SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH, PART II

I had intended to cover more of Bush's farewell speech. But to what purpose? I covered most of the areas in the post below where I thought he was most disingenuous about his record. Why torture (Ooops!) America with more?

Bush made a valiant effort trying to spin what has been a failed presidency into a successful one--even to the point where he insists history will prove him right.

Few historians believe that, and even fewer Americans. Mr. Bush leaves office with a nation in shambles and his legacy in worse condition. He has no one to blame but himself and Vice.

But don't take my assessment alone as the final indictment on what he has wrought. Here are some choice words from various journalists from here and abroad:

Bernie Horne, Alternet:

"Thanks to Bush, we know that conservatives are not fiscally responsible, they are not for small government, they don't stand up for moral values and they won't make Americans one bit safer. Conservatives aren't even true defenders of "free markets" -- having presided over the biggest market bailout in the world."

Robert G. Kaiser writes on washingtonpost.com: "This was a sad moment. Bush looked frail and uncomfortable to me. His inappropriate little grins were, I suspect, more a measure of that discomfort than anything else. The country is in a disastrous state, and Bush seemed to want to pretend that he was just another president ending his term of office. Tragically, we are coming to the end of one of the least successful presidencies in American history. In a month or two I suspect we will have put Bush entirely behind us. . . .

"In my view, Bush was talking down to us tonight by assuming, implicitly, that people might actually accept his rosy view of what has been happening to the country and the world while he has been president. I think this tendency to whistle past the graveyard is a large part of the explanation for his remarkably low approval ratings at the end of his presidency."

Tom Shales writes in The Washington Post: "Only his remaining ardent supporters would probably classify last night's TV appearance by President Bush as reality television. On the other hand, detractors -- a sizable group, judging by popularity polls -- would likely say George W. Bush's farewell to the nation, delivered from the East Room of the White House, had the aura of delusion and denial.

"America is suffering what is commonly being called the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression, for example. Yet in Bush's speech, that crisis was euphemized into 'challenges to our prosperity,' as Bush took credit for bold steps to remedy the situation."

Rupert Cornwell, the Independent: "Almost everything he touched went sour – from the global image of the US to the economy, from the military (stretched almost to breaking point by two wars) to his own Republican party, and the conservative cause once championed by Bush's hero Ronald Reagan. By almost every measure, the country is in a worse state than when he took over on 20 January 2001.

Bush and his enabler Dick Cheney set out to strengthen the presidency, and to an extent they did – but largely by weakening, and on occasion trampling over, the constitution itself."

And finally, one of my favorite writers, Mark Morford, SFGate:

"To my mind, even the softest portrait of W merely raises the larger question, perhaps not to be fully answered for many years: How could such a mediocre and unimaginative human cause so much damage? How could this frat house daddy's-boy dullard so perfectly undermine America's fundamental identity and disfigure every major department of government and bring the nation to its knees? Indeed, unpacking that one may take awhile.

Other questions, though, are not so difficult. Questions like: Has it really been all that bad? Have we been too hard on the poor schlub? Does Bush really deserve such white-hot derision and international contempt? Or is he just lost and misunderstood, like a sad clown with a big shotgun and an unfortunate muscle spasm? I think we can all answer those without the slightest hesitation.

There is, after all, no escaping history. There is no escaping the hard reality of our gutted and mangled nation, how the past eight years are simply some of the most dismal and corrupt in our nation's history, a modern take on the Dark Ages. And there is also no escaping the sense that we barely got out of it alive.

But you know what? Maybe there will eventually be a tiny bit of room for empathy for George W. Bush, for feeling a tiny bit sorry for the guy for being so inept and so deeply loathed and for never really understanding the scope of the damage he was doing, or who was really pulling the strings.

They say forgiveness, after all, is one of the highest virtues of man. Particularly forgiveness of those who have wronged us, harmed us, wreaked violence and idiocy and a homophobic war-loving fundamentalist Jesus upon us. The question then becomes, how do you begin? Where do you look inside yourself for a hint of mercy and absolution for this most banal and regrettable of evil overlords?

Maybe you don't look inside at all. Maybe, at least initially, it's more effective to do the exact opposite, to step back and take the long view, widen your lens until it encompasses the entire insane pageant of life, until you can't help but see Bush and all his concomitant demons for what they really are: a blip, a blink, a shrug of God, a speck of sad lint floating through the giant, never-ending cosmic circus.

Hey, it might not be forgiveness, but it's a start. "