George W. Bush: Legacy? Smegacy!

In his “ultimate exit interview” stand-up comic and still-President George Bush treats us to more delusion, denial, and more frightening insight into his personal version of reality (entire video here).

On Katrina, for instance, he praised the “helicopter drivers” as proof that the “federal response was not slow.”  He admitted the “Mission Accomplished” banner was a mistake.  He said “Abu Ghraib was “a disappointment.” “No WMD’s was a disappointment” (ours for believing him?  Saddam’s for not having them?).  He spoke wistfully of every day of his presidency being joyous, even when troops were losing their lives.  He also lectured reporters on the political climate after 9/11.

Looking back, Bush pointed out that certain angry people were bound to criticize any president, and he said the “opiners” had been hard on him.  Opiners???  But as Bush travels, he said he doesn’t meet many angry people. He doesn’t pay attention to the “loud voices.”  Really, the president who dodged the shoes said that.

It would be so tempting to just show Bush the door and try to forget the last eight years. But we must not do that. When your house has been flooded, you can’t start rebuilding until you get the muck out of all the nooks and crannies. Otherwise, your new house stinks, no matter how nicely you paint it.

In his Sunday op-ed column, New York Times “opiner” Frank Rich discussed the importance of not just turning the page.

The biggest question hovering over all this history, however, concerns the future more than the past. If we get bogged down in adjudicating every Bush White House wrong, how will we have the energy, time or focus to deal with the all-hands-on-deck crises that this administration’s malfeasance and ineptitude have bequeathed us? The president-elect himself struck this note last spring. “If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” Barack Obama said. “I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”

. . . While our new president indeed must move on and address the urgent crises that cannot wait, Bush administration malfeasance can’t be merely forgotten or finessed. A new Justice Department must enforce the law; Congress must press outstanding subpoenas to smoke out potential criminal activity; every legal effort must be made to stop what seems like a wholesale effort by the outgoing White House to withhold, hide and possibly destroy huge chunks of its electronic and paper trail.

Aside from criminal wrongdoing, we need to document the extent of the damage to the federal government caused by outright incompetence and neglect. Bush warned that Obama would encounter “disappointments.” The Center for Public Integrity has identified 125 systemic failures across the federal government.

Many of the failures are rooted in recurring themes: agency appointees selected primarily for ideology and loyalty, rather than competence; agency heads who overruled staff experts and suppressed reports that did not coincide with administration philosophy; agency-industry collusion; a bedrock belief in the wisdom of deregulation; extensive private outsourcing of public functions; a general failure to exercise government’s oversight responsibilities; and severely slashed budgets at understaffed agencies that often left them unable to execute basic administrative functions.

Disappointments, indeed.

Examining the Bush legacy realistically is not a “partisan witch hunt.” It is both a reckoning for the American public and an important point of departure for Congress and the Obama administration. Hopefully, by exploring the Bush legacy of mis- and malfeasance, the people of America can create a “never-do list” for future presidents.

The criminal investigations (war crimes, bribery in contracting, etc.) require a special prosecutor(s) and/or grand jury(ies). The non-criminal investigation must be an independent, grass-roots effort with ordinary people paying attention.  (The “loud voices” of the blogging community will be vital to keeping the heat on any investigators.)   The media does not have the attention span to cover it.  The legislative committees involved are too concerned about their own possible complicity and political fallout to be trusted to follow through.

The most stunning thing about Bush’s press conference today was the extent to which W still doesn’t get it.  He reacted angrily to a question about the loss of American leadership and the damage to our moral authority abroad over the last eight years. As if the questioner had just made that up.  He “doesn’t accept that assessment.” That may be the view of some “elites,” he says.

He’s in a burning house, and when someone points that out, he just says, “Aw shucks, it’s a little warm, but, heck, it was burning when I got here.”  No, Mr. Bush, it wasn’t.  You brought the gasoline to the party.  

Maureen Dowd captures the Bush lame duck period precisely:

From Gaza to the unemployment figures to the $10.6 trillion debt, things keep spiraling while W. keeps fiddling. Just as when he was in the National Guard and didn’t bother to show up, now, as the scabrous consequences of his missteps shake the economy and the world, he doesn’t bother to show up. He’s checked out — spending his time on more than a dozen exit interviews that do nothing to change his image as a president who was over his head and under Cheney’s spell.

Here’s hoping the next in-depth interview we see from George W. Bush is under oath.