This is not the icing on the cake of the Bush Administration. That’s still to come.
Rather, the sticky mess we’re mired in–as Feds ponder ingredients of their soon-to-come Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout on top of the IndyMac fiasco, second largest bank failure in American history, not to mention the Bear Stearns bailout–is only the latest layer in a tall leaning cake historians will someday deconstruct like archaeologists at a dig to try and figure out how we could’ve allowed such a chef as George W. Bush in the kitchen to begin with.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Things could get much worse. The icing on the cake comes later. Just wait. President Bush is not the sort to go quietly into that good night. He’ll put off allowing anyone else the last word, especially historians, scientists and financial experts, possibly until the last syllable of recorded time, to quote Hamlet.
So, expect more from this tragicomic president, possibly something big. Maybe the icing on this particular cake will arrive in the form of a mushroom cloud over Iran. Perhaps it’ll be some unspeakable insider crime against Democrats. Maybe it’ll just be a spectacular string of bank failures or some other predictable result of putting foxes in charge of hen houses. Whatever it is, more and more congressmen might come around to the notion that only by demanding Bush’s impeachment can they salvage something of their own reputation, integrity and legacy.
Of course, it’s too late for that. So much damage has been done, that, looking back layer by layer it’s hard to find a single thing Bush did right. OK, he made funds available for fighting AIDS in Africa, at least to the satisfaction of Bono. Besides that, it’s pretty much a mess.
Oh, how the layers stack up. Digging through them layer by layer, we encounter…
1. The Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, IndyMac, Bear Stearns fiascoes, of course.
2. Historic high oil prices.
3. The re-arming of Sunni warlords in Iraq—a layer we’ve yet to taste, but we will, we will….
4. Ratcheting up war fever against Iran, which makes silent diplomacy almost impossible.
6. Politicizing the Justice Department.
7. Allowing the cover-up of details surrounding Dick Cheney shooting the old guy in the face with impunity.
8. Failure to rescue New Orleans as Katrina drowned a thousand of her citizens and otherwise laid waste to the city.
9. Allowing ethnic cleansing—that too polite phrase by which one means the murders of thousands–by Shia and Sunnis in Iraq.
10. Emasculation of the EPA and sabotage of lawsuits against polluters.
11. Creating a matrix for gulags, kidnappings, torture, murder and other evils in the name of fighting terror.
