Our justifiably beleaguered president, G.W. Bush has been describing how he sees his “legacy” to the world in a breathtaking series of interviews with Hebrew-language and Arabic-language media. The WaPo’s Dan Froomkin has provided a helpful digest of these interviews, here. You can read the whole texts as posted on the White House website, on the sidebar here.
From Froomkin:
- “I can predict that the historians will say that George W. Bush recognized the threats of the 21st century, clearly defined them, and had great faith in the capacity of liberty to transform hopelessness to hope, and laid the foundation for peace by making some awfully difficult decisions,” Bush told Yonit Levi of Israel’s Channel 2 News…
And so it goes on. And on and on and on…
Froomkin, quite accurately, describes Bush’s utterances as “particularly delusional as he heads to a region that remains traumatized, angry and distrustful on account of Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq, his antagonism of Iran and his perceived crusade against Islam.” He also notes that
- Bush’s self-image contrasts sharply with his image among his fellow Americans… [A] CNN poll in November found that 58 percent of Americans rated Bush either a poor president, a very poor president, or the worst president ever.
So why is this sad sack of a guy being foisted onto the peoples of the Middle East at this time? I guess a first explanation might be simply that he is delusional. He really does not see the effect he has had on the world. (If you read the longer texts of these interviews, though, you’ll see that he repeatedly argues that “we can’t really judge the Bush presidency today, or for a very long time into the future….” Which means he probably is aware, if not of the effects of his actions on others, then at least of his low popularity figures.)
Another strong possible sign of his delusionality might be the degree to which he speaks about himself in these interviews in the third person.
From reading Froomkin I also learned of this recent WaPo op-ed in which the venerable former Senator George McGovern argued for Bush’s impeachment. McGovern noted that back in 1974, when calls to impeach Pres. Nixon were gathering steam, he had stood aside from that campaign, because he thought if he joined it that would look like an act of political vengeance against the man who had beaten him in the 1972 presidential election.
But then comes this zinger:
- [T]he case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?
He notes correctly that neither party in the Congress seems eager to start impeacghment hearings. But he writes:
- Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly “high crimes and misdemeanors,” to use the constitutional standard.
I I drew a different comparison here yesterday between late-Nixon and late-Bush, noting that Bush’s desperate attempt to get out of Washington and foist himself on the Middle East looked strangely evocative of the foreign trips Nixon made during his last months in office in 1974. One of those Nixon trips was indeed also to the Middle East. Someone who knows a lot about that era recalled to me recently that one of the strangest things that happened was when, during a meeting with the whole Israeli cabinet, someone raised the question of what to do about terrorism. Nixon replied that he knew what should be done! He jumped to his feet, assumed the crouch of a Chicago gangster and whirled his imaginary machine-gun around in front of him in a way that, if the gun had existed, would have mowed down the whole Israeli cabinet. “That’s what should be done!” he told the astonished cabinet members.
I wonder if GWB’s particular form of delusionality also involves amateur theatrics?
Considering the series of ineffective and criminal presidents that the US people have had to endure, with no end in sight, perhaps the Constitution ought to be amended to eliminate the position. Recently Obama is seen as a new ‘savior’ — woe is us.
“No man is wise enough to be another man’s master. Each man’s as good as the next — if not a damn sight better.” –Edward Abbey
There used to be a TV satire called the Great White North where a couple of hosers (their own term), definitely not among the most swift, would regale the audience with their notions of really smart ideas. One was to leave the car flasher lights on when you go into the doughnut shop for a coffee break on the theory that the cops would not ticket your car. Right. People really got off on that one.
The thing is, some delusions go down smoothly with some audiences, and even those who see right through them may consider them harmless. Maybe a lot of Americans belong to a group that shares the delusions of Bush, or considers them harmless. So long as your media features only the propaganda of a tiny band of media moguls, both pretenses can be relied on, even though 50,000 dead or wounded Americans and God knows how many dead and injured Iraqi people,plus the terrible reality of Gaza are nothing to be amused about.