Last Stop on Bush's Magical History Tour

As departing President George W. Bush rides out his Magical History Tour with a farewell speech, onlookers are left with one more emotion to add to the horror, outrage, disbelief and despair that his administration has engendered: boredom.

After eight years of acclimatization to Bush’s magical thinking, in which democracy is a condiment to spread over other nations like butter on a slice of Wonder bread, and everything in our wide, wonderful world can be reduced to absolute categories of good or evil, most of us are beyond hearing, believing or caring about anything that rolls off the well-trod footpath of Bush’s tongue. In the interest, though, of protesting one last time that the emperor is not wearing new clothes no matter how sincerely he believes he is, let us note the most flagrant of W’s delusions.

The Bush Doctrine has not made our world a safer place. Afghanistan is hardly the young democracy that now encourages girls to attend school… unless throwing acid in their faces as they walk to class can be considered encouragement. Nor is Iraq the shining beacon of Arab Democracy and friend of the U. S. that will revolutionize the Middle East. Our friends don’t throw shoes at our President when he is making a speech… notwithstanding that many of us in the homeland can understand the impulse. And as for Bush’s pat, farewell claim that, “Democracies do not elect terrorists…” what, exactly, did Palestinians do when they used their first Democratic election to put Hamas in power? The only thing we can say with certainty about Bush's Adventures in TerrorTown is that 100,000 Iraquis and 4,200-plus Americans died in them, while Haliburton and Blackwater grew richer.

Which leads to a Bushism that is only partially delusional: mostly it’s self-serving hypocrisy. When he said in his farewell address, as if blowing a kiss to a lover he was dumping, that “America must maintain our moral clarity,” sensitive JPL instruments registered a sustained rumble as jaws dropped across America. What right does the leader of an administration that gave us Abu Graib, Gitmo and the Katrina fiasco have to utter the words “moral clarity,” much less wave them like a tour-bus banner? Whatever America did or didn’t demonstrate to the world in the past eight years, moral clarity is the furthest thing from it.

Before climbing back onto his history bus, Bush tossed us a final, magical thought: We may not agree with his decisions, but we must at least give him credit for making the hard ones. I won't be the only or last one to point out that, if the decisions made were very, very bad... like, launching a preemptive war over weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist... no credit is due.

Throughout his presidency, Bush has whined that the work of governing, winning wars and rescuing hurricane victims is “hard.” Yes. And it is especially “hard” when the administration responsible for doing the work is unqualified to do it, as it would be hard for a 65-year-old ex cheerleader to lead today's Lakers to victory with a back-flip exposing her size XL thong. What’s the connection? None. If George Bush can say goodbye to America with a string of non sequiturs, I can plant one in my blog.

As Bush’s Magical History Tour recedes into the distance, many of us believe he has proven that radical conservatism doesn’t work. Hopefully we also will realize that collective national denial, just like individual personal denial, offers the briefest of comfort before it collapses in failure.