It’s Christmas Eve but the greatest gift of all is still 26 days away…that’s Bush’s last day. Waiting for the Bush presidency to come to a close has been like the end of an abusive marriage, torturous and seemingly never ending. Instead of quietly exiting leaving behind financial havoc and uncertainty, this administration has instead chosen to attempt to shore up their legacy.

President Bush has done a series of unenlightening exit interviews where he said among other gems that every day in the White House was “joyous.” I find use of that word in light of the tragedies that have befallen our nation in the last 8 years ironic to say the least. This is a president so lacking in self reflection and so unable to perform an honest personal inventory that he rejects responsibility for every mistake and every failed policy he himself enacted. This is a president who according to the NY Times was personally and repeatedly forewarned about the danger that the housing bubble could burst, but actually asked in a meeting to discuss the financial bailout of Wall Street, “How did this happen?” The shallowness of his intellect truly boggles the mind. Bush personally removed competent policy makers and bureaucrats and replaced them with political cronies, like Michael “Brownie” Brown, thus setting the stage for the haphazard, lackadaisical response to disasters like Hurricane Katrina and our current financial crisis.

In some of these interviews including one with CNN’s Candy Crowley he actually seems to blame uneducated consumers for fueling the financial meltdown by investing in products they didn’t understand. Never mind the fact that deregulation of banks allowed consumers to invest in products that no one clearly understood and never mind the fact that President Bush encouraged home ownership to all regardless of their ability to pay as part of his push for an ownership society. All of the facts seem to be forgotten now in the rush to the door.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/17/bush-legacy-no-responsibility/

Vice President Cheney for his part is completely and defiantly unrepentant for anything he’s done ever in his lifetime. He proudly declared in an interview recently that he had indeed authorized torture of suspected terrorists and felt that it had saved lives. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/12/cheney-confesse.html

The only good to come of any of these exit interviews is growing support for a war crimes tribunal to address the actions of Bush and Cheney.

The fact that anyone in their right mind could be debating the Bush legacy as anything other than a complete unmitigated disaster is a joke. Two wars, massive spending, record deficits, warrantless wiretaps, violations of our constitution, the needless deaths of more than 4,000 soldiers, the collapse of our banking and financial systems, the further destruction of our manufacturing economy, rising unemployment, the onset of recession, provoking international outrage among our former allies…the list goes on and on. In the end, nearly everyone in America will be touched in some way by the destructive nature of the Bush administration’s actions and policies. The scary part for me is that I don’t believe we really know everything that’s happened over the last 8 years. We won’t have a full accounting of the damage until President-elect Obama takes office and begins to assess the damage. That’s the truly awful part about all of this. Instead of starting fresh, Barack Obama will have to pick up the shattered pieces of our economy and our nation and attempt to put things back together, while taking a detailed look at the damage done. God help him and us as we move forward together.

This Modern World…a comic take on Bush’s exit

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2008/12/30/tomo/

Here’s a great summary of the exit interviews…

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16800.html

(Even Republicans say Bush will be remembered as Herbert Hoover….)

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/late-edition-bush-punted-auto-industry-problems-is-hoover

‘Incompetent’ is the top word that Americans associate with President Bush.»

In a Pew survey released today, “just 11% said Bush will be remembered as an outstanding or above average president,” which is “by far the lowest positive end-of-term rating for any of the past four presidents.” Sixty-four percent of respondents said that the Bush administration “will be remembered more for its failures than its accomplishments.” The poll also asked people to describe Bush in a word. The top word that came to mind for 56 respondents was “incompetent“:

ADMINISTRATION — CHENEY: IT ‘WOULD HAVE BEEN IMMORAL’ FOR US NOT TO TORTURE:Earlier this week, Vice President Cheney admitted to personally authorizing the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other detainees. In a new interview with the Washington Times, Cheney stridently defended the program, saying, “I feel very good about what we did,” adding that he would “do exactly the same thing again.” He specifically defended the morality of torture. “I think it would have been unethical or immoral for us not to do everything we could in order to protect the nation against further attacks like what happened on 9/11,” Cheney said. He claimed that torture was “directly responsible for the fact that we’ve been able to avoid or defeat further attacks against the homeland for 7 1/2 years.” In fact, torture has endangered, not protected, American lives. Military experts say thatU.S. torture policies have been the single greatest recruiting tool for al Qaeda. A former interrogator who worked in Iraq stated unequivocally last month, “The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001.”

www.thinkprogress.org

Glenn Greenwald explains the “rule of law” to Bill Moyers.

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/glenn-greenwald-talks-bill-moyers-abo