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TechnoratiDumping Dubya: Why The Regressive Right Desperately Wants To Erase The Bush Presidency
Hey, wasn't that George W. Bush presidency really fantastic?
You do still remember it, don't you?
Wasn't it great? Don't you have lots of warm and fuzzy memories of it? Isn't it a shame that he couldn't have a third term?
Okay, so maybe you don't see it that way. Maybe the last eight years weren't such a party for you. But remember the regressive right? Remember how much they loved the guy? Remember how they adored Ol' Georgie, especially back in 2001, 2002, 2003? Remember how they gloated and stuck it all in our faces? Remember how much they loved not only Bush's politics, but his in-your-face, my-way-or-the-highway, love-it-or-leave-it, macho cowboy routine delivery?
I don't know about you, but I recall all of that really, really well, thank you very much. Painfully well, one might say.
Which makes it all the more puzzling that the troglodytes of the right seem to have disappeared their former grand hero almost completely these days. Isn't that odd? They never talk about him anymore, as if he had never even existed. They seem quite desperately to want to vanish him entirely, like the body of some beaten-to-death prisoner at Abu Ghraib.
Hmmm. Wonder why? Wonder what gives?
I'll go out on a limb here and speculate that it might have something to do with the fact that the Bush presidency was a spectacular failure. You know, a total train wreck. A complete cock-up. A gigantic exercise in FUBAR so bad that nobody wants to be associated with it, anymore than with syphilis or projectile vomit.
But that's kinda weird given the former adoration directed toward the Caligula Kid. Isn't that kind of intellectually dishonest? Can it be that the right in America is actually disingenuous? I mean, everyone knows they are destructive, selfish, hypocritical, racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, imperialistic, nasty, brutish and short. But who would have thought they were dishonest too? This is almost more than I can bear!
If you pin a regressive to the wall and torture them (a practice which I recommend as often beneficial for both parties involved), they will do two things to try to stop you from beating them up about Lil' Bush.
First, they'll attempt to deflect your attention away from the whole painful affair by talking about a certain Ronald Reagan fellow, patron saint of lost causes. That's an interesting move, given that Junior Bush was more Reaganistic than was Reagan himself. And, especially, given that Reagan was last in the White House an entire generation ago, making him about as relevant to many Americans today as Millard Fillmore.
It's also more than a bit weird because, of course, Saint Reagan bears little resemblance to Ron Reagan, the dude who actually was president. (Indeed, Ron Reagan the person - a guy so out of it during his presidency that he actually introduced himself to his own cabinet members and his own children in White House receiving lines, and used 3 x 5 cue cards even to read his small talk lines with people ("Pretty humid today, huh?" "How ‘bout those Yankees?") - actually bore little resemblance to the presidency he played in the movies, but that's another story entirely.) Saint Reagan solved all our economic problems. Ron Reagan, on the other hand, gave us the worst recession since the Great Depression (until little Bush would trump him), and tripled the national debt (until little Bush trumped him again). Saint Reagan was a great champion of American values. Ron Reagan shredded the Constitution in the Iran-Contra Affair. Saint Reagan was tough on the Soviets and ended the Cold War. Ron Reagan nearly agreed to eliminate all American nukes in a pow-wow with Gorby, tucked tail and ran from Lebanon, and was so powerful that he succeeded in rolling back the Soviets from every square single inch of the Carribean island of Grenada, current population 90,343. And so on...
So playing the Reagan card is the first game used to avoid the horrid little reality of Bushism. But if that particular line of diversionary legerdemain fails miserably, the next thing you're likely to hear is that conservatives have abandoned George W. Bush because he wasn't really a conservative.
This is my favorite. Oh yes, indeed.
Do they mean by that that Bush was too nice in his foreign policy, concerning himself too frequently with world opinion rather than American self-interest?
Do they mean that he failed to invade other countries - like, say, Afghanistan or Iraq - when he should have?
Are they upset that he was too squeamish to deploy American military forces in endless wars based on lies?
Or are they angry that the administration didn't privatize everything in sight, including the country's armed forces?
Do they mean that he was too nice to the mealy-mouthed diplo-nothing-burgers at the UN, rather than sending a thug over there to jam policy down their throats?
Do they mean that he wasn't unilateral enough, always worrying about what Europeans and other pansy countries were concerned about?
Is their problem with him that he coddled the Russians and refused to shred the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty?
Or that he was far too deferential to bearded, Birkenstock-wearing, Al Gore-adoring dittoheads, and wouldn't unsign the Kyoto Accord?
Or that he failed to undermine the International Criminal Court at every possible opportunity?
Maybe it's all about how he negotiated too much with North Korea.
Are they angry that Bushiekins didn't have the guts to piss all over international law by authorizing illegal invasions, torture and renditions?
Are they miffed that he constantly kowtowed to Palestinian terrorists, never taking the side of Israel in the endless rounds of Middle East peace negotiations he presided over?
Oh, I know what I was. They're angry that he didn't slash taxes during his presidency! That's obviously it.
Or, wait, was it that he was too pro-choice, both at home and in US family planning policy abroad?
Maybe they're fuming
because he didn't put real regressive, pro-government, pro-executive
branch, pro-corporate, 13th-century-social-policy-
Could it be that they really wanted a president who would absolutely thrash the historic barrier between church and state, and all they got was this lousy Bush-Cheney 2004 tee-shirt instead?
Maybe they're pissed because Bush refused to spy on Americans. Or that he was so weak-kneed that he went and got warrants before he did it. Or that he waited for Congressional approval to do any of this.
Or is it that he refused in principle to autograph over a thousand signing statements appended to legislation, which would have effective wiped out the role of Congress in American government?
Possibly they don't think he was a real conservative because he refused to jump on Air Force One and fly across the country in the middle of the night in order to intervene in one family's legal, medical and ethical nightmare over whether to unplug Terri Schiavo from life support.
Maybe, as fans of small government, they're angry that he used FEMA so effectively to save lives and to save the city of New Orleans, before, during and after Hurricane Katrina.
Could it be that Bush was too tough on corporations, refusing to give them tax credits for exporting American jobs, or blocking any massive giveaways to them under his prescription drug bill?
Or was it that the Bush White House was just too much in favor of corporate regulation, across the board?
Certainly it must have had a lot to do with how Bush took the lead in fighting for the very survival of the planet by calling the country into battle against the peril of global warming, a total fabrication by evildoing scientists.
Are they mad that the Bush White House flinched at politicizing the institutions of government - for example, I'll just pick one at random here, the Justice Department - in order to turn them into agents of the Republican Party?
Or are they angry that there was hardly any cronyism in the administration, so that party workers could never get government jobs - say like running the Iraq occupation, for example - because the president was too scrupulous.
Probably they're just furious that Bush let accused terrorists and other assorted brown people run free in America, because he didn't have the guts to defy a bunch of mamby-pamby lawyers and open up a bottomless-pit of a jail in some hell-hole somewhere, like say at Guantánamo Bay.
And I know they're still mad that he didn't have the stones to steal elections when push came to shove in confronting those tough, take-no-prisoners Democrats.
Are all of these failings why regressives don't think George W. Bush was one of them as president? Of course not. In fact, Bush did all of these things. In fact, he and his fellow-travelers fulfilled every single item on the regressive wet dream checklist during his presidency.
Except for two. First, they expanded the size of the national government through reckless spending. And, second, because they were careful not to take any popular goodies away so that voters would experience the real pain of regressive politics, they paid for it all (and the tax cuts, and the wars) by borrowing. Future generations could pay for it. Plus interest, of course.
Those are both important issues to the right, to be sure, but it is absolutely ludicrous to argue that those two items, stacked up against everything else he gave them listed above, remotely suggest that Bush was not a conservative. Utter nonsense.
So what's going on?
The obvious answer is that Bush was a total disaster as president who was hated by a country that couldn't wait for the clock to run down on his nightmare. Who wants to be associated with that?
The less obvious answer is even more telling, though. It's true the Bush folks were grossly incompetent, at least at the things they didn't care so much about. But the deeper and more profound reality is that this was far less a failure of one fool than it was the acid test for an entire ideology, which in fact failed the exam miserably.
I know how shocking it can be that regressives are hypocritical or deceitful. Go figure, eh? But, truthfully, this is the biggest whopper of them all. The King Kahuna. The Mother of all Deceits. So big, in fact, that I'm pretty sure that they even lie to themselves about it at the same time they're lying to us.
Because if they didn't, here's what they'd have to admit: We tried their ideology. Big-time. And it totally sucked.
Unless, of course, you happen to like war, recession, environmental destruction, constitution shredding, prejudice, hatred, greed, deceit and failure. Those things enjoyed rather remarkable success, actually.
Americans can be astonishingly stupid, and embarrassingly easy marks sometimes. But, even so, they're usually able to see that these are bad things.
If only there were national figures within the supposed opposition (that means you, Mr. Happy Face, in the White House) who were willing to label this disaster for what it was, perhaps we might have stamped out the scourge of regressivism for a generation or six by now. But, alas, that would require a modicum of political courage.
Unfortunately, that's just about the only thing regressives have.
Even more unfortunately, it is often enough to carry the day, even when your ideas are so unequivocally destructive.
29 Comments so far
Show AllTony my dear friend and Student: I havnt heard from you, so I know thing are going well at your position in the gold world. The attached reading herewith will be your assignment for this week. Please read it well and I will test you when we get together. Dont try to skip out on me.
If you were the Republican right, wouldn't you want to erase the Bush Presidency?
Let's hope 0's ills don't make to many forget.
"Can it be that the right in America is actually disingenuous? I mean, everyone knows they are destructive, selfish, hypocritical, racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, imperialistic, nasty, brutish and short."
And don't forget "Christian".
The neo-cons recognize that concepts like "freedom, justice, fairness" are just too difficult for the man in the street to understand. So they never dare deal with such subjects. Instead they make unprovable but easy to believe claims that energize the ignorant masses in the streets. "The Dems are going to take your guns away." "The blacks are going to move into your neighborhood." "They are going to get your daughter." No matter how well the Dems explain their agenda, they will be undermined by the persistent fear mongering that continues without challenge.
David Michael Green is cute, verrry long-winded and (as usual)misses the point. If rejoice that W. Bush is gone, meet Mitt Romney. If you can imagine W. Bush on steroids, that's Mitt Romney!
Watch over the next two years as the Mormon Mauler makes peace with all the Christo-fascists, rattles the bones and memory of Ronald Reagan, encourages Caucasian voters to get in touch with their inner bigot and becomes Terminator II (with no older model in sight to restrain him). All together now, "four more years, four more years".
Poet
I think it is you who misses the point. It is true that the regressive right in the United States is much bigger than in any other civilized country in the world, but it is also a fact that the conservatives in America have not won any election in the last 15 years without having to resort to dirty tricks, smear campaigns and voter fraud. Their real popularity is waning. You can fool some people sometimes, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. The people who still count themselves among the crowd of proto-fascists are just making more noise, that's all. It does not mean they are actually a force to be reckoned with.
All that Obama needs to do to secure a democratic majority and the total disintegration of the Republicans for the coming thirty years is to make sure that elections are free and fair, and that EVERY VOTE counts, even those of the poor, and you as citizens have to hold him to that.
In the meantime, civil society will just have to keep on exposing the nasty brutes of the regressive right for what they are, try to prosecute some more ex-Bush officials (all things that Obama himself is apparently not willing to take on, for obvious reasons), push for progressive causes and enlighten your fellow citizens who cannot keep up with the changes about it.
It is all OK to do some scaremongering about crazy right-wing lunatics, but don't take them too serious. It just gives them an audience.
What about the Patriot Acts,,, wow, the most efficient and quickly written piece of legeslation to strip Americans of constitutional rights , while growing the private spy industry and un bridled law enforcement ever in American history.
The right wing christian lunatics and all of Bushs paid cronies put the screws to anti-war, pro-choice, and friends to muslims all over this country.
These gang stalking hoodlems, under the supervision of the FBI,local law enforcement, first responders, and petrified lawyers and judges all over this country threw civil rights and constitutional protections into the trash can, in an effort to gain total controll of America using stazi police state tactics.
Now that the left is in control of Washington, the far right is afraid of backlash and having the same things done to them, thats why they have rushed out to buy bullets and guns.
They know what they have done, the desperation to elect Mccain using every dirty trick and lie, is very telling of what they were trying to hide and private contracts they were trying to protect.
OOOOPs, the checks and ballances are coming in the form of left wing oversight.
Pass the Justice Act by Center Fiengold, and then lets unleash the law suits, because without powerful law suits, Americas currupt stazi police will try again to take our country from us.
MAKE THEM PAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Personally, I have been wating 2 years for this legislation,
if they fail to pass the Justice Act, we are still in a stazi controlled country.
BornFreeMen
Victim of Fusion Center gang stalking torture surveillance for over 2 years. I want my day in court, I want Justice, and I want these MotherF@@@king natzi spys to go to hell.
You guys still harping the left/right thing? By now it should be clear that we have a co-opted govt. Money isn't left or right.
I used to think that Bush was an idiot and that Cheney was the 'puppet-master' to be blamed. A friend of mine corrected me however. As he claims... Bush was a very successful president who achieved all that he set out to do.
1. He got the man who tried to kill his daddy.
2. He protected the royal Arabian family that had backed his failed oil exploits in earlier years.
3. He made all his political backers very rich.
I STILL think that Baby Bush was an idiot and a puppet, but ya can't argue with the above......
Since the current administration is basically following, continuing, or in most cases, accelerating almost every Bush policy and ideology, the Dems are going to have a tough time in 2012 trying to show how they are "better" than the Rethugs. Since more and more Americans are waking up to the realization that there ARE no differences between the Dems and the Rethugs - that they are, in fact, just a bunch of corporatist pigs good-copping/bad-copping the American people - they will need to really up their acting abilities come 2011 when the campaigning begins.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross."
Sinclair Lewis, "It Cant Happen Here", 1935
Another piece at Huffpo: Bob Cesca writes that if Republicans win seats in 2010 they are sure to begin impeachment. They are dumbass zealots, but they go after everything they want.
Remember the comments here last year that it would be better if McCain won? Chilling, but I get it now.
Dems fight for nothing. We non corporate people count for nothing. I wish the stupids could realize that.
Great piece, but...
But here's another possibility: the reason the 'right' has dumped Bush is because he was just the front-man for the Cheney Shadow Presidency.
Notice how the 'right' isn't running away from Cheney? (WSJ editorial: Cheney for President.)
As soon as any nefarious operation ends, the first one overboard is the front-man - because his services are no longer needed. When it's time to start a new operation, a new front-man - or woman from Alaska - will be hired for the job.
And this writer needs to get out more - the Bush-cult is alive and well amongst 'the people.' On the street, R-nuts still talk about what a great man/President/gift-from-God he was/is/always will be.
The R-nut elites, on the other hand, know the truth: Bush was nothing more than Cheney's mask...
...and Bush did all of these things with democratic support.
Obama continues the looting here and the murder overseas.
At the end of the day, democrats are no different than "regressives". Only the personalities are different.
The seemingly unending error of liberals is to waste words to trying to refute the right wing with "logic". Only sound-bites and talking points work with their ilk. To use logic is to preach to the choir.
I agree that liberals depend too much on logic, but we also cannot simply adopt the insane, fact-challenged sound-bite strategy of the opposition. I think we need a clever combination of irrefutable logic buttressed by short, easily grasped descriptive language. For example, rather than the nearly meaningless "public option," we could refer to "Medicare, Part E."
If the Bush error can be compared to a fairy tale, it is "The Emperor Wears No Clothes," with the signature moment of disclosure being Hurricane Katrina. Recalling back to the seemingly halcyon days of the late 90's when it became apparent that Dubya would run for President, the hard-ons on the Regressive Right was all too obvious to see. Thus his administration's many failures are so disheartening to them: they were expecting a porn star experience and got a hand job without lube instead (btw: Obama is showing signs of doing the same to a lesser extent to his adherents). Thus it is no surprise that the Dubya, Cheney, & Co. "experience" is one they do not wish to recall: not only did they get turned out, but they didn't even get their money's worth.
Re NateW September 24th, 2009 12:50 pm
I'm glad you mentioned Katrina, as it brings into high relief the "imcompetence defense."
There is no way in hell that what happened to the residents of the Gulf coast was the result of "incompetence." It was foreseen---perhaps even abetted, as some eyewitnesses have testified---and allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion. Great benefits to well-connected people followed as night follows day.
The same can be said of the ink-still-wet Patriot Act et seq., the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires, the inflation and subsequent popping of the housing bubble, the NCLB Act, etc., etc. It appears Shrub achieved just about everything on his daddy's wish list except privatizing Social Security. I'm sure that in private he feels it all added up to a screaming success.
If Green had suggested that conservatives were pushing the "incompetence defense" as an exculpatory gambit, I wouldn't disagree. But his repetition of it seems like praising with faint damns.
"The troglodytes of the right seem to have disappeared their former grand hero." Really?
I saw Little George and Laura christening the new Dallas Cowboys' football stadium on national television just a few nights ago, yucking it up with the celebs in a luxury box and drinking deeply the red state popular adulation of his Texan cohorts in crime in a style and manner that Richard Nixon was never able to pull off. And for that matter, who cares if the Chimp keeps a relatively low public profile for awhile? We still have Dick Cheney to carry the banner for torture, war, and the rest of the Bush legacy any time he wants on Faux News as designated spokesman for the GOP neocons in exile.
Frankly, I don't buy the premise of this particular piece by David Michael Green. The regressive right is doing just fine, it seems to me. George W will get a standing ovation when he swaggers on stage smirking at the next Republican national convention, regardless who the GOP picks to run against an embattled, incumbent Barack Obama who has alienated the most important elements of his own party base.
Forgive first. Then forget. That's the way it goes. The right wing isn't going to erase anything. They will embrace and celebrate the Bush presidency just like they glorify the Reagan era. Amnesia is an amazing, powerful phenomenon.
The only way to avoid such a revisionist history from unfolding before our very eyes is to hold the Bush/Cheney inner circle legally accountable for the crimes they so blatantly facilitated when they were in power.
Fail to do so, and there's no one to blame but ourselves.
Bill from Saginaw
Hmmmmm, the self styled "conservatives" and the Republicans I have seen on the boob toob seem to think that the Bush government was a great success, not a failure, so the entire premise of this article rings a little off key.
"Isn't it a shame that he couldn't have a third term? "
Does the author Green consider himself a leftist? because many of the critics on the left I am aware of, say that the US is presently experiencing GB's third term. Judging by Obama's continuation of Bush's policies, Obama doesn't think that Bush was far wrong either.
Ronald Reagan? Only yesterday we were reading an article on this site, from a Democrat, begging Obama to be more like Ronald Reagan, "the Obama Revolution", so the Republicans and Democrats have something else in common as well.
It seems that, no longer able to defend Obama, the Democrats are bringing back Bush to use as a target, This is futile. Americans kept that clown in office the maximum allowed under his "quaint" constitution. Now the people of the US must deal with Obama. However bad Bush was, it doesn't make Obama any better.
I liken the Republican party to Holocaust deniers. In order for fascism to reemerge and become a major force in the world, the world must be convinced that that murder of six million untermenschen by the Nazis never took place.
In order for the United States to reelect another crypto fascist Republican president, the eight years of George Wanker Bush/Cheesedick Cheney must be made to appear either a triumph or a disaster actually caused by unAmerican and downright evil elements in American society. The latter is the most likely strategy. Over at The Huffington Post is a story about some nastily idiotic Republican politician claiming that gay marriage is socialism. That's the story Republicans will have to tell. Unfortunately, there are enough - more than enough - stupid, uninformed and bigoted people to make stories like that stick.
"Over at The Huffington Post is a story about some nastily idiotic Republican politician claiming that gay marriage is socialism."
It sounds like the Republicans have developed software to randomly generate arguments and connections, like a random number generator but for sequential elements of a purported "logical thought process." Heck, with the US population as it is, it just might work if the randomly generated arguments and ideas can be repeated often enough.
We have to reshape our dialog away from the history-free sound bite sized communications we tend to use nowadays.
This is ammunition as we engage in conversations everywhere, and stuff to bring up when we talk to the closed minded, and the selective memory skulls.
Re-presenting what Bush did everyday when the next cycle of arguements comes from the ill informed money loving light suckers, we can state why we dont want what they are proposing.
Why isnt congress invoking history and facts in the health care debate? If they really had the interest of the people in mind and not their wallets, we would be doing what Mr. Green did. How can the members of congress and senate re create themselves as if they are starting everything from scratch? Why isnt there any responsibility for what has happened so far, and what have they done about it?
When the next election comes, there will be a laundry list on every senator and congressman\woman on what they have done, and what the repurcussions of what they have done, on full display on a web site. I think we also have to list all the people who have given money to these folks, and list what they stand for, so we can hold them responsible for taking a stand agains the interest of common good. Next time there is debate, bring the donors and supporters up as well.
Love
Zero
List the donors?
Neoliberals will be pissed that you are putting pressure on them to boycott Whole Foods and a whole lot of other vendors of yuppie goods and services.
It's not just the Republicans who want to erase Bush's dark side just like they did Reagan's. The Democrats are also at fault for trying to be the GOP's fall guy party. Just look at this year's gubernatorial races in NJ and VA. The Republicans are doing their own "economic populism" while the Democrats are still stuck on those frivolous social issues of yesterday. Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Reid, etc ... are pushing the train further to the right of Bush, Cheney, Delay, Rumsfeld, etc ... in some cases. Blaming the Republicans might have been right before 2007 but after the Democrats started taking power and gagging, blaming the Republicans is looking less credible. Either the Democrats get their sh*t together or face the consequences.
The Republicans don't need to take action to create Obama's and the two Democratic Party-controlled houses of Congress' Waterloos, the Democrats are creating their own Waterloo. All the neocons need to do is sit back and go in for the kill in November 2010 and November 2012.
By putting Dubya out to pasture the neocons are giving Obama and the Congressional Democrats enough rope to hang themselves. Most swing voters believe the Democrats now own the problems Dubya started.
Michael Green all you have done here is to remind us that we have been screwed--we know and the regressive republicans know what they have accomplished--so what. Why don't you write about where we can go from here. Does it do any good to waste so many words to blame those idiots, so few words to say it remains the same and nothing about a solution--maybe it's just me--but I find it useless and tiresome--you could do better.
Barack Obama represents the third bush term as a practical matter, from his policies of elevating state secrets, to continued renditions, to stealing from tax payers to bail out failed corporate criminals on Wall St to expansion of the US military expedition in Afghanistan, there is little about Mr. Obama that right wingers might be expected to denigrate.
...elevating state secrets. I don't think so. ...corporate criminal bailout: no good choices available & done in haste. Afghanistan? America has never truly embraced the withdrawal method when we are intimately involved with another. My hope is that Obama is simply opting for a bit of decorum instead of a slam-bam ending in the first months of his Administration.
Corporate criminal bailout was the only choice and done in haste?
Are you reading what you wrote?
Saying it was done in haste suggests there was a better option that was disclosed over time and therefore was not the only option. Yes that option was disclosed to the American public over time, namely, let the big banks fail and go through what is called FDIC receivership to be broken up and sold to willing buyers. The same thing was allowed to happened with WAMU among other banks who were bought up by Warren Buffet and J.P. Morgan Chase for example. In some cases the buyer might want to retain the new name for the whole bank, for example Bank of America sounds better than J.P. Morgan Chase to me (assuming Chase bought B of A).
You are suggesting incompetence as an excuse for the Obama administration not seeing this option in time of haste. I argue that the FDIC receivership option was always on the table for other banks and was therefore on the table for B of A, Citibank and Chase. There is a law that requires it. In fact Obama explicitly was asked to remove this option from the table in violation of federal law.
American has "embraced" withdrawal if you look at any polling data. The only question is whether it is a deal breaker for voters to go to 3rd parties.
You clearly missed many articles on Common Dreams dealing with "elevating state secrets" and "escalation" in Afghanistan which is quite the opposite of decorum.
I kindly request all posters to please thoroughly read this site before posting comments.