I watched a little TV

What did you do on Monday, January 12, 2009? Anything interesting or extraordinary? I went to work. I drove home. I took my daughter to dance class. I watched our current president, George W. Bush, address journalists at a press conference for the last time. Since I was at work, I didn’t get to watch it live. I watched most of his press conference from web video later in the evening. If you only listened to it as sound bites on the radio, you got to hear how in denial he really is. However, you missed some very important aspects of his behavior. I could only describe him as erratic & strange. It could be explained away if he had a brain tumor & his behavior was affected: fidgety, posturing, inappropriate smiling, aggressive, loud, rambling. I can’t think of a better way to say it.

I think I was more stunned (yes, still) by his answer to the “biggest mistakes” question. A few things really struck me: “we shouldn’t have hung the Mission Accomplished banner”, “not finding WMD in Iraq”, “could have landed Air Force One in Baton Rouge”. You can tell that he doesn’t genuinely understand the NATURE of his mistake or that they were his fault. The mistake wasn’t the damn banner. It was not accomplishing the mission. It was not having a clear strategy for occupying or exiting Iraq. The mistake wasn’t not finding WMD. The mistake was invading a country on the premise of WMD possession, ignoring weapons inspectors that found nothing, only listening to intelligence that supported his belief and ignoring the international community & UN. The mistake wasn’t not landing the plane. The mistake was appointing a man that ran horse farms to head FEMA... "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie!" It was not paying any attention to what was going on in New Orleans for over 2 days and then not caring. It was not getting people off rooftops or out of the AstroDome for 7 days. It was allowing thousands of families to live in FEMA trailers for years after the storm had come & gone, long after the flood waters had receded. It was cutting funding that would have shored up the levees before all those people lost their lives, their families, their livelihoods.

It makes me sad that Dubya continues to fall back on the mantra that “history will judge his presidency”. At least he knows what people will think of him during his lifetime. Does he truly think in 100 years his crimes will look any less damning? Actually, I think he does. He’s wrong. I remember learning in high school that Ulysses S. Grant’s 8 years in office were rife with corruption and incompetence; that he was a joke. His presidency was 110 years before I was sitting in Mrs. Riddle’s American history class, looking at political cartoons. I truly hope that one day my great granddaughter will be sitting in her American History class, learning that George W. Bush’s 8 years in office were rife with corruption and incompetence, that he was a war monger and a joke. I hope she learns about his starting a war that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians just to avenge his daddy. I hope she reads with shame about our torturing detainees in Gitmo. I hope she reads about the Obama administration prosecuting the criminal acts perpetrated by his predecessor. Unfortunately, I also think history will judge us, the American people, harshly as well. After all, he had 8 years in office, not just 4.