northsider

Foaming At The Mouth
Like Lee Harvey Oswald said, "I'm just a patsy"

I clicked on a link a few minutes ago that led me to video from this morning's press conference from the President. I only saw the first ninety seconds or so, just enough to catch some light banter with the press corps before fielding yet another painful question about accountability. In that instant, it became perfectly clear what the next popular assessment of George W. Bush will be: Pity.

That's right, pity. I truly feel that people will come to recognize how he (and by extension, the rest of us) wound up in this mess of an administration. That he was just a trojan horse for the GOP to get into the White House. It was evident to anyone saw the political cartoons on the op-ed pages of any major newspaper that Al Gore's key weakness in 2000 was the public perception of him as wooden and bloodless. So the perfect opponent was a man with no greater strength than his jocular charm. His hearty backslapping manner combined with genuine piety (a product of his alcohol recovery), experience in the executive branch on the state level, and a connection to the Presidency by his father made him an excellent vehicle for the Republican party. The fact that he is by all accounts an intellectually incurious person just meant that he would have no problem allowing himself to be helped by 'more experienced hands' like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell. Any threats or dirty work that needed to be carried out would be subcontracted out to Karl Rove, easily the most disgusting and reprehensible scumbag in major politics since Joe 'There's Commies under the bed' McCarthy.

So my point is that I really think that people will eventually feel sorry for the guy. Does he deserve our pity more than the people who really got shafted by his administration? Of course not. But sooner or later, even he may come to realize was played by his good friends in the GOP. They set him up to be the front man for Cheney's conniving and Rumsfeld's pig-headed stubbornness. I think we will soon start to see an increase in 'Poor, poor George W.' editorials in the near future, even among more conservative Republicans.

And the tell-all denunciations of how he was kept in the dark and manipulated by insiders who have held both him and the general public in sneering contempt have already started to trickle in. But don't expect any from Bush himself. As fas as G.W.B. is concerned, Dick Cheney setting up cushy government contracts for his private-sector cronies is no different than when his fraternity brothers bought beer for the underaged on Pledge Night. And he never, ever would have stopped them, even if it meant his ass if they were caught. Mark these words: whatever else may come to pass, George W. Bush's legacy will be similar to that of Warren G. Harding's. Just a sucker for his crooked pals.