As former President Bush "wings back to Crawford Texas" and is succeeded by a far better man, it is difficult for me to stop being angry with Bush for these last eight horrid years.
It has been easy for me to trash Bush for a variety of reasons, and this will not be the last time I do just that.
I have a propensity to include irrelevancies in what I write in order to somehow make a point, and I will now do just that. This time it is about taking credit for something you have done, and of course avoiding blame for anything as well.
I am one of the few executives who worked at CBS in the late sixties who will freely admit that he had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation, production, or broadcast of All in the Family.
I have met several thousand others who claimed that they were involved, but I am sure that I have not met all of them.
What follows is an example of how people in the entertainment business, like people in government, take credit for things that they had little or nothing to do with.
Almost twenty years ago, while at an airport lounge waiting for my flight, an agent/producer and his wife were sitting near me and the agent began telling me of his many accomplishments in the entertainment industry. He had worked at Columbia Pictures a few years after I had left. He continued to expound with his wife and I listening. At a point she interrupted to ask me why I was ever so slightly shaking my head, and I reluctantly replied that one of his "accomplishments" in the industry, took place while I was at Columbia Pictures, and was something that I had actually done.
I always loved the expression that is something like this "success has many parents, and failure is an orphan." While I was not pleased by my failures, I developed a superior skill set of artfully always finding someone else to blame for them. I expect that working in either the Entertainment Industry or The White House, you become expert at not taking responsibility for whatever might not have turned out the way you wanted it to.
It is incredible to me that our former President and Vice President have in recent weeks been taking credit for their wonderful eight years of trying to do whatever if was that they were trying to do with America, while leaving the blame for anything that went wrong to others. Going to war in Iraq as they did is worth more then just the "whoops" that will come out of Bush from time to time. America needed and still needs a major mea culpa from him about this.
The dictionary defines the word legacy as... "Anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor: the legacy of ancient Rome."
I have a Bush/Cheney "legacy problem."
Do those American and Iraqi boys and girls, men and women, killed or wounded have the "legacy" of a full life? The way that Bush/Cheney respond to this horrid war is repulsive to me. The hundreds of thousands killed or maimed will still be dead or wounded while both men responsible for the carnage continue to rationalize their behavior. They are proud of what they have done, while most, like me, would be ashamed. We have endured almost 50,000 casualties from all causes in Iraq.
And WHY were there any casualties at all? Why? Why? Why?
LEGACY?
If you missed the Keith Olbermann eight minutes about the Bush eight years on MSNBC, try this link.
I have not given up my desire for NBC, CBS, ABC, or Fox to present a documentary about the Bush transgressions during his eight triumphant year Presidency. What Olbermann has done and continues to do is laudable, but please General Electric, allow him to "run rampant" on your Broadcast Network and make a much bigger impact.
Many have suggested that it is time to "look forward" and to a certain extent they are correct. However, I do believe that I need some sort of "truth and reconciliation" activity to examine and bring to light the monstrous transgressions of the last eight years that pertain at least to the Iraqi war. The violators of our laws and Constitution should at least be exposed even if they are not punished for what they have done.
I only hope that a very rich American would hire some respected investigatory reporters to produce a documentary about the Bush/Cheney years and give it away to whomever will transmit it.
That documentary could serve as the Bush/Cheney legacy.