Is George W. Bush Driving you Crazy? Take This Multiple Choice Test to Find Out

It is my deeply held conviction that the world is crazier than I am. Of course, I’m close to certifiable myself, so this must mean the rest of the world is off its rocker. For those of you who are completely sane, you have my deepest sympathy. After all, trying to maintain one’s sanity in an insane world is sure to drive you crazy, eventually. If you don’t believe the world is just plain irrational just consider trying to pass this Psychological Inventory prepared by the APA meant to test your mental stability:

1) You are in a lavatory stall when a conservative Republican Congressman peeks his head beneath the divider. Do you?

a) Give him a campaign contribution and run like hell.
b) Ask him if he thinks Bush’s surge is working.
c) Thank him for championing legislation that upholds the sanctity of marriage.
d) Ask him if he liked Will Ferrell wearing leotards in the movie Blades of Glory.
e) Wear pampers like astronaut Lisa Nowak and avoid public restrooms altogether.

The correct answer, of course, is none of the above. You should probably spray the congressman with mace and move your family to Canada. But because this is a multiple choice test devised by the mental health professionals any answer that you give can be interpreted as a sign that you are truly disturbed. For instance:

2) Imagine you are the president of the United States of America. You’ve just ordered the invasion of country X, but you have inadvertently started a civil war. Your generals tell you that cutting and running will spark a regional conflagration and staying the course will destroy America’s military. Do you?

a) See if the job you really wanted -- baseball commissioner – is still available.
b) Do what you always do when you screw up; ask mom and dad for help.
c) Take troops from country X and invade country Y.
d) Blame the politicians in Washington.

Once again, the correct answer is none of the above. The world was a mess before you took office and it will be a mess after you leave. If the next guy/gal wants your job so bad, then let them figure out what to do.

The next question he designed to test if you have a conflict between the delusions of grandeur we all harbor and a natural resentment of authority figures.

3) President Bush reminds me of which fictional superhero?

a) Inspector Clouseau
b) Mr. Bean
c) The Wizard of Oz
d) Captain Kirk
e) The Lone Ranger

This one had me stumped, I admit, till I realized it was all of the above. Now, here’s a question designed to test your moral reasoning:

4) You are pulling in $6 billion a year salary as the manager of an exclusive hedge fund, but hordes of deadbeat sub-prime borrowers can’t keep up with the double-digit spike in their adjustable rate mortgages. If they default, then the value of the assets in your portfolio will be worthless. The best course of action is to:

a) Call the Fed Chairman collect and ask him to print more money so that someone -- anyone – will have enough money to buy the junk bonds you need to sell pronto.
b) Call the President collect and ask him to read, Socialism for the Rich: Why Deficits Don’t Matter, by economist Ken Lay. Then read him the riot act and tell him he needs to cut taxes right away on capital gains, inheritances, and financial windfalls.
c) Buy every Lotto and Powerball ticket in the country.
d) Ebenezer Scrooge was right; foreclosing on deadbeats is the only way to engender fiscal responsibility.

The correct answer, of course, is none of the above. The savvy hedge fund manager should immediately recognize that his best bet is to liquefy his position by selling his worthless stock and bond certificates on EBay, before some other hedge fund manager gets wise and has the same idea.

Congratulations! You’ve just complete the APA’s Psychological Inventory designed to measure your degree of personal psychosis. By now you are probably wondering how you fared? Just count up the number of belly laughs, chuckles, and snickers you experienced in taking this test. If you:

1) Laughed five or more times – You are psychologically well adjusted and are probably qualified to serve as Hillary Clinton’s running mate.
2) Chuckled twice and snickered once – Go back and take this test again and see if you can’t do better next time.
3) You didn’t laugh once – You are definitely a Republican and you probably think Barack Hussein Obama is the leader of the terrorist organization that attacked America.

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Mr. Bush and Mr. Bean

George Bush is to statecraft what Mr. Bean is to vacations; both threaten disaster at every turn. Actually, when it comes to rebuilding New Orleans and Iraq, America would probably be a lot better of if we had Mr. Bean at the helm instead of Mr. Bush. This week marks the second anniversary of Bush’s mishandling of the Katrina disaster. However, Bush is still desperately seeking to salvage his legacy not by rebuilding New Orleans, but by trying to reconstruct Iraq after America’s invasion turned the country into a failed state. Press reports indicate the Bush administration may ask Congress and the taxpayers for an additional $ 50 billion this September, roughly four-fifths of the cost of what is needed to repair America’s ailing bridges and highways.

When the final tab comes due, Iraq is almost certain to be Bush’s $2 trillion Bridge to Nowhere (which will provide a new twist on the slogan Bush once used to describe his economic philosophy: “It’s your money, you paid for it”). The Bush administration claims, of course, that although it may have made a few teensy weensy mistakes in the past, this time they have Iraq moving in the right direction. Indeed, one conservative interest group is spending $15 million to run an ad campaign in decisive Congressional districts in hopes staving of a Republican defection from the president’s Iraq policy come September.

A newly leaked summary of a report prepared by the General Accounting Office presents a grim assessment of the “progress” being made in Iraq. In short, the report indicates that the Iraqi government has made little or no progress towards meeting 15 out of the 18 benchmarks that have been set by Congress and the president.

More ominous, by far, is the fact that Iraq’s much maligned prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has been hinting that he may have to find new friends (Iran or Russia) to replace the United States as a stabilizing force in the country. Is this the thanks we get for ensuring the free and fair elections that helped place al-Maliki in power? Actually, as David Ignatius reports in the Washington Post, the Iranians funneled so much money to Shiite religious candidates favorable to Iran, that they essentially bought the outcome they wanted. Indeed, 5,000 Iranians a week slipped into Iraq with counterfeit credentials that the results in Baghdad were even more suspect than the results in Palm Beach, Florida during the 2000 election.

In sum, the triumph of “free elections” hailed by the Bush administration as a milestone in Middle Eastern politics appear to have paved the way for Iran’s dominance of Iraq, and the Persian Gulf. Mr. Bush, like Mr. Bean, is largely oblivious to all this. There is one difference between Mr. Bush and Mr. Bean: Mr. Bean makes me laugh, but I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when watching Mr. Bush.

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Bush vs. History and the Future of Iraq

During the final year of WWI the Germans won a series of tactical victories before losing the war. A befuddled public was fed the right-wing myth that defeatists in the high command had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, essentially stabbing the Fatherland in the back. This falsehood would find favor with a certain bohemian corporal, one Adolf Hitler, who would launch a second world war to avenge Germany’s humiliation in the first. Needless to say, Germany’s decision to refight a war it had lost ended up creating an even greater catastrophe.

Fast forward 60 years, and George W. Bush is invoking America’s humiliation in Vietnam as a rationalization for staying the course in Iraq. Bush represents a fringe in American politics that believes America could have, should have, and would have prevailed in Vietnam, if only America’s leaders had had the will to win. This reactionary element has never seen America’s involvement in Vietnam as a strategic blunder, the product of defective assumptions and pathological misjudgments, but rather as a test of American character that the nation failed. In their view, spineless liberals lost Vietnam. Ipso facto, weak-willed leftists will be responsible for our failure in Iraq (notwithstanding conservative incompetence in waging the campaign in Iraq).

Over the next several months, the Bush administration will be trying to use whatever tactical benefits the so-called surge is producing to cover for the fact that America’s strategic position in Iraq is unraveling. Put simply, despite modestly encouraging developments associated with the surge – Sunni insurgents training their sights on al-Qaeda in Iraq, for instance -- the overall situation in Iraq is a worsening disaster for America’s interests. The longer the Bush administration remains in denial, the worse the denouement in Iraq is likely to be.

Bismarck once famously remarked that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” If this is true, then in follows that so long as the United States is fighting in Iraq it is because the political process, diplomatic efforts, and reconciliation are failing. The question, of course, is can the United States military turn the situation in Iraq around?

A game changing moment is always possible, but the centrifugal forces in Iraq appear to be tipping in the direction of greater chaos. The Maliki government in Iraq appears to have no interest in pursuing political reconciliation. Indeed, the Shiite dominated government gives every indication of stalling for time, essentially waiting the Bush administration out, so that it can proceed apace with its campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Sunnis.

The Bush administration, eager to find some glimmer of hope in the disaster it has wrought, points to the recent Sunni-American alliance against al-Qaeda in Iraq, as proof of progress. This short-term success, however, may actually undermine Iraq’s long-term prospects (in so far as American efforts to arm Sunni militia are an unwelcome development as far as the Shiite dominated central government is concerned). Further, we should be under no illusions that the Sunni insurgents have suddenly become pro-American; they just hate al-Qaeda more than they hate us at the moment. In other words, once they finish fighting al-Qaeda, or Shiites, they might very well turn the guns we’ve given them back on us.

There’s another complication on the horizon for America’s efforts in Iraq; sometime in December, Iraq’s prime minister will have to request that the United Nations renew its Security Council Resolution that provides the legal basis for the U.S. occupation. It is possible that Maliki will no longer be in office at that point, but the Iraqi parliament has already passed a bill requiring the prime minister to consult the legislature on the matter of renewing the Security Council Resolution. They have also passed a non-binding resolution calling for a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal. The upshot, in other words, is that come December the U.S. could very easily be voted out of Iraq, while an American adversary (Iran or Russia) is invited in to fill the vacuum.

The Bush administration, of course, would likely ignore anything from the U.N. Security Council, but it may be tempted to launch a preemptive attack against Iran to change the equation ahead of time. One thing is for sure, the Bush administration is not about to let Iraq’s parliament decide the fate of Iraq.

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Bush's and Absolute Power

Absolute power doesn’t corrupt, as Lord Acton once supposed, but it does reveal character. In the case of George W. Bush, his stint as commander-in-chief has exposed the fact that the 53,000,000 Americans voted for a man who suffers from a glaring lack of substance.

Bush, when you get down to it, is a rather pedestrian character, but his privileged background has imbued him with delusions of grandeur. He does not appear to have learned from his failures, in part because he has never had to face the consequences of failing. Whether it was his alcoholism, his multiple failures in the oil business, or the fact that his father’s friends on the Supreme Court had to bail him out before anyone examined the ballots too closely, Bush is the kind of guy who always got promoted despite his performance, not because of it.

Lincoln suffered from depression, F.D.R. from polio, but George Bush is just plain insufferable. There’s no better example of Bush’s unbearable obliviousness than when interviewers ask him to discuss the topic of asking Americans to sacrifice on behalf of the nation during a time of war. Apparently, as Bush sees it, Americans are sacrificing too much already just by spending a few extra minutes going through airport security. Perish the thought that Americans might be asked to forgo their tax cuts or face a military draft.

One problem with Bush is that he cannot match means with ends. No doubt, this has something to do with the fact that Bush has always achieved his ends without having to bother with the means. For instance, Bush’s oil ventures kept drilling dry holes, but wealthy investors bought him out to curry favor with his highly placed father. Bush’s stock went up, even as his business ventures went bust. No wonder, then, that Bush has a sense that no matter how much he screws up a deus ex machina will intervene at the last possible moment to make everything right.

Bush’s shallowness is apparent in ad hoc style of his arguments. For example, at one time Bush vigorously rejected any comparison between Vietnam and Iraq, but lately Bush has been drawing analogies between Vietnam and Iraq to argue America cannot leave Iraq without creating a humanitarian disaster. Implicit in Bush’s argument, of course, is the notion that America should have remained in Vietnam longer, as if prolonging that mistake could have prevented disaster.

But Bush was against nation building before he was for it, so it is best not to scrutinize his arguments too carefully. Bush has always been a flip-flopper, but he gets away with it because he has no shame in accusing his opponents of engaging in the very tactics he employs. Bush, when you get down to it, will spout whatever slogan or line of argument he thinks will let him get his way. His Vietnam analogy is tailor made to try and pin the blame for losing Iraq on the Democrats. Bush was given virtually absolute power, but the only accomplishment Bush has demonstrated is his ability to skirt responsibility.

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Alberto Gonzales Resigns

Most Americans would sooner trust Michael Vick to walk their dogs than trust Alberto Gonzales with the law. Gonzales has been both Bush's loyal lap dog and the president's pit bull when it came to shredding the Constitution. His tenure will be remembered for his dubious rationalizations for scrapping the Geneva Conventions, his efforts to turn the Justice Department into the political arm of the Republican Party, and his shameless effort to hoodwink a desperately ill John Ashcroft into signing off on unconstitutional procedures associated with the administration's illegal wiretapping program. No wonder Gonzales suffered from amnesia every time he was called to account for his activities.

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George Bush vs. Vietnam

The ordinary person learns from experience. The wise person learns from the experience of others. But the fool never learns. I’ll leave it to the reader to guess which group George W. Bush belongs to. It is clear, however, that Bush exhibits about as much sagacity in military matters as Inspector Clouseau demonstrates in law enforcement. The draft-dodging Bush, never served in Vietnam, but he has no compunction about Swift Boating veterans like John Kerry and Max Cleland, casting them as weak-willed surrender monkeys.

John Kerry, of course, served and was wounded in a war he opposed. George Bush, on the other hand, was gung-ho about a war he took pains to avoid serving in. Which contradiction is more ironic? Kerry’s experience taught him that America’s involvement in Vietnam was misguided from the start, which led him to pose the following question intended to end the war:” How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” It is a tragedy of historic proportions that Bush, the man who failed to serve in Vietnam, and has thus failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam, has gone on creates an even more tragic blunder in Iraq.

There are many eerie parallels between Vietnam and Iraq. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was as phony as Saddam’s phantom WMD, and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was as flaky as Donald Rumsfeld. In both cases, it seems, the “reason” we kept fighting was to avoid defeat. America’s leaders during the Vietnam era acknowledged this privately, but Johnson’s determination not to be the first president to lose a war meant that tens of thousands of U.S. troops would die for a cause that was unwinnable.

Bush believes America lost Vietnam because our leaders lost their nerve, not because the war was strategically misguided and misconceived. By failing to understand the lessons of Vietnam – that America’s involvement was predicated on false premises (like the Domino Theory: if Vietnam fell all of South East Asia would become Communist) – Bush has “succeeded” in creating a quagmire potentially even more insidious as Vietnam.

The invasion of Iraq was predicated on similar false premises, most notably the Reverse Domino Theory: once we establish democracy in Iraq it will sprout up all across the Arab world, thus reducing the impetus for terrorism. But so far the invasion has had just the opposite effect; it has discredited democracy and fed the forces that spawn terrorism. Put simply, democracy does not thrive without certain cultural habits, institutions, and a vibrant middle class, none of which exist in Iraq. At best, implanting democracy takes a generation or more, but our botched occupation has set that dim prospect back considerably.

Bush is going to get Swift Boated by History. His “mission accomplished” antics, his intemperate rhetoric (“bring it on”), and his feeble historical revisionism will catch up with him. Bush was AWOL during Vietnam. And Bush will be doing his best evade responsibility for the consequences of Iraq too.

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George and Jesus

Is George W. Bush proof that we live in a universe devoid of intelligent design? Bush, of course, is famous for asserting that Jesus was his favorite political philosopher. He has also claimed that God wanted him to be president. Perhaps the Almighty has a sense of humor, because it looks increasingly certain the George W. Bush will go down in history as presiding over the most incompetent, corrupt, and disastrous administrations in U.S. history.

We now know that the Bush administration’s missionary zeal to spread democracy across the Arab world, beginning in Iraq, was just part of a larger effort to export its libertarian ideology and Christian values into the heart of the Middle East. God knows, the Saddamists and Islamicists could do with a little more capitalism, but more religion?

Seriously, though, the fact that the Bush administration used a litmus test to select the diplomats and officials that would oversee our nation building crusade in Iraq proved to be a fatal mistake. Put simply, the administration vetted State Department officials and other relevant personnel according to the following criteria: are you pro-life? That is, those espousing a pro-life philosophy would be sent to rebuild Iraq while those possessing expertise in Middle Eastern and Arab affairs (but not hewing to the president’s pro-life agenda) were relieved.

It’s a little ironic that so many in the pro-life movement were so gung ho about an invasion that failed to meet the standards established by Christian philosophers for a “just war.” For instance, according just war theory the use of force must meet four criteria: 1) it can only be waged by a legitimate authority, 2) it must be in self-defense only, 3) it must be a last resort, and 4) it must be proportional (the good achieved must outweigh the injuries inflicted).

Leaving aside the question of Bush’s legitimacy, momentarily, it is abundantly clear that Bush’s invasion of Iraq failed to meet three out of four criteria the just war theory requires. For instance, it is evident that Iraq posed no serious, direct, or imminent threat to the United States. Second, Bush unilaterally withdrew the U.N. weapons inspectors just weeks before they were due to complete their mission, thus precluding the possibility of a peaceful outcome. Further, the invasion has “succeeded” in spawning a civil war in Iraq, which means Iraqis are far worse off now than they were under Saddam.

Questions regarding Bush’s legitimacy are worth raising. Bush asked for and got a blank check from Congress authorizing the war, but the wording of the resolution called on the president to exhaust all means short of war first. Bush failed to do this, just as he failed to get a second U.N. resolution explicitly authorizing the invasion. Put simply, Bush used the vaguely worded U.N. resolution he obtained earlier as a blank check, though most international law experts believe Bush acted illegally. It is also worth noting that Bush’s path to the White House was extremely dubious. His ascension to the Oval Office owed more to legal sophistry and a partisan Supreme Court, which essentially nullified the will of the American people (as expressed by the majority of Americans who voted for Al Gore and the majority of Floridians who cast their ballots for Gore as well).

Bush is a throwback to leaders who operate according to the discredited theory from the Dark Ages known as “the divine right of kings.” According to this deeply irrational idea the monarch is acting as God’s representative on earth and his decisions are divinely guided. Bush’s disastrous reign is a reductio ad absurdum argument against this theory. However, Bush has brought great credit to the sole political teaching of his favorite political philosopher, Jesus: Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. In other words, George has proven that Jesus was right about keeping religion out of politics.

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Why Bush’s Military Surge is Fizzling

General Petraeus and the men under his command are being asked to do the impossible; buy time for a political reconciliation among Iraq’s warring factions. Most observers agree that General Petraeus’ counterinsurgency techniques have improved the security situation for many Iraqis, but only at the cost of increasing the number of U.S. casualties. Virtually no one believes, however, that the Iraqi government is moving in the right direction when it comes to settling sectarian differences. Because the surge cannot be sustained indefinitely, however, any military progress that is not accompanied by diplomatic progress will be in vain.

General Petraeus, as the cliché goes, wrote the Army’s counterinsurgency manual. According to his estimation, successful counterinsurgency efforts generally take at least eight to ten years. This means that pacifying the insurgency, which is a virtual prerequisite for a political settlement, could happen around 2015 at the earliest. And this assumes that Bush’s successor – not to mention the American public – will continue to back the current strategy, an untenable proposition.

In democratic countries different factions agree to settle their differences peacefully through power sharing arrangements and compromise. In the Middle East, however, power and politics are a zero-sum game. Put simply, in the Arab world power only changes hands through violence. The Bush administration claims the invasion of Iraq was intended to establish a new precedent for the Arab world, where leaders come to power through the ballot box rather than through bullets. But the invasion that violently overthrew Saddam Hussein contradicted the lesson the Bush administration insisted it was trying to teach. Actions, no doubt, still speak louder than words.

Historians will tell you that democracy is a generational enterprise. That is, it takes decades before a given people can absorb and exhibit the state of mind, habits, and cultural practices associated with self-government. Absent the requisite educational levels, institutions, and cultural factors (free markets, separation of church and state, and a vibrant middle class) self-government usually breeds mob rule and tyranny. To put it bluntly, Iraq was probably one of the least promising places on the planet to try and plant democracy.

It is not surprising, then, that the Shiites and the Sunnis each seem determined to settle their political differences through force. To complicate matters, the U.S. has been arming Sunni forces (which previously had been shooting at U.S. troops) as a counterweight to al-Qaeda in Iraq, but also to counterbalance the Iranian friendly Shia dominated government we helped install! Arming Sunnis forces, needless to say, makes tactical sense (in so far as they want to kill al-Qaeda), but it may also backfire strategically because it undermines the Shia led government we are counting on. As military historian Andrew Bacevich puts it, the Bush administration’s strategy amounts to arming one gang to check another. This is unlikely do anything for law and order. Sooner or later, Bacevich argues, whomever we’ve armed may turn their weapons back in the cops (which would be us).

Imposing democracy on Iraq is proving about as feasible as a shotgun marriage. Just as an obligatory ceremony, some official looking documents, and the unavoidable vows about working together won’t keep a warring couple from killing each other after the “honeymoon” is over, so the façade of elections and a Constitution are not going to forestall Iraq’s warring factions from slaughtering each other, if that’s what they are determined to do.
Bush’s surge strategy is almost entirely predicated on the Maliki government reaching a political accommodation that will satisfy Iraq’s rival factions. However, the man Bush has tapped, as the “right guy” for Iraq, is either unwilling or unable to reach beyond the sectarian divisions and forge a genuinely inclusive government. As Iraq’s former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi observes: “It is past time for change at the top of the Iraqi government. Without that, no American Military strategy or orderly withdrawal will succeed, and Iraq and the region will be left in chaos.”Every astute observer, Democrat or Republican, expresses exasperation over the lack of a diplomatic surge to accompany the military surge. Why isn’t George Bush sending one or more of America’s best negotiators – James Baker, George Mitchell, or Dennis Ross (to name a few) – to try and hammer out a political settlement or broker a backroom deal with the parties? It is very likely that Iraq is one mess that even a consummate political fixer like James Baker can’t clean up. But if the man they call the “velvet hammer” could pull it off, then it would certainly make up for his role in securing Bush’s “election.”

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Bush's Catch-22

George W. Bush has always been something of a contradiction. In 2000 he lost the popular vote but “won” the election in the Electoral College. His campaign argued that the most accurate recount procedures violated the equal protection clause, which the Supreme Court accepted as a valid reason for terminating a manual recount. However, Bush’s “victory” in the depended on the fact that votes are weighed unevenly in the Electoral College. To heap insult upon injury, the “states’ rights” candidate effectively got the strict constructionist majority on the Supreme Court to behave as activist judges by intervening in the internal procedures of a sovereign state. It is now abundantly clear that George Bush twisted the law like a pretzel to override the will of the voters. George Bush’s “win,” needless to say, has been America’s loss.

Following Bush’s election America finds itself a universe where Alice in Wonderland logic applies. Only on the wrong end of the rabbit hole could the following things occur:

The draft-dodging duo of Bush/Cheney painting war hero John Kerry as a wimp.
Massive Bush tax cuts in a time of war are followed by the biggest increase in Federal spending in American history (if you don’t think there will be a reckoning for Bush’s financial follies I have a couple of bridges I’d like to sell you).
Bush claims, “the U.S. does not torture. Period. End of discussion.” At the same time, Cheney extols the virtues of water boarding on Rush Limbaugh’s show.
The Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales, commits perjury in his Congressional testimony and his so unconvincing that even Republicans and officials at the Justice Department believe he’s incompetent. But the president still believes he’s doing a heck of a job.
Bush would decry nation building as a candidate but then attempt nation building in Iraq (all the while managing to paint political opponents who opposed his nation building exercise in Iraq as flip-floppers and historical revisionists).
Bush declares the end of all major combat operations before Iraq explodes into a cauldron of violence and U.S. casualties soar.
The invasion of Iraq was supposed to defend against a threat that never exist (Saddam’s non-existent WMD and alleged but discredited ties to al-Qaeda) while creating the kind of failed state and terror haven the Bush administration said the invasion was meant to meant to forestall. Meanwhile, the U.S. invasion, which was supposed to engender a wave of democracy that would sweep through the Middle East has in fact discredited democracy, spawned and radicalized a new generation of terrorists, and enhanced to fortunes of our chief adversary in the region, Iran.

America’s predicament in Iraq, of course, represents the ultimate Catch-22. We have inadvertently helped install a Shiite dominated government, friendly to Iran, that is trying to squash Sunni insurgents (who were once our adversaries but are now our allies against al-Qaeda). The Shia government, needless to say, is wary about our arming their Sunni adversaries. And the Sunnis, no doubt, are worried that will sell them out to their Shia adversaries. Meanwhile, the Saudis are arming the Sunnis and the Iranians are arming the Shia. And just in case this wasn’t complicated enough, the Shia are fighting among themselves.
All this means we have to stay put in Iraq, or things will get worse. But we can’t stay put without breaking our military. That’s some catch, that catch-22.

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Bush’s Brain Resigns

Karl Rove, the man known as Bush’s Brain, seemed to provide the mental ballast an intellectual lightweight like Bush needed. With the Bush administration sinking like a Russian submarine, Rove’s political genius suddenly seems of a lower order; like a contestant smart enough to win “The Price is Right,” but not someone you’d mention in the same breath as Einstein, Mozart, and Shakespeare.

Still, for a guy who never managed to finish college Rove did manage to accomplish quite a lot, including engineering a political realignment that will make Democrats the majority party for a generation or more. Too bad Rove is a Republican.

Rove deserves credit as the chief architect of the most spectacularly unsuccessful, incompetent, and unpopular administrations in American history. It’s no easy feat to have a wartime president with unparalleled public support, to have control of both houses of Congress, and yet accomplish virtually nothing of lasting significance on the legislative front. On Bush’s signature issues – the privatization of Social Security, immigration reform, faith-based initiatives, replacing Medicare with health savings accounts, and educational reform – only the No Child Left Behind Act was passed. No Child Left Behind, incidentally, is due to expire in a matter of months, and there is little enthusiasm to renew it.

Bush legacy won’t depend on his domestic achievements, thankfully. There’s no telling how bad Bush might have messed up the United States had he not been preoccupied with screwing up Iraq. To be fair, Karl Rove did not play a significant role in foreign affairs, so there’s no sense in blaming him for the “brilliant” idea to invade Iraq as a prelude to remaking the Middle East in America’s image. However, Karl Rove reportedly presided over a domestic policy review process that was so lackadaisical and undisciplined that one observer described it as like watching kids roll around on the White House Lawn.

Rove, it appears, was a genius when it came to reading polls, but a mental midget when it came to policy. His divide and conquer mentality, which led him to portray Democrats as fifth columnists in order to galvanize the Republican base was destined to be self-defeating. Put simply, Rove treated the Republican base the way Pavlov treated his dogs, or as B.F. Skinner treated his pigeons: as mechanistic cogs that could be trained to respond the same way every time to the same stimulus. Ring the bell before dinner and Pavlov’s dogs would soon be drooling every time they heard the bell. Mention “defeatocrats,” gay marriage, and tax and spend liberals and Rove could be certain that those who made up the Republican base would be foaming at the mouth as they pulled the correct lever in the voting both.

Rove’s approach was self-defeating for several reasons. First, his rhetorical appeals (“stay the course,” Democrats had failed to learn the lessons of 9/11, There’s no difference between Saddam and al-Qaeda, for instance) were basically pitched at the lowest common denominator. As Lincoln observed, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” At some point, Rove’s insipid slogans, empty clichés, and gross over simplifications were bound to alienate the more educated and sophisticated portions of the electorate. A movement that deliberately marginalizes the best and brightest in order to mobilize reactionaries, the superstitious, and the narrow-minded is not going to sustain itself over the long term.

Rove failed for many other reasons. He failed to build a broad-based coalition, he eschewed consensus building, and he did not establish sound decision-making procedures within the policy-making apparatus. As a result, everything about the Bush administration has proven brittle. Rove was like the general who had the perfect plan on paper, but it fell apart at the first whiff or reality. There's very little doubt that the Bush administration's IQ will decline with Rove's departure, but that may not be a great loss since the administration's collective IQ was not very high to begin with.

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Bush's Economics and the Credit Crunch

In banana republics the financial meltdown usually doesn’t occur until the first family has left office and is safely ensconced in another country. Mexico’s peso crisis, for instance, didn’t materialize until after Carlos Salinas had passed off the palace keys to his successor and bought a one-way ticket to Ireland. So I’m inclined to believe that the current liquidity crisis, accompanied by a fairly precipitous drop in the Dow Jones, is only a momentary phenomenon. The current volatility should not force prudent investors to rethink their retirement portfolios. And it shouldn’t cause them to hoard canned foods, automatic weapons, and medical supplies in anticipation of global economic depression. No, any economic clouds Americans are likely to face are almost certainly days if not months away. After all, if the Bush Administration can avoid impeachment and avoid accountability for the disastrous war in Iraq, then it can certainly avoid any kind of financial reckoning until January of 2008.

There is, alas, little doubt that most Americans are poorer than they were when Bush/Cheney took office. After all, we’ve been borrowing money to pay for: tax cuts, the war in Iraq, and to repair our dilapidated bridges. Actually, we’ve been neglected investing in our bridges and roadways, which is one reason 25% of them are rated structurally deficient. That leads to the inescapable conclusion that our highways are more dangerous than the terrorists. But just as most Americans would rather buy a giant screen TV (for no money down) than fix a leaky roof, so the Bush/Cheney Administration would rather nuke Iran than fix America.

In a sane world we probably wouldn’t borrow money from China, so that we can but oil from Saudi Arabia, so that Saudi Arabia can afford to purchase our high-tech weapons, so that we can keep our military-industrial-political system going, which we need to defend us in a world awash in weapons but scarce in oil. But as the reader may have noticed for him or herself, this isn’t a sane world, not even remotely. Which is why the Bush Administration kind of makes sense, in a tragic Shakespearean kind of way, because we need someone more foolish than us to enact our foolishness for us so that we might recognize how foolish we are, before it is too late.

The Bush Administration has mortgaged America’s future by selling China promissory notes so it can pour resources into a money pit like Iraq. But Americans have long been living beyond their means and ignoring and denying the emerging energy crunch, the climate crisis, and our decrepit infrastructure. We’re on course to spend more than a trillion dollars on Iraq, with nothing to show for it. And we owe the Chinese $ 1.3 trillion for the money they lent us so we can buy their poisoned toothpaste, deadly dog food, and flat tires. One day we’ll wake up and find that we’re poor and stupid. If you don’t believe me, then I have a bridge (in either Baghdad or Brooklyn) to sell you.

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Bush's Madness in Mesopotamia

The Bush Administration’s announcement of a $20 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia makes about as much sense as giving a heart patient a bucket of fried chicken. Sure, a big arms deal with the Saudi sheiks is a nice way to recycle all those petro profits to American contractors that make up what’s left of Bush’s base. But selling our shaky allies a smorgasbord of weaponry is only going to make a volatile region even more unstable. Of course, the fact that we’re sending arming the Sunni Arabs in Saudi Arabia is symptomatic of the fact that our invasion of Iraq has inadvertently backfired to the advantage of the Persian Shiites in Iran.

The Washington Post, incidentally, is reporting that the Pentagon cannot account for 30% of the weapons it has handed over to the Iraqi government. As one expert put it, this "likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors." The fact that the U.S. military is battling forces supplied by U.S. taxpayers – the U.S. has spend nearly $20 billion supplying Iraqi security forces – puts a new twist on the administration’s banal old cliché that as “The Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down.” Can there be any doubt that Bush is to the war on terror what Inspector Clousseau is to law enforcement?

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Bush's Bridge to Nowhere

Presidential historians will tell you that great presidents demonstrate political courage and wisdom. JFK, for instance, resisted hawkish advice during the Cuban missile crisis. His defiance of right-wing elements in his own administration convinced many he was an appeaser, but his approach proved remarkably sensible in so far as his cautious incrementalism averted a nuclear war. Likewise, truly great presidents like Lincoln and F.D.R. managed to shape and articulate a vision of what America could be as they guided the nation through perilous challenges. In each of these cases, the United States emerged stronger and more resilient as a result of the decisions these exceptional leaders made.

It is increasingly unlikely that anyone will associate political courage and wisdom with George W. Bush. It is true, of course, that Bush has staked his legacy on the invasion of Iraq, a brash gamble to remake the Middle East. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, however, was a popular gambit, one that that was initially supported by 75% of the electorate. It also helped the Republicans win the mid-term elections in 2002 by painting Democrats as soft on national security. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was audacious, but it was not politically courageous because he had everything to gain politically and little to lose in launching the war.

Many observers argued Iraq “was the wrong war at the wrong time.” They have proven prescient. Bush’s invasion has precipitated the very conditions it was meant to forestall. And we are fighting in Iraq to achieve negative goals – i.e., preventing a full-scale civil war, mass genocide, and a wider regional conflagration. Nothing about the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq seems to have been handled with the least bit of sagacity.

The imprudence of invading Iraq is compounded by the fact that America is literally falling apart even as our nation building efforts in Iraq are foundering. We are spending at least half-a-billion every week in Iraq, but we can’t even provide reliable electricity in Baghdad. Meanwhile, America’s basic infrastructure (our highways, bridges, and power grids) is crumbling before our eyes. Not to mention the fact that the United States is facing a crisis in healthcare and health insurance.

In all probability, history will judge the folly of Bush’s misplaced priorities harshly. National security experts like Stephen Flynn have been arguing for some time that America is losing its resilience, its ability to withstand ecological events, terror assaults, and even normal wear and tear. Failing to invest in our critical infrastructure means puts citizens at risk, reduces our competitiveness, and leaves us more vulnerable to terror attacks and extreme weather events.

Extreme weather patterns associated with the climate crisis are all but certain to expose the weaknesses in America’s ailing infrastructure, which will further highlight how foolish the Bush Administration has been in ignoring the scientific consensus on global warming. To put it bluntly, invading Iraq has proven to be a vicious cycle that siphons America’s strength, breeds more terrorists, and diverts resources from sensible endeavors. Bush contends it will be decades before America realizes how farsighted and sagacious his decisions were. His track record as a prognosticator, however, does not inspire much confidence.

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