An open letter to still-president George Bush.
W.:
I recently wrote an open letter to Sarah Palin in which I asked her to shut up and do her job. In your case, I will simplify that request to just shut up. I don’t want you doing anything that remotely resembles ‘doing your job’ as you have magnificently fucked it up this last eight years, almost to the point of no redemption.
I will not rehash your top failures as I don’t want to get writer’s cramp. Suffice to say, your best accomplishment will be leaving the White House. Period. No matter how you and your apologists spin it, you have failed miserably as president. This is not surprising considering that you failed as the owner of the Texas Rangers and at just about anything else you’ve done. You are the quintessential poster boy for privileged nepotism, but of course, you can’t see that.
You can’t even leave the White House with any semblance of class or dignity. Instead, you engage in petty behavior (denying President-Elect Obama’s request to use the Blair House and then hastily installing one of your cronies to make the denial look legit); you cram through laws so chilling and widespread (denying women the right to comprehensive healthcare), you make Dr. Kevorkian look downright cuddly in comparison; you burrow your cronies so deeply into the political landscape, not even the hand of god can extricate them.
In addition, you just won’t shut up. I have a hunch it’s because you know how disastrous your reign has been and are trying desperately to spin it away, but you are blathering on and on about how great you were and how everything was not your fault. The collapsing economy? Not your fault. The non-existing WMDs in Iraq that drove us into a never-ending occupation? Not your fault. The former was the fault of the prior president, and the latter was the fault of the intelligence agencies.
You are the like the energizer bunny in your efforts to avoid any responsibility for what has happened the last eight years. While it’s true that most of the actual decisions were probably made by Dick Cheney, YOU are the nominal head of the country, so YOU have to bear the onus of responsibility for the quagmire created under your watch.
Remember when Obama was elected, and people danced in the streets? It wasn’t just a repudiation of the Republicans as you suggested–it was a repudiation of you. One blogger commented that it was like a revolution had occurred, and he was right. America has been held hostage by an ideological zealot for the last eight years, and we are so close to being free at last (if President-Elect Obama can keep his faith separate from the state).
Our country is a laughingstock around the world right now. You did that. When President Sarkozy of France wanted to deter Prime Minister Putin of Russia from doing an illegal, unlawful, not to mention painful procedure to President Saakashvili, he cited you as a reason for Mr. Putin not to do said action. Mr. Putin thought about it for a minute, and then agreed. You did that. You have the lowest approval rating of any president in the history of America (well, as far back as it’s been tracked), including Nixon as he resigned. You did that. You shot your friend in the face–no, wait, Dick Cheney did that.
The GOP is big on personal responsibility, except, apparently, when it comes to yourselves. Parents teach their children that if you do something wrong, there are consequences for your action. Now, with all that you’ve done and will probably get away with, why should kids listen to their parents? Bill Clinton got half-impeached for something far more banal than war crimes, but impeachment was taken off the table for you by Nancy Pelosi.
And still you whine about how you’ve been misunderstood and mistreated by the media. You trot out your women to defend you (Laura and Condi), and even old Poppy had to get in on the action. Now that you’ve been seen as the emperor without any clothes, you are frantic to cover yourself in any shreds of, what, competency? Dignity? Accomplishment? I’m not sure what, but you’re not convincing anyone except those who already think the earth is flat.
Let me put it in words you will understand. You systematically destroyed America and all the things that we used to hold as self-evident. You have left a legacy of fear, lies, wanton lawbreaking, and you have made us all poorer for it. So I implore you. In your last eight days, do the right thing for once in your sorry life and shut the hell up. Consider it a fitting end to your presidency.
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