises, intelligence and moral fitness for office; and
3) believing that Clintonesque candidates (as Bill told Letterman after he left office, the key to running for president is to "LOOK like you know what you're talking about") can merely show up and that the passage of time alone will cyclically allow them to have a turn in power every so often without anyone having to make a compelling case for the superiority of their views.
"What it takes" to contend with the right is a serious doctrinal assualt upon and social democratic alternative to Reaganism in both foreign and domestic policy, and on the premises and fitness for office of Republican leaders.
For example: JFK said at alma mater UC Berkeley in 1962 (ten years before my time there) that we fought the Cold War to assure a "free and DIVERSE world". That is a trope worth developing to meet the right's predictable coming assault on the national security vision and credentials of our nominee.
Americans are also ready to be reminded (ala RFK) that responsible domestic policy involves attention to the quality of our lives, not just crude measures such as economic growth, which includes dealing with so much preventable non-desiraable activity and situations from toxic waste dumps to divorce to cancer.
In 2008, it's discredit-the-right or be discredited. Until Democrats present a serious doctrinal alternative to the right, all we are doing is nominating an ill-equipped pinata for the right to demolish. Alas, neither finalist (in their current modes) is waging what John Edwards accurately referred to as a needed epic fight.
Eric C. Jacobson
Public Interest Lawyer
Culver City, California
Who - what class - wants an epic fight? Maybe in another one or two election cycles working people will get the drift (even as they continue to get the shaft). So long as television and its kin happen getting the drift won't happen. Many young folks seem to seek the umbrella of charisma when at best it's a chimera. Many older folk are benumbed by falsities that can only be glimmered in a financial haze of a future that will not include them. The betwixt and between are well tended by commerciality. We are rugged individuals. Individually plying our rights to be rugged individuals, yet never fearing the dearth of love. We are always wanted. Desired by corporatists.
As much as I loath everything that Bush and Cheney represent I, as a Democrat, also loath both the cowardice and the complicity to the Bush/Cheney crime family that has been and is being shown by the spineless so-called Democratic leaders. Yes, I mean you too, Speaker Pelosi.
From the internet: DUBYA'S LEGACY
The GWB Library
The George W Bush Presidential Library is now in the planning stages. You'll want to be the first at your corporation to make a contribution to this great man's legacy.
The Library will include:
The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction.
The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you can't remember anything.
The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don't have to even show up.
The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don't let you in.
The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they don't let you out.
The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room (which no one has been able to find).
The Iraq War Room. After you complete your first tour, they make you to go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes fifth tours.
The Dick Cheney Room,! in the famous undisclosed location, complete with shooting gallery.
Plans also include: The K-Street Project Gift Shop - where you can buy (or just steal) an election.
The Airport Men's Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican Senators.
Last, but not least, there will be an entire floor devoted to a 7/8 scale
model of the President's ego.
To highlight the President's accomplishments, the museum will have an electron microscope to help you locate them.
When asked, President Bush said that he didn't care so much about the individual exhibits as long as his museum was better than his father's.
!!!!!!
Rosey....L
Now that is fucking funny Rosey!!!
I would rate George W. Bush right up there with Caligula!
Well if Bob Guccione, Peter O'Toole, Malcolm McDowell, Gore Vidal and Tinto Brass had any say they'd have to re-film some scenes and cut GWB out. Caligula liked doing his own killing, it seems.
"De mortuis nil nisi bonum: speak only good of the dead."
I'd be glad to speak good of Bush, if only he'd die...
We, the people, should make it be so. Me, I'll still not speak well of him.
I don't CARE how history will judge Bush!
We think he is a criminal and should be
Impeached!
Not impeached, pay deadly for the rest of his days
Let us not forget WHY Bush has not been impeached: Because of the paltry excuses of Pelosi and Conyers.
Bush gets to sit around and play at rationalized self-comparisons to Washington because no one in the lapdog media or Congress have held him accountable.
The Democratic Congress could have reined in Bush, had it wanted to. To do so would have shown constitutional integrity. Alas, it was not to be...hence I will not be voting Democrat again. I will not waste my vote on quislings.
Supreme Court. Hold your nose and vote for the beast if necessary.
I suspect that the first elected (or appointed) President of World will revere both Bush as one of its founding fathers
Washington and Lincoln??? Try Milosevic and Pinochet.
Milosevic attempted to protect his country against the depradations of NATO and the U.S. in their attempt (successful) to destroy Yugoslavia.
Will the long off historical verdict note the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004? The incredible crimes of Rove, William Kristol, Wolfowitz and the criminally compliant Congress?
Bush is a creature without conviction or conscience. If future historians can't see a war criminal behind his pathological smirk, then the most unctious Skull & Bones alumnus will have played his greatest trick ever.
Hey, I'm not going to be rude about the man - he is the elected President of your country. I'd just like to know why you guys elected him - twice. I was living in Austria when a third of the country voted for the "Freedom" party under Jorg Haider: the next day, i couldn't find a single person who would admit to voting for him.
Got to just love democracy!
We didn't elect him. he stole both elections.
What a coincidence, DrMikeC. The exit polls on election day, November of 2004, revealed that most people in my state voted for John Kerry!
I suppose Kennedy starting wellfare qualifies him as one of the greats or Johnson starting Veitnam. Reagan is looked on fondly because he had astonishing accomplishments, we sure as heck don't live under the cloud of Soviet attack anymore. Bush has made mistakes and they might be airbrushed over to an extent, but Carter put the Ayatollah back in power and he's an American Icon after single handedly placing the most destrucive force in the middle east into power. Considering the past 30 years it's arguable that Iraq would never have been Iraq if Carter hadn't put the Ayatollah back in power. There's plenty of reasons to dislike Bush, but don't be so damned one sided about it.
Numbskull-Ronnie Rayt Gun did NOT defeat the Soviet Union,no matter how badly the mouth breathers of the right want it to be true.The USSR collapsed under the weight of it's own inefficiency and corruption
And if Carter had invaded Iran to restore the Shah,you could have bet that the Russians would have responded.
Are you for real? First, the Ayatollah was never put BACK in power because he was never in power in the first place. Second, he was leader of IRAN, not Iraq (oh well, they all look alike to you).
Reagan is not looked on fondly by anyone who truly loves America. Reagan's legacy is not the breakup of the USSR. It's deregulation. We are poorer for that.
Hate to rain on your parade, Numbskull, but the American adventure in RVN began in the 50s, while DDE was prez. And it was during RMN's watch that the KIA numbers really went over the top, though any objective person can also lay blame at LBJ/McNamara's feet. Second, Raygun Ronnie was only occupying the WH when the Soviets went bankrupt, but the actual process began in 1957 with the Politboro's reallocation of agricultural monies to an emerging space (MIC) program. Finally, laying the Shah's downfall at Carter's feet is only more selective recollection. American intervention of the behalf of the Shah in the 50's, and subsequent support of his secret police activity, laid the groundwork for the revolution in 1979. History is so much fun to learn, almost as much fun as the fiction you've been reading...
Truly a Numbskull:
Seems you're begging for attention. I apologize for giving.
Nonetheless, Kennedy did not start welfare. See FDR for first, serious federal welfare programs. (There were select elements prior.)
Johnson did not start Vietnam. See Eisenhower/Kennedy.
Carter loves the Ayatollah Khomeini? Well Jimmy's a christian ya' know. You may wish to recall that Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was Jimmy's dish.
Reagan? Cloud of Soviet attack? How? Why? Astonishing accomplishments? What? When? Getting highways named after him? Snoozing with the pope? Praising the SS at a Bitberg, Germany cemetery? Firing air traffic controllers? Invading Grenada? Making films in uniform? Et cetera. Ad nauseam.
Iraq might never have been? Speak to British map drawers. Ayatollah Khomeini didn't much like Iraq, either. See 1980-1988.
Mutual Disdain suggests that Bush will get the credit if Iraq ever becomes democratic. The flaw in that notion is that Iraq has never been democratic
We're so arrogant as a nation, and Bush is the most arrogant man among us. We presume to decide for other countries and other cultures how they should live. Who are we to decide if Iraq should become more Western or not? Iraq is a tribal country, with Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds harboring centuries-old animosities toward one another. They don't want a Constitution like ours, nor would they know how to live under such a document. They aren't like us, and they don't like us, either.
Marty have you never heard of the Internet?
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