Delineation of a Historically Failed Presidency

The Bush Presidency has failed its supporters, too

I reprint the following important notice to the American people, copyright torpedoes be damned. This essay is so personal, so gripping and so real, it completely tells the tale of a nation led astray and going through the biggest catharsis since the Civil War. Even though I don't agree with every word stated, I have to believe that the solution to our national crisis lies within this letter.

AN APOLOGY FROM A BUSH VOTER

By Doug McIntyre / Host, McIntyre in the Morning Talk Radio 790 KABC

There's nothing harder in public life than admitting you're wrong. By the way, admitting you're wrong can be even tougher in private life. If you don't believe me, just ask Bill Clinton or Charlie Sheen. But when you go out on the limb in public, it's out there where everyone can see it, or in my case, hear it.

So, I'm saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he's the worst President, period.

In 2000, I was a McCain guy. I wasn't sure about the Texas Governor. He had name recognition and a lot of money behind him, but other than that? What? Still, I was sick of all the Clinton shenanigans and the thought of President Gore was... unthinkable. So, GWB became my guy.

For the first few months he was just flubbing along like most new Presidents, no great shakes, but no disasters either. He cut taxes and I like tax cuts.

Then September 11th happened. September 11th changed everything for me, like it did for so many of you. After September 11th, all the intramural idiocy of American politics stopped being funny. We had been attacked by a vicious and determined enemy and it was time for all of us to row in the same direction.

And we did for the blink of an eye. I believed the President when he said we were going to hunt down Bin Laden and all those responsible for the 9-11 murders. I believed President Bush when he said we would go after the terrorists and the nations that harbored them.

I supported the President when he sent our troops into Afghanistan, after all, that's where the Taliban was, that's where al-Qaida trained the killers, that's where Bin Laden was.

And I cheered when we quickly toppled the Taliban government, but winced when we let Bin Laden escape from Tora-Bora.

Then, the talk turned to Iraq and I winced again.

I thought the connection to 9-11 was sketchy at best. But Colin Powell impressed me at the UN, and Tony Blair was in, and after all, he was a Clinton guy, not a Bush guy, so I thought the case had to be strong. I was worried though, because I had read the Wolfowitz paper, "The Project for the New American Century." It's been around since '92, and it raised alarm bells because it was based on a theory, "Democratizing the Middle East" and I prefer pragmatism over theory. I was worried because Iraq was being justified on a radical new basis, "pre-emptive war." Any time we do something without historical precedent I get nervous.

But the President shifted the argument to WMDs and the urgent threat of Iraq getting atomic weapons. The debate turned to Saddam passing nukes on to terror groups. After 9-11, the risk was too great. As the President said, "The next smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud." At least that's what I thought at the time.

I grew up in New York and watched them build the World Trade Center. I worked with a guy, Frank O'Brien, who put the elevators in both towers. I lost a very close friend on September 11th. 103 floor, tower one, Cantor Fitzgerald. Tim Coughlin was his name. If we had to take out Iraq to make sure something like that, or worse, never happened again, so be it. I knew the consequences. We have a soldier in our house. None of this was theoretical in my house.

But in the months and years since shock and awe I have been shocked repeatedly by a consistent litany of excuses, alibis, double-talk, inaccuracies, bogus predictions, and flat out lies. I have watched as the President and his administration changed the goals, redefined the reasons for going into Iraq, and fumbled the good will of the world and the focus necessary to catch the real killers of September 11th.

I have watched the President say the commanders on the ground will make the battlefield decisions, and the war won't be run from Washington. Yet, politics has consistently determined what the troops can and can't do on the ground and any commander who did not go along with the administration was sacked, and in some cases, maligned.

I watched and tried to justify the looting in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. I watched and tried to justify the dismantling of the entire Iraqi army. I tired to explain the complexities of building a functional new Iraqi army. I urged patience when no WMDs were found. Then the Vice President told us we were in the "waning days of the insurgency." And I started wincing again. The President says we have to stay the course but what if it's the wrong course?

It was the wrong course. All of it was wrong. We are not on the road to victory. We're about to slink home with our tail between our legs, leaving civil war in Iraq and a nuclear armed Iran in our wake. Bali was bombed. Madrid was bombed. London was bombed. And Bin Laden is still making tapes. It's unspeakable. The liberal media didn't create this reality, bad policy did.

Most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a reasonably accurate take on a President's place in history. So, maybe 50 years from now Iraq will be a peaceful member of the brotherhood of nations and George W. Bush will be celebrated as a visionary genius.

But we don't live fifty years in the future. We live now. We have to make public policy decisions now. We have to live with the consequences of the votes we cast and the leaders we chose now.

After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I've reached the conclusion he's either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works. Or both.

Presidential failures. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Jimmy Carter, Warren Harding -- the competition is fierce for the worst of the worst. Still, the damage this President has done is enormous. It will take decades to undo, and that's assuming we do everything right from now on. His mistakes have global implications, while the other failed Presidents mostly authored domestic embarrassments.

And speaking of domestic embarrassments, let's talk for a minute about President Bush's domestic record. Yes, he cut taxes. But tax cuts combined with reckless spending and borrowing is criminal mismanagement of the public's money. We're drunk at the mall with our great grandchildren's credit cards. Whatever happened to the party of fiscal responsibility?

Bush created a giant new entitlement, the prescription drug plan. He lied to his own party to get it passed. He lied to the country about its true cost. It was written by and for the pharmaceutical industry. It helps nobody except the multinationals that lobbied for it. So much for smaller government. In fact, virtually every tentacle of government has grown exponentially under Bush. Unless, of course, it was an agency to look after the public interest, or environmental protection, and/or worker's rights.

I've talked so often about the border issue, I won't bore you with a rehash. It's enough to say this President has been a catastrophe for the wages of working people; he's debased the work ethic itself. "Jobs Americans won't do!" He doesn't believe in the sovereign borders of the country he's sworn to protect and defend. And his devotion to cheap labor for his corporate benefactors, along with his worship of multinational trade deals, makes an utter mockery of homeland security in a post 9-11 world. The President's January 7th, 2004 speech on immigration, his first trial balloon on his guest worker scheme, was a deal breaker for me. I couldn't and didn't vote for him in 2004. And I'm glad I didn't.

Katrina, Harriet Myers, The Dubai Port Deal, skyrocketing gas prices, shrinking wages for working people, staggering debt, astronomical foreign debt, outsourcing, open borders, contempt for the opinion of the American people, the war on science, media manipulation, faith based initives, a cavalier attitude toward fundamental freedoms-- this President has run the most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in my lifetime, perhaps, in any American's lifetime.

You can make a case that Abraham Lincoln did what he had to do, the public be damned. If you roll the dice on your gut and you're right, history remembers you well. But, when your gut led you from one business failure to another, when your gut told you to trade Sammy Sosa to the Cubs, and you use the same gut to send our sons and daughters to fight and die in a distraction from the real war on terror, then history will and should be unapologetic in its condemnation.

None of this, by the way, should be interpreted as an endorsement of the opposition party. The Democrats are equally bankrupt. This is the second crime of our age. Again, historically speaking, its times like these when America needs a vibrant opposition to check the power of a run-amuck majority party. It requires it. It doesn't work without one. Like the high and low tides keep the oceans alive, a healthy, positive opposition offers a path back to the center where all healthy societies live.

Tragically, the Democrats have allowed crackpots, leftists and demagogic cowards to snipe from the sidelines while taking no responsibility for anything. In fairness, I don't believe a Democrat president would have gone into Iraq. Unfortunately, I don't know if President Gore would have gone into Afghanistan. And that's one of the many problems with the Democrats.

The two party system has always been clumsy and imperfect, but it has only collapsed once, in the 1850s, and the result was civil war.

I believe, as I have said countless times, the two party system is on the brink of a second collapsed. It's currently running on spin, anger, revenge, and pots and pots and pots of money.

We're being governed by paper-mache patriots; brightly painted red, white and blue, but hollow to the core. Both parties have mastered the cynical arts of media manipulation and fund raising. They've learned the lessons of Watergate and burn the tapes. They have learned to divide the nation for their own gain. They have demonstrated the willingness to exploit any tragedy for personal advantage. The contempt they have for the American people is without parallel.

This is painful to say, and I'm sure for many of you, painful to read. But it's impossible to heal the country until we're willing to acknowledge the truth no matter how painful. We have to wean ourselves off sugar coated partisan lies.

With a belated tip of the cap to Ralph Nader, the system is broken, so broken, it's almost inevitable it pukes up the Al Gores and George W. Bushes. Where are the Trumans and the Eisenhowers? Where are the men and women of vision and accomplishment? Why do we have to settle for recycled hacks and malleable ciphers? Greatness is always rare, but is basic competence and simple honesty too much to ask?

It may be decades before we have the full picture of how paranoid and contemptuous this administration has been. And I am open to the possibility that I'm all wet about everything I've just said. But I'm putting it out there, because I have to call it as I see it, and this is how I see it today. I don't say any of this lightly. I've thought about this for months and months. But eventually, the weight of evidence takes on a gravitational force of its own.

I believe that George W. Bush has taken us down a terrible road. I don't believe the Democrats are offering an alternative. That means we're on our own to save this magnificent country. The United States of America is a gift to the world, but it has been badly abused and it's rightful owners, We the People, had better step up to the plate and reclaim it before the damage becomes irreparable.

So, accept my apology for allowing partisanship to blind me to an obvious truth; our President is incapable of the tasks he is charged with. I almost feel sorry for him. He is clearly in over his head. Yet, he doesn't generate the sympathy Warren Harding earned. Harding, a spectacular mediocrity, had the self-knowledge to tell any and all he shouldn't be President. George W. Bush continues to act the part, but at this point whose buying the act?

Does this make me a waffler? A flip-flopper? Maybe, although I prefer to call it realism. And, for those of you who never supported Bush, its also fair to accuse me of kicking Bush while he's down. After all, you were kicking him while he was up.

You were right, I was wrong.

The Return of the Long Lost Art of Righteous Brazenness

Are Americans relearning how to speak out without fear?

The final weekend of April 2006 gave us Americans a big taste of something we haven't beheld for a very long time: People actually standing up and saying things on their mind, apparently without fear of any retribution whatsoever. Americans have seemingly regrasped the powerfulness of catharsis in one full swoop.

In one extended weekend, we saw three major national protests in favor of immigrant rights, getting U.S. forces out of Iraq, and doing something about the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. We saw the highly talented Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner emit a blast furnace of "truthiness" that scorched a tumbling President and an uninquisitive lapdog American press. We are seeing a crescendo of pundits and concerned citizens across the U.S. make the case why there is no case for a new elective, preemptive war with Iran. And this weekend capped an extraordinary period where we see 1) state legislatures in three U.S. states (so far) openly considering whether Bush should be impeached via the invocation of special rules developed by none other than Thomas Jefferson, and 2) multiple retired U.S. generals openly speaking out against the current U.S. Defense Secretary--acts historically unheard of.

Americans who deeply care about the republic are learning how to speak out again. But why now? Let's explore some possibilities.

People are *really* tired of war

Yesterday, the number of Iraq combat deaths amongst American soldiers reached the 2,400 mark. Thousands upon thousands of our finest have been injured, physically and psychologically. And the numbers of Iraqi dead are mounting to far higher and scarier numbers themselves. And all this occurred because Bush decided to go to war without any justification (that we know of today), and worse, using cherry-picked intelligence to lie Congress into supporting a war resolution. But what makes this all hit a special boiling point now is that Bush 1) continues to have no plan whatsoever for our ultimate withdrawal, and 2) civil war is obviously brewing over there while our soldiers are left sitting in the middle of it. Bush is now seen as not giving one damn about our troops, and this is absolutely unacceptable to most of the American people. There's also a growing sense in the American public that war should be only the last resort in defending the nation--so when we now know how Bush got us into Iraq, and wants to get us into Iran, we now clearly see sinister schemes and fearmongering where we used to see a "strong war President."

If the Latinos can do it, why can't we?

On several occasions recently, Latinos across the country have taken off work, risking their employment and possibly even their safety, to march in favor of their rights in this country. And they are showing up the rest of us *real* good. A lot of people are wondering, "How are they doing that?", "Hey, why can't we organize like them?" and "How can they be so brave?". American Latinos are giving us all an object lesson that certain things are worth fighting for. And despite the U.S. Constitution being obviously trashed on multiple occasions by President Bush (as one mere example), most of the rest of us cannot seem to be able to organize our own protests. People are asking aloud "What's wrong with us if we can't fight for our country?" Perhaps this past weekend was the beginning of a big answer to that question.

The encouragement from high Bush negatives in the polls

There is an obvious bandwagon effect here; that is, when 68% (or so) of the American people are on your side against Bush, it is easier to speak out without anyone calling you on it, or firing you for it. But it's not as simple as this, as many Americans have been living in a state of fear, much of it induced by political leaders (and even some employers), since 9/11. The current major disapproval of Bush was, in a way, hard won by activists pointing out over time the increasing instances and degrees of Bush's obvious foibles. And so now that Bush is hovering near Nixonian lows, there is most likely a sense of relief and even faint celebration in the American public that most of us are on the same page now. We can finally speak our true minds again. It is very refreshing and empowering.

Those damned high gas prices

This is a "well, duh!" kind of point, but people do seem to start squawking when their wallets and purses are being hit hard by fuel and travel expenses that continue going up seemingly without an end in sight. Anecdotal evidence of "political conversations at the pump" are on the rise. When people are hurting financially, and hurting the same across the board, people almost can't help but take advantage of the "water cooler of economic complaining." And what makes this effect especially piercing for Bush's bubble regime is that everyone knows that the high gas prices are all his doing through political inaction based on an unusual coziness with Big Oil (not to mention his administration continuing to beat the wardrums for a new conflict with Iran).

Bush has crossed one Constitutional limit too many

The American people love their Bill of Rights. And they love how the Founding Fathers set up this republic to have a separation of powers. But now President Bush is openly trashing our rights via warrantless wiretapping, while writing "signing statements" on hundreds of bills that effectively says he has the power to decide the constitutionality of laws that apply to the executive branch (well, really, Bush himself). Many Americans rightly see these actions by Bush as outright treason. And when they see treason in a political leader, true patriotism arises in the American public. Bush's treason against the Constitution has become a major factor, not only in terms of increasing complaints from elected Representatives and Senators (even within his own party), but also in Americans scratching and clawing to find *some* way of impeaching and removing this President. Because of the craven intransigence of the Republican Congress, the state legislature route is apparently the only way of legally removing the President. And of course, if that fails, given the continued outright treasonous activity by Bush, who knows how much further the American people will be willing to go to see he is removed? Hint: I've seen some approving talk in some places of a potential coup--the past several months especially. Come to think about it, when we see retired generals speaking out, it almost seems as if a shot across the bow is occurring right before our very eyes.

**

The increased speaking out, in public and in Internet forums and blogs, is happening despite the fear of what our employers or potential employers might do. Apparently, we are about at the point where the American people have lost much of that fear. The problems in this country are too great, and it's ultimately up to truly patriotic citizens to fight for their country--in the streets, if necessary.

But our speaking out won't come without some fierce words from the remaining 32% of Bush's support. They will warn that we will lose business or lose our jobs if we speak out--in fact, I've already been told I will lose "50%" of potential consulting business because of my "ludicrous" positions. But I don't care, and neither should anyone else. After all, if we lose the potential of 32% (the real Bush approval number) of business, that is, business from the backwash of society, why should we care? The potential of business from 68% of the public who agrees with our patriotic views is an incredibly huge market!

The bottom line for Americans is this: Do not let anyone cower you into not fighting for your country. And to the dude who thinks my "ludicrous" views will hurt my business, SO BE IT! My country is WAY MORE important than my business.