In Need of New Moves, but in Which Direction?
Bush’s $500 Million Library: Shouldn’t We Know Who His “Megadonors” Are?
Comedy writers all across America have been buoyed by news that President Bush is looking to raise half-a-billion dollars to build his legacy-burnishing presidential library. The punchlines write themselves: What’s it going to house, 100,000 copies of The Pet Goat? Will there be exhibits on waterboarding and the quaintness of the Geneva Conventions? A room devoted to the nobility of the Hanging Chad? The Abu Ghraib Game Room? But it’s no joke that the names of donors to the library don’t have to be made public. Bush 43 may be a lame duck, but he still has two years left in which he can throw open the doors of the White House favor bank. Whatever happened to the concept of government transparency?
Six years into his reign of error, Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader has apparently discovered that he’s not going to be President for Life after all. With that in mind, he’s now beginning to think in terms of how he’ll be remembered. Like most of his Presidency, he’s going to be certain that his legacy will be stage-managed from start to finish…and he’ll be able to do this all for the low, low price of $500 million.
Hey, propaganda and whitewash don’t come cheap, eh?
While his lackeys and sycophants are busily raising a half-billion dollars from donors who may remain anonymous if they so choose, Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader will be trying to determine how best to burnish his legacy to make him appear as the smirking murderer brilliant statesman and leader of men he sees himself as.
Talk about being marooned on an island. Democrats want to roast (and for some of us, impeach) Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader, and Republicans are just plain pissed. Democrats know him as a lying thug who prevaricated and propagandized his way into the war in Iraq he wanted all along by taking a page from Josef Goebbles. Republicans see him as a traitor to the Conservative cause who dumped Donald Rumsfeld when the going got tough. The fact that his approval ratings are hovering in convicted child molester territory (the low 30s) certainly isn’t making the task of creating a desirable and positive legacy any easier.
[O]fficial Washington remains unsure of which way he may go in trying to salvage his legacy. Will he continue on as if nothing has changed, pursuing conservative policies he believes history will smile upon later, even if it means getting nothing past a Democratic Congress here and now? Or will he move to the political center and seek deals with Democrats that will sour conservatives but leave him with a longer list of accomplishments?
As his top aides meet to plan their first moves of the new year with a new Congress — focusing acutely on his State of the Union address — Mr. Bush seems to be hemmed in from both sides.
Almost makes you feel sorry for the guy, doesn’t it? Almost.
For all of their talk about bipartisanship, the newly elected Democrats still have fresh memories of six years of presidential attacks painting them as “wrong on taxes” and “weak on defense.” Already they are talking about investigations into the administration’s domestic wiretapping and terrorist detainee programs and the vice president’s consultations with energy officials, among other things.
The president’s own party remains angry with him for his handling of the war, the delayed ouster of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the low presidential approval ratings that contributed to this fall’s Republican wipeout.
Man, what’s a lying, murdering thug to do? Can’t a guy get some love in Washington these days? Hmm…apparently not. ‘Course, it’s not like Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader hasn’t made his own bed.
Against all odds, it seems Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader has decided that, after six years of telling Democrats to go pound sand, he’s all about the “bipartisanship”. Yes, now he’s all over the idea of working with Democrats in an effort to get things done. If you listen to him talk, though, what he’s really all about is co-opting Democrats. He seems willing to work with Democrats only under strict conditions, which basically involve Democrats not expecting him to do or agree to anything he’s not willing to. Now, I may have been a History major, but when I look up compromise in the dictionary, this is not what I see.
Mr. Bush has pledged to find common ground with Democrats, notably on a new minimum wage, proposed changes in the immigration law and the reauthorization of his main education initiative, No Child Left Behind. “I intend to work with the new Congress in a bipartisan way to address issues confronting this country,” he said immediately after the election.
But when Mr. Bush made a similar remark in a private meeting in the Oval Office with the new Senate majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, and his new lieutenant, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Mr. Reid — according to Mr. Durbin‚Äôs account — interjected that Mr. Bush had made a similar vow after the 2004 election, which was followed by still more partisan rancor.
Mr. Bush’s rhetorical olive branch to Democrats has made conservatives nervous, prompting visions of a reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act that will increase spending, or a new immigration system granting legal status, which many conservatives consider amnesty, to illegal immigrants. One Democratic leadership aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Bush was “most animated” during a meeting with the incoming Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, when the subject of immigration came up.
From where I sit, it seems pretty clear that Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader is in a pretty lonely place. Stripped of the righteous Republican Congressional majority he saw as his birthright (it’s not called “God’s Own Party” for nothing, eh?), he now finds himself in a no-win situation. How to make a legacy from such meager ingredients? I have no idea…and it’s clear that Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader does either.
You’ll have to pardon me if I seem to be enjoying Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s predicament just a little bit too much…because I truly am.
"Bush is looking to raise half-a-billion dollars to build his legacy-burnishing presidential library."
Why am I not surprised? After all, this is the same person who is spearheading the closure of all EPA libraries, and making all EPA library collections virtually unavailable to anyone. Librarians all over the country are sharpening their spears. AlterNet has a good article on this story: http://www.alternet.org/story/44528/
Bush could build a three hundred billion dollar presidential libary, but it still wouldn't remake his legacy - after we wasted that much in Iraq - not to mention thousands of Americans and Iraqis dead. He is still in denial of reality.