Bush reign tarnished America

The shoe-thrower in Baghdad provided a metaphor for the unmitigated disaster of the eight-year monarchy of G.W. Bush. The toss illustrated the utter contempt for Bush, the worst president in U.S. history.
Bush leaves the White House with a deep moral stain that includes torture, kidnapping for torture abroad, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. He disgraced the presidency. He left America at its all-time low in world prestige and all-time high in domestic abhorrence.
Jane Mayer writes in “The Dark Side”: “For the first time in its history, the United States sanctioned government officials to physically and psychologically torment U.S.-held detainees, making torture the official law of the land.”
Bush squandered blood, money ($3 trillion) and moral currency in two unnecessary wars. He promulgated the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive warfare.
His domestic policies were retrograde. Tax cuts for the wealthy. Deregulation and more deregulation with a madness for privatization. The powerful fear factor after 9/11 greatly aided his reactionary agenda.
History, far from absolving Bush, will judge him as an ignoramus, an unlettered, uncultured dolt. He was shallow and hollow. A buffoon, a worldwide embarrassment.
E.L. Doctorow savaged Bush in an essay: “His mispronunciations and malapropisms suggest a mind of half-learned language that is eerily compatible with his indifference to truth.”
Bush was a son of privilege, a draft dodger during the Vietnam War. He occasionally served in the Texas Air National Guard, a “champagne” posting gotten through dynastic pull. He constantly failed in business but always failed upward because of powerful connections.
Abortion violated Bush’s religious principles so he constantly undercut the landmark Roe v. Wade. His first body blow was a global gag rule on abortion providers. His last was the “right of conscience” to refuse abortion services.
Stem cell research? So what if it could lead to medical breakthroughs for the good of mankind. Bush took orders from a higher power.
He put conservative ideology over the truths of science. He destroyed the social contract and elevated property rights over human rights.
Bush trashed the environment. To him, global warming was a myth to be ignored if not laughed at. He compromised federal agencies and departments, turning the Justice Department into a political fiefdom. He refused to allow photos of 4,000 American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan in coffins.
He sealed his father’s presidential records because they might reveal terrible secrets. Russ Baker in “Family of Secrets” wonders if the Bush-friendly CIA murdered the Kennedys for ideological and political reasons.
Bush II stacked the judiciary with ugly conservatives who will influence the law for decades. He rejected the world-honored Geneva Conventions. America alone among Western nations refused to sign a U.N. resolution to decriminalize homosexuality.
The Constitution? A trifle. Bush decided the law. Civil liberties? Worth trampling for what he falsely called national defense. The FBI under him infiltrated lawful, peaceful groups. It allowed agents to gather information on citizens without evidence of wrong-doing. Bush issued signing statements declaring what he wanted congressional laws to mean.
His hubris was monumental. When an aide suggested that tax cuts for the rich might be bad policy, Bush chastised him: “If I decide to do it, by definition it’s good policy.”
Bush’s meanness was glaring. Not satisfied with ruining the country for eight years, he did his damnedest over his last three months to desecrate it further. His departing administration issued “midnight rules” presenting gifts to business and industry.
Items: He greatly weakened the Endangered Species Act...Having desecrated Yellowstone with snowmobiles, he said loaded guns were just wonderful in national parks…He made it easier for coal companies to dump rock and dirt into streams and valleys…He blocked California’s effort to regulate tailpipe emissions…He ruled that new power plants need not install technology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Bush was adept at the blame game. Financial woes of the auto industry? He called it the fault of the United Auto Workers, demanding still more wage slashes. Yet the UAW made concessions in 2003, 2005 and 2007 contracts. Big Business? Oh, it’s all right to use bailout money to pay absurd salaries and hand out huge bonuses.
As for Vice President Dick Cheney, he was the svengali behind Bush. America has had evil men in power before: Mitchell Palmer, J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy. Cheney joins them.
Cheney said he had better things to do than serve in Vietnam. He called waterboarding entirely appropriate in the bogus war on terror. He said wiretapping was fine.
Bush and Cheney were totally unfit to be president and vice president. It speaks ill of the American people who twice put them in office over far better men.