What More?

by Greg Olear

When Bush won the election in 2004, I decided to withdraw from the political process.  The idiot majority who had allowed him to remain in office deserved what they got, I thought at the time.  As for me, I was going to enjoy watching the wheels fall off.

And fall off the wheels have.  There was the intentionally-leaking-a-covert-agent’s-identity-to-discredit-her-left-leaning-husband thing, the so-what-if-wiretaps-are-illegal-we’re-doing-it-anyway-because-of-Osama thing, the whoops-the-vice-president-shot-his-buddy-in-a-hunting-accident-and-went-for-dinner-instead-of-to-the-hospital thing, not to mention “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” and “America does not torture.” 

Also, deficit spending is out of control, the Supreme Court is leaning precipitously to the right, and the economy is growing only if you happen to be mega-rich.  Bush was right about the Dubai ports fiasco and immigration; otherwise his tenure has been an unmitigated disaster.  He’s easily the worst president since Harding, and probably ever.

So why, when Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin moved to censure him, did his colleagues on both sides of the aisle not join him?  Isn’t it crystal clear by now that Bush is a blot on the presidency, if not the entire human race? 

It must have to do, as everything in politics does (alas), with the polls.  So the real question is, why do people still like this guy?  Let me rephrase: how far would Bush have to go to make his benighted supporters see the light?  Dress in a clown suit and start killing children?  Appear on Oprah and force himself upon the host?  Pre-empt American Idol?  Switch parties?

The facts are these: Bush lied—or misrepresented classified information, which is much the same thing—in order to take the country to war against a sovereign nation that did not attack us, that he knew was not a threat to us, and that he knew had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.  Because of his criminal negligence, thousands of American soldiers are dead, many more wounded or traumatized, and the death toll in Iraq is unknowable.  Oh, and a pair of Nobel economists predict the war will cost the U.S. economy $2 trillion.

I knew all this, as did many of my left-leaning brethren, well before the election.  Iraq remains Bush’s most egregious crime against humanity, one for which he deserves far more than the slap on the wrist that is a censure.  Until his stauchest supporters hip themselves to the gravity of the situation in Iraq, and hold accountable its arrogant authors, the President will continue to get away—quite literally—with murder.

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