Pity Party
This is a kind of laugh/cry piece:
Others inside and outside the administration, however, say the upbeat talk masks disappointment and frustration among many White House staffers, who believe Bush’s reputation has been unfairly maligned for a series of calamities — from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to the financial crisis — that were beyond his control and that he handled well. GOP nominee John McCain’s escalating attacks on Bush’s tenure have added to the irritation, these people said.
“Everybody kind of wanted to spend the last 100-plus days doing some legacy things, and the financial crisis has thrown a wrench into that,” said one prominent Republican who regularly talks with senior White House officials.
“You have a combination of no legacy stuff, a horrible economic mess and the likelihood that Obama is going to win,” this person added. “There is a real sadness there.”
I feel almost as sorry for Bush as I do for the people who’ve been tortured to death as a result of his policies, or for the over four million Iraqis who’ve been forced to flee their homes. I mean, how could one administration suffer so much bad luck?
37 Responses to “Pity Party”
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November 2nd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I will never understand this obsession presidents have with “legacy”. This shit isn’t separate from your terms, jerks, it is what you did for 8 years that defines your legacy. To say “we wanted to do legacy stuff” when you are ostensibly leading the US is the most vain, selfish, bs imaginable. Run the freakin country.
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Bush is sad. And that makes me sad. If he’d only write, I’d send him $10 toward a vacation in Belgium.
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:24 pm
A friend of mine got his girlfriend pregnant in high school.
He later told me that I was lucky, since I didn’t got any of my girlfriends pregnant.
I almost punched his face.
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:35 pm
They “kind of” wanted to do “some legacy things”?
Is there a single person affiliated with the Bush administration who is serious about governance?
Seriously: “NO LEGACY STUFF”?! What a joke.
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I have a very tiny violin for those poor white house staffers.
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Bush has plenty of legacy. The techniques he has used to dismantle the constitution will be remembered forever.
Oh, you mean positive legacy.
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:55 pm
What if McCain really had the cojones to oppose Bush? He might be ahead.
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I agree with Walker.
Iraq
Gitmo
Domestic spying
Katrina
DOJ corruption
Credit crisis
This Administration has legacy in spades.
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
What needs to be resisted with every bit of strength is any inclination we have to feel sorry for Bush or anyone in his administration. Letting them off the hook will be the easiest thing to do. We must not, or we will not learn from our mistakes…again.
Jeez, even Oliver Stone has gone soft.
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I shouldn’t be surprised at the blindness and vanity of Bush and his inner circle, but I am. At least I expected them to think that legacies are the province of bourgeois boobs; reality takers, not reality makers like themselves.
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Worrying about “legacy” at this stage is like buying souvenirs at the airport on your way home – it’s not likely to fool anyone.
I think that W’s should get a plaque in the middle of the Iraqi desert – “If you seek his monument, look around.”
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:48 pm
I almost laughed out loud at the “legacy stuff”. As if you can screw around for 8 years and then tie it up with a bow made of “legacy stuff”. It’s also pretty sad: it actually is true that really big mistakes can be balanced out in the eyes of history by small-bore BS. My idiot-contrarian students: “But Nixon went to China!”
Another thing it underlines is that even well-informed people think of presidents in short hand. Most public discussions of say Reagan or Clinton are not going to get into detail about what good happened, what bad happened, how much of each the president himself was responsible for, and put it all on the balance. It’s very easy for the informed collective memory to alter or abolish certain well-established facts about the past.
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Some of these guys and gals might be thinking that with the Unitary Executive out the window, and the Permanent Republican Majority a Karl Rove wet dream, they might be looking at some jail time over the next few years over the things they got up to ….
Bet a few pardons will be signed off, and the shredders will be running hot, hot, hot ….
November 2nd, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Why feel sorry for these fuckers?! They deserve all the contempt and hatred they get both in the short-term and history
November 2nd, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Thanks
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Isn’t those last minute consumer/worker/environmental deregulation to help businesses produce unsafer products, create unsafer work places and poison our planet further, and get richer for it, the ultimate legacy builders? These punks have not forgotten these great last 100 day achievements?
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:13 am
Their recent “legacy” work includes weakening consumer and environmental protections. It’s self-imposed schadenfreude and an end-run bailout of non-financial companies.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Legacy? Here’s a legacy: these assholes would have been out after one term, so bereft of any worthwhile policies was GWB’s Administration. What policies he did have, the public wasn’t buying, including the same, tired, old capital gains taxes riff that his dad used to play.
It was obvious why the lazy bastard was spending all of his time at the ranch. He knew he was a short timer… until OBL’s crew got inventive with box cutters.
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