The squinty eyed man surveyed the room. The war in Iraq is going to hell, along with everything else in Iraq. Rummy is gone, Miers is gone, Hughes is gone. It looks like Gonzalez and Rove will be out soon. With the Senate investigating the Attorney General Scandal, and the House investigating the CIA scandal, this it the time for Truth, he thought. We have to address reality, and put this partisan flaming and lying behind us. Put that idea right out of his head, and spoke.
“We’ve got a strong record to run on,” he said, confident as the day he declared victory on the deck of an aircraft carrier, as Members of Congress dined on beef tenderloin and jumbo shrimp. “The key is to learn from every election and to come back stronger. And with your help, that’s exactly what we’re going to do in 2008!”
Every few years, historians survey American History, and decide which Presidents were the best and which ones were the worst.
For a long time, Presidents Millard Fillmore (who created the Know-Nothing party); Franklin Pierce (the first homosexual US President); and James Buchanan were thought to be the worst US Presidents. Buchanan alone could be the worst. His Secretary of War, John Buchanan Floyd moved all of the modern weapons owned by the United States Army to armories in The South, and made sure the armories could not be defended. Floyd made sure that a new fort was built to defend the port of Charleston SC, that was impervious to naval assault, but could not be defended against a land-based attack. And he took a commission as a General in the Confederate Army as soon as it was formed. President Buchanan was in a position to see what Floyd was doing, but did nothing. I fairness to Buchanan, it probably was not possible for him to have prevented the Southern Rebellion that took place the day he left office.
President Grant had quite a lot to say about Floyd in his memoirs, which show that as General Grant, he was quite astute about politics. For whatever reason, after he was elected to the Presidency, Grant did not pay any attention to detail, and trusted people who should not have been trusted. Grant continued to trust people after he left office. He was a partner in a Wall Street firm, and when the fellow who actually rand the firm got out of the country will all the investors’ money, including most of Grant’s. This administration was the most dishonest one in American History.
At least, until Warren G Harding was elected. Harding’s people sold off the Naval Oil Reserve – Teapot Dome – and whatever they could get their hands on. Harding also kept a mistress, Nan Britton, living right in the White House.
Then, of course, there was Richard M Nixon. Diogenes was a journalist once, and had a chance to talk with Mr. Nixon – in less than one minute, Nixon had a chance to invent a lie and get the whole thing presented, before ending the phone call. Nixon had the bad luck to have a few people in his administration who had integrity, and a few who were afraid of going to prison, and one (Deep Throat) who was so angry about not getting the promotion he wanted, that he let the secrets out. And, of course, a Congress held by Democrats.
Comparing George W Bush to the absolutely worst Presidents, it is hard to say that he is the worst of the worst. After all, we are not going to have a Civil War. South Carolina is certainly not going to secede. On the other hand, Mr. Bush might edge out Mr. Harding for giving away the Treasury. When he took office, the budget was well in the black, and the National Debt was much smaller than it had been in a long time. The Debt was down from the previous record, left by twelve years of Ronald Reagan and George Bush 41. Immediately on taking office, Mr. Bush 43 launched a tax reduction effort. Diogenes remembers that the program was sold as a tax refund for every American, and Diogenes remembers that he got about $600. The richest Americans got so much money, that the budget went immediately into deficit, and the National Debt soon got much more than it had been under Bush 41.
We do not actually know about the size of the National Debt any more. The Bush 43 people fixed the process with the majority they had in the House and the Senate, so that the costs of the war in Iraq do not actually show up in the budget. The costs of taking care of injured US service people is not in the budget, so that if we are going to actually take care of those people who served us in a corruptly conceived and stupidly managed war, the debt will climb again.
Diogenes remembers that after the Vietnam War, Republicans said again and again that America would have won the war if it were not for those hippie Democrats who made us lose the will to win. It was a lie in 1977, and it was a lie in 1987, and it was a lie in 1997, and it is still a lie now. It was never true that we could have won that war, even with Nuclear weapons, and using those would have made us a pariah state, alone in the world.
Interestingly, there are people now, who still are repeating that lie, including Senator John McCain, whose studies in Military History at the US Naval Academy should have taught him better. Mr. McCain, who certainly knows better, is cozying up to Mr. Bush 41’s supporters in order to get their support for the 2008 election. McCain knows that the number of people who support the war is quite small, but in addition to counting votes, the Senator obviously can count money in the millions. And he has been at the wrong end of the Republican attack machine, and does not want that to happen again.
It is getting very late for the Bush Administration. He won his office by exactly one vote – that of Sandra Day O’Connor. He got Congressional support in the 2002 election by creating a war with Iraq. Patriotism will not hold support forever, but it is good for a few years, and in those few years, Mr. Bush did a lot of damage.
Yesterday, President Bush, standing in front of a banner that read “Rebuilding Our Republican Majority” and flanked by two giant puzzle pieces, last night pledged to House Republicans that the GOP will retake both congressional chambers and “hold the White House in 2008.”
