Bush Unplugged

Now so many years removed from his most defining moment our president stands stripped bare of his trappings of power. He stands before as he probably always was, a self-serving, uninspired, diletant that we can now say that we really don’t like very much. He’s an arrogant little crap with an unyielding sense that we all just don’t get it like he does.

September 11, 2001 has been his Teflon shield for five years now. The defining moment of a presidency that was on the shakiest of moral ground to begin with. Not since FDR had the Gods of War stepped in to help a presidency ascend to greater heights. Overshadowing his weak ideas on the economy, health-care, deficit reduction and all things international was his perceived strength in the face of the evil doers.

That one tragic act allowed him to redefine a presidency that in it’s beginning was floundering. He and his people were able to grab the right elements of the event and start building a shield between themselves and reality. Mr. Bush took the flag and wrapped himself in it. Forget all the rest of the stuff he told us, I will keep you safe. I will keep these turbaned wild men out of your shopping malls, office buildings, schools and bedrooms. And while I’m at it I’ll get rid of these liberals and gays and anyone else that can upset your apple cart.

But what we weren’t looking at was that smug face that sat there lecturing us. Don’t you get it, he would say? We would watch these self-satisfied dogmatists like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, and Pearl telling us that we just needed to shut and listen, they would do the heavy lifting and put “freedom” first and “safety” would be the natural progression.

But it was a house of cards seen through a rose-colored window. We weren’t being made safer, we were being lied to about what was going on. This administration was actually taking us back to a time when Richard Nixon used his presidential power like a ball-peen hammer to smack away at the rights and liberties of anyone who seemed out of line.

Ego, turned to disdain, gave the President the willingness to lie to us. And that is the greatest crime anyone of his stature can commit. The worst part is that his lies have cost so many lives. The dead men and women in Afghanistan, Iraq and even in the streets of New Orleans came from his ability to lie right to our faces. His contempt for our government allows him appoint incompetence into every office of his administration. And his lack of true compassion, I feel his greatest lie of all, have led to an atmosphere in this country totally counter to what we should be about: understanding and co-operation.

Arrogance is the one character flaw that Americans have never, ever tolerated in politics. It’s what dogged Bill Clinton, it killed Al Gore, and it is now destroying George Bush. His lack of leadership during Katrina; his secret deal with Dubai, knowing that America would never go for it; his stewardship of these false wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, his willingness to gamble our futures both financially and environmentally, show that this is a man who really doesn’t care about anything more than making he and his friends rich.