So, the inauguration went off pretty much like everyone thought it would – first date jitters between Obama and Roberts aside. The harpy-toothed right will try to make noise about Obama’s oath. They’ll sight his middle name, since they’re still not over it after a year and a half. They’ll accuse him of thief’s guilt via his stammered, over anxious recitation – as if the far right has any ground to stand on in terms of their main man bungling his lines in public. And the tin foil hat brigade will claim that the variation of the Presidential oath means that Obama isn’t really the President – right after they remind us that his birth certificate was clearly photoshopped by time traveling al Queda agents.

His speech was mostly what I expected. I was surprised to hear him include non-believers in his littany of religious groups that need to come together. It was such a wonderful contrast to the hateful little tirade that one Williard M. Romney went on just about one year go. And his handling of race – specifically his race – was deft as ever. Managing to talk about his status as a minority in the country that elected him, segregation, slavery and racism without ever referring to himself (or anyone else) as “black” or “African-American”. I don’t know if it’s his way of refusing to create contrasts or if he’s just trying to avoid the out-of-context sound bite potential that our media loves to replay in place of actual news, but he executed it as well as he ever has.

There were times in the speech that he grew more forceful than I expected (and I welcomed them). He also grew a bit more flowery towards the end than I would have preferred. I understand that his speeches are a bit of poetry and a bit of performance art, but I felt like the last paragraph or so was crafted using some sort of Random Cliche Generator. But the thing that stuck out most in my mind about the speech was how he handled George W. Bush. He essentially thanked him for his service to our country, and then proceeded on to a list of ways that our country has gone straight to hell in the past eight years. It wasn’t quite the full-on Colbert, but it was a hell of a lot nicer than I would have been. Of course, I’m also not the President right now. Maybe those two things are related.

But on this day when I’m supposed to be celebrating The End of an Error, all I can think about is that bloody error of a man, grumping down into the collar of his coat, staring back at Barack Obama. All I can see is that stonewalled glare as Obama talked about the false choice between freedom and safety. I wonder if Bush is relieved. If it’s a load off of his mind to no longer have to worry about the burdens and responsibilities of office. If like every other endeavor he’s attempted over the course of his snake-bitten life, he’s happy to let someone else clean up his mess. After all, now he can go home to Kennebunkport (the ranch in Crawford is as much of a prop as the man who owns it), slip on his comfies, and try to figure out why David Letterman chuckles so hard whenever he sees a video clip of Bush trying to walk in a straight line.

And yet, he just isn’t disappearing down the memory hole quietly enough or quickly enough. Part of that has to do with his whirlwind Legacy Tour, where he and Cheney and Condi and that whole wacky, lovable crew you remember from their hit television show “Terrorists Are Going To Fucking Kill You” give interviews to every reporter and pundit that will feign interest long enough to let them speak. And their message is pretty much the same every time. History will vindicate them. The world will thank them. And seriously, y’all, it’s not torture if the prisoner doesn’t actually die.

When Bush is compared to Nixon, my heart swells. Not just because Bush is left to justify his existence against one of the worst Presidents in American history, but because he fails to do so. Even Nixon’s most vocal and unkind critics viewed Tricky Dick favorably in comparison. And truly, even if he could prove his primacy over Richard Nixon, there are no medals for second-to-last place. “Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for – but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him.” – Hunter S. Thompson

This same Revisionist Army has tried to compare Bush to Truman and Lincoln (both Presidents who left office unpopular, but were vindicated later). The comparison to Truman is bad enough – Truman’s tenure in the White House was marked by the firm belief that no matter who had caused a problem, as President it was his responsibility to set things right. And whether he actually coined the phrase or not, “The Buck Stops Here” will be forever associated with Harry Truman. Bush, by contrast, never came across a problem that was either his fault for causing or his job to fix. From 9/11 to the phantom Iraqi WMDs to the drowning of New Orleans to the meltdown of our economy to the torture of prisoners in American custody, Bush was mysteriously never culpable. Nor did he ever make any efforts to correct the crises of his Presidency with even the slightest whiff of competency.

But to compare a cretin like Bush to a giant like Lincoln is just beyond the pale. I’m going on record right now and predicting that, in a century’s time, no one will be using the nickname “Honest Bush”. At his lowest, Bush excuses his excesses by comparing them to the excesses of Lincoln’s Presidency, and justifies them similarly. Now with all due respect to those that have fought and served and sacrificed over the past seven years, anyone who suggests that some backwards bunch of brainwashed holy warriors scheming in the mountains of Afghanistan threatened the stability of our country on the same level as the Civil War needs to walk the cemetery at Gettysburg and realize that those hoary stones mark a just fraction of the good men wasted in three short days of combat.

There is no need to wait for history to obscure the details in a battle fog of conflicting punditry and rosy nostalgia. George W. Bush was, is and forever will be a miserable failure, from his ape-gait lumber to his spoiled child certainty to his ghastly inability to refrain from smirking when invoking the memory of the dead. But worse than that, he was an empty-headed creature. A pseudo-folksy front man for a band of Pollyanna armchair generals who see the world as their own personal political rutting ground. Men who thought the domino theory that worked so bloody well in Vietnam was worth trying again – only this time in reverse and in a region far less stable. Not that any of them were around to see the domino theory in action. Like Dick Cheney, they all had other priorities.

So consider this my grand goodbye to George W. Bush. The man who single handedly made Presidential elections a two-year affair, born from the public’s urgent desire for a real leader. The man who forced us to laugh, though never with him. The man who cast America before the eyes of the world as a self-righteous, egomaniacal bully. The man who rode this country through an agonizing eight-year slow-motion T.J. Kong bomb drop of ignorant, warmongering insanity.

He will not be missed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 4:41 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.