Adios, Au Revoir, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye!

Tomorrow afternoon at 12:01, having utterly failed at the only real job he’s ever had, George W. Bush will take his place at the bottom of the presidential barrel. His media mea culpas have already vanished into the ether. His apparent graciousness during the current transition (in marked contrast to his reprehensible behavior in 2001, when he allowed his staff to spread preposterous lies about Clintons having "trashed" the White House) will do him no permanent good. (It’s like Chris Rock’s riff about sleazy people demanding credit for doing what they’re supposed to do.) The world and we have seen enough. Bush’s unprecedented blend of incompetence and villainy will serve him well as he battles the stygian shade of Richard Nixon for the title of Worst President Ever. And unless the Middle East transforms itself rapidly enough for a critical mass of historians to somehow give Bush and his bloody wars a share of the credit, his fate is sealed.



Still, in ways large and small, the Bush Reclamation Project is already underway. Here’s Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal, on the president's prodigious White House reading:

A glutton for punishment, Mr. Bush insisted on another rematch in 2008. But it will be a three-peat for me: as of today, his total is 40 volumes to my 64. His reading this year included a heavy dose of history -- including David Halberstam's "The Coldest Winter," Rick Atkinson's "Day of Battle," Hugh Thomas's "Spanish Civil War, "Stephen W. Sears's "Gettysburg" and David King's "Vienna 1814." There's also plenty of biography -- including U.S. Grant's "Personal Memoirs"; Jon Meacham's "American Lion"; James M. McPherson's "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief" and Jacobo Timerman's "Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number."

This is absurd and laughable. It's pure presidential scorekeeping. Bush undoubtedly counts "books I've read" the way Bill Clinton counts golf strokes. (Although, if Rove is telling the truth for once, it might explain why his boss demanded one-page national security memos. He was too busy reading about Dean Acheson to worry about Osama bin Laden.)


Unfortunately for Karl and George, other people are going to keep talking about the Dark Side of Dubya. Here’s Lawrence Wilkerson, quoted in this month’s Vanity Fair:

We had this confluence of characters—and I use that term very carefully—that included people like Powell, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and so forth, which allowed one perception to be "the dream team." It allowed everybody to believe that this Sarah Palin-like president—because, let’s face it, that’s what he was—was going to be protected by this national-security elite, tested in the cauldrons of fire. What in effect happened was that a very astute, probably the most astute, bureaucratic entrepreneur I’ve ever run into in my life became the vice president of the United States.

He became vice president well before George Bush picked him. And he began to manipulate things from that point on, knowing that he was going to be able to convince this guy to pick him, knowing that he was then going to be able to wade into the vacuums that existed around George Bush—personality vacuum, character vacuum, details vacuum, experience vacuum.

Ironically, George W. Bush has left the country in such a sorry state that his successor and the Democratic Congress are unlikely to have the time to hold him accountable, even if they have the stomach for it--which they don’t.

For me, the jury is still out on Barack Obama. I need to see some results. I won’t be getting any thrills up my thigh tomorrow.


Unless I get to see a commercial jet–not Air Force One–taking off for Texas with George W. Bush aboard. One way.