Sympathy for "W", Not For Voters

I never dreamed I would find myself feeling sympathy for George W. Bush, but that occurred as I watched Oliver Stone's movie, "W." Most of Bush's political critics would prefer to accuse Bush of having a dishonest nature about him while he drove America over a cliff. But Stone does "W" a favor by telling the story about a character who was never equipped intellectually or instinctively to be the leader of the free world. After watching this painful history on the big screen, it would be impossible to feel good about voting for George twice, but at least the spin, according to Stone, is that "W" was not a scoundrel.

Stone's movie is kind to "W" in that it makes a case that George spent most of his life swimming in water that was too deep for his swimming skills. The tragedy, according to Stone, is that voters never recognized that. We can tell ourselves that maybe we didn't have enough information about George that first term. We could say that the first go-around we had no way of knowing enough details about the man. We might have heard a few stories about how George had bankrupted three businesses before he was forty years old, but the details were unclear at the time of that first vote. Maybe we heard bits and pieces about "W's" black sheep background spanning from college to the National Guard years, but those facts were still emerging. And voters might have also heard that "W" had left Texas looking like a fiscal wasteland after one term as governor, but the details were still sketchy. Plausible deniability for that first-term voter was possible.

Still, historians like Stone, for generations, will be saying the obvious about that second-term Bush vote. They will remind us that by 2004, we knew the truth. September 11th was only one of the troubling events that occurred under "W's" watch. We also experienced our first recession since the time the last GOP president sat in the oval office. Bankruptcies were skyrocketing by Bush's third year in office. He had wiped out a $500 billion budget surplus. "W" had already started his march toward building a multi-trillion-dollar debt for America. He had taken his first steps to bankrupt the economy in the same way he bankrupted so many other things with that peculiar "W" touch.

By the time that second Bush vote was cast, it was clear that the Iraq war was a scam. Joblessness was up. Poverty was climbing as quickly as the number of Americans without health care coverage. The dollar was moving towards an historical bottom along with almost every other economic indicator that mapped out "W's" first term.

I'm convinced that at least a small part of Stone's movie message was, "I told you so." In fact, it almost appears to be a subtle attempt to rub the faces of voters around in the Bush mess. But the positive element of Stone's work is that it screams at voters and begs them to be honest and informed the next time they vote for a president. That alone makes "W" an important movie.

Comments

[longislandlol]

Dynastic families usually have one child in their brood that needed to catch up to the rest---it would have been like putting Rosemary Kennedy in as JFK's Secretary of State--

[PlanetKansas]

The Talking Heads song "Once in a Lifetime" is the perfect themesong for W the movie and W the actual man. ...well...how did I get here???

[vegas9999]

Oh that Stone!! You can always count on him to pull the truth out of history.

[Dgold662]

There is not enough time in a movie to really show the effects Bush had on this country.amazingly enough,the effects he is having even now. It did not show how he felt about being the first President not to be elected, but appointed by the courts and we have no idea how much he was involved in his brother's state of Florida of stealing the election. I will never understand how he was elected a 2nd time, but shockingly enough America might do it again. To vote for any party with someone like Palin on it, let alone a 72 year old man with 4 bouts of skin cancer and possibly allowing this women to become President of the United States, when we are in even worse shape then the United States makes me feel that we are fighting a hopeless cause. I have traveled a lot lately and it shocks me how citizen's in other countries can not believe Obama is not ahead by 90 percent in the polls. The message we will send to McCain is elected is, we supported everything Bush has done to the world . We are glad he invaded Iraq . We are glad on his watch the world is going bankrupt and we have shredded basic human rights. I prey we show the world how wrong we were in allowing Bush that second term and how smart we can be, in electing Barack Obama. We will send a strong message to everyone everywhere!

[Girl28]

I actually did not vote for Bush in 2004. I was very suprised when he won re-election. That's one reason why I think it's so important that we give the Democrats a chance to clean this mess up. It would be different if McCain's economic or foreign policy proposals were different from W's but unfortunately they're not.

[Acid Monkey]

I think that accurately espouses what many outside the USA feels about the American voter.

Fooled me once, shame on you. Fooled me twice, shame on me. After the 2000 Bush election we looked with disdain at your government. After the 2004 Bush reelection our opinions of the American voter diminished. Many outside observers were surprised at his reelection, in light of what has been revealed about Bush, his handling of the economy, his disregard of the UN and the Geneva Convention, the false pretense for the Iraqi invasion. the PATRIOT Act, the bullying policies such as rendition and Guantanamo Bay. Knowing all this and still voting him in (with an overwhelming majority) gave us an insight into the thinking of the American people.

Are you going to get fooled a third time? Fool me thrice, I'm a [insert expletive here]!!.

Vote Obama/Biden for the world's sake!

[tdbach]

Don't be too harsh on us Americans. We are victims of our own outdated political structure. After TWO YEARS of unrelenting...bullshit... shot at us from every media outlet during the course of our interminable campaigns, we can no longer make affirmative, reasoned judgments about candidates. We devolve into voting someone "off the island" and accepting whoever is last standing.

Our political processes were invented at a time when our country was too big, and our transportation and communications technology was too primitive and slow, and our multistate structure too inchoate, to embrace the quick-change offered by a parliamentary system. Oh, to have but a few weeks or months to decide!! No one, lease of all Americans, have the attention span to handle years of competing crap at light speed. You just shut down into entrenched, stubborn positions - almost in self-defense.

If we weren't so goddamn provincial and "proud", we'd have a constitutional convention and chuck our system for a parliamentary one, with legislative elections given, say, two months to run, and the legislature picking the president. Then, and only then, could we be assured that no American Idol candidate gets to run our country.