Submitted to a Candid World

Below, a top ten list of Bush’s worst failures. In one of my favorite episodes of Futurama, one character defends his absurd profession by saying, “when push comes to shove, you gotta do what you love, even if it’s not a good idea.” That pretty much sums up George W. Bush’s entire presidency.

I’m dedicating this post to remembering some of the worst of the worst of Bush’s acts in office, misdeeds which made me greatly question the health of our nation and of our democracy. We need to remember that, if we vote for McCain, we may not be voting literally for Bush, but we’re voting for the same behind-the-scenes people that made him so awful. So, lest we forget, a top ten list, in no particular order:

1. Outing Valerie Plame Wilson: when State Department officer Joseph Wilson discovered that Bush’s State of the Union mention of “yellow cake uranium,” implying Iraqi nuclear capabilities, was not consistent with facts, he told the public. In an urgent effort to discredit Wilson, and shame him into secrecy, Karl Rove - exclaiming, “Wilson’s wife is fair game” - assisted various other press operatives in “outing” Valerie Plame Wilson as an undercover operative. A career ruined, intelligence blown, lives at risk, all for a political point. (more below the line…)
2. Partially Pardoning Scooter Libby: for his efforts in the fiasco, Scooter Libby was convicted of interfering with justice. Effectively proving that in Bush’s Washington, justice is determined by pay grade, Bush commuted Libby’s prison sentence. I’m aware that other Presidents have pulled this stunt: they were wrong too.
3. The Departure of Colin Powell: many Americans voted for Bush in ‘00 and ‘04 because, despite his mistakes and apparent incompetence, Bush had “good people” behind him. People like Colin Powell. Of course, the Bush-Powell relationship dynamic actively prevented Powell from using that competence. When Powell proposed sending condoms to Africa to halt the AIDS epidemic, Bush refused to, instead insisting on “abstinence only” education as the only way to combat AIDS. When Powell informed him that this would worsen the AIDS crisis, Bush not only refused to listen, but made Powell announce the plan himself. This attempt to extend the Bush moral fiat to Africa - doomed from the start abroad as it is at home - is a prime example of Bush-era factual relativism, too. When Powell left the State Department in 2005, it symbolized the departure of intelligence, competence, and objective reasoning from the Bush White House.
4. Abu Ghraib: winning hearts and minds, one electrified nipple at a time. Enough said.
5. Denial, but Silent Approval, of Torture: the American people are largely against torture, except in the “24,” ticking-time-bomb scenario, which has of course never existed beyond the hypothetical. As opposition to torture became more and more of a valence issue, Bush continued to insist that, if it was done, he didn’t know of it or approve of it. But, of course, he did, proving again that Bush sees himself less as a president, and more as a potentate free to disregard public will unless he’s up for election.
6. Mission Accomplished: on May 1, 2003, Bush declared an end to “major combat operations” in the Iraq War. In what was either a legendary attempt to “talk away” the truth, or possibly just gross ignorance, Bush attempted to convince the American people that the Iraq War was over. More than five years later, casualties are still mounting. This banner is emblematic of the larger problem of the Iraq War: America never voted for the war that we got. We voted for a short war with a short occupation. We got a bloody fiasco with no end in sight. The theme runs throughout the Bush presidency. Just so, we voted for a compassionate conservative: we got an imperialist. Seriously, if America were a corporation, the “material misrepresentations” made by this administration would have been enough to put the “CEO” behind bars long ago.
7. Terry Schiavo: when Mrs. Schiavo, in a persistent vegetative state, was going to be put to rest, the legislature and the President rushed in to declare Mrs. Schiavo “alive and well.” Symbolic of Bush’s other attempts to legislate away “uncomfortable” scientific realities - look at his stance on science education, global warming, etc. - the question of whether a functionally dead woman had a right to die all of a sudden became an issue in the “culture wars.” Why Bush, along with the rest of the religious right and their “culture of [selective] life,” care about adults facing euthanasia and fetuses facing abortion, but not adults facing the death penalty, not children without health care, and not elderly people without medication, is simply beyond me. I guess human life is only important where politically expedient.
8. Election-Year Attempts to Ban Gay Marriage: how is it that gay marriage is only a threat to the institution of the American family in election years? Bush was so quick to pull out that issue in 2004 and 2006, so ardent in pursuing it, but so quick in dropping it after the respective elections ended. The exploitation of hot button issues, at the expense of national unity and no matter what the cost, is a theme that I will not miss.
9. Alberto Gonzales’ “I Don’t Know” Congressional Testimony: attorney general Alberto Gonzales’ repeated sworn denials of knowledge of the potentially politically-motivated firing of certain U.S. attorneys turned what I thought was an innocuous employment scuffle into a showcase of the subordination of accountability, logic, and democracy to the all-important opinion poll. It proved that the administration’s obsession with secrecy went so far as to even cover material that they shouldn’t be afraid to disclose.  I’m ashamed to share an undergraduate degree with Gonzales.  Small consolation: at least he can’t find a job.  His old firm (Vinson & Elkins LLP) won’t take him back!
10. Cheney’s “So?”: I’ll let the following video clip end this little polemic, and speak for itself. It’s a fitting way to close any evaluation of the Bush years.

I weep for my country. My only consolation is that we’ve survived worse. Not bloody often, though.