The Humiliation of W

For all the attacks on President Bush's intelligence or competence--normally emphasis on the former--I would submit that the more appropriate attacks are on competence. To attack his intelligence (or lack thereof) is an easy attack and, well, not very intelligent in my view. I doubt very much that any of us can imagine Reagan or Eisenhower or FDR reading Plutarch in their den for inspiration in their forthcoming memoirs yet, regardless of your view of them, they were quite effective presidents. They were competent, they were not morally lazy, and they took their jobs seriously.

Now we see something like this. A tragicomic retelling of what has been known for some time--our CIA knew *nothing* of any accuracy regarding Saddam's WMD capacity. And the most powerful nation on earth being played the fool by a shit-can engineer looking for a green card. Is it all Bush's fault? Of course not. Is it all, ultimately, his responsibility? Of course it is. And that's the point.

Our current President has left behind nothing in the way of legacy. Nothing--except for failure. Nixon was, quite fairly, reviled by many and left the Presidency in shame. But he left behind an all-volunteer Army, took us off the antiquated gold standard, started the Environmental Protection Agency, normalized relations with China and initiated detente. Clinton was actually, legally, impeached but left behind a budgetary surplus, stopped the genocide in the former Yugoslavia, lifted millions out of poverty, pushed through the crime bill that was Giuliani's real platform for success, founded NAFTA, and reformed welfare (Giuliani's second platform of success, btw). One can have many disagreements with the former two presidents mentioned, and I have my share--even with the latter legacies they left behind. But it cannot be denied that they left something lasting.

W has left nothing of value. Nothing. He is, as Bill Maher has said, a disaster that walks like a man. His legacy is of suspending Habeus Corpus, of authorizing torture, of making America not a symbol of freedom and democracy, but a symbol of bungling neo-colonialism. A nation that spies on its citizenry, treats its great Constitution as an obstacle, the antithesis of the Enlightenment, the nightmare of Thomas Paine and George Orwell. We have become a lugubrious joke. We have played into the hands of the short-sighted, and dishonest, cynics that claim America is a collection of superstitious dimwits that worship only money in the end and care very little for anything beyond our own borders unless it makes us richer in the short term.

The aforementioned cynics saw only our potential weaknesses. And this President is the manifestation of all them. A morally lazy, elitist, superstitious plutocrat with no sophistication, no vision--a man-child that was not disciplined appropriately as a child or as an adult.

But much more than the humiliation that W may or may not feel, W is our humiliation as a nation. And we will long be apologizing for him. Or at least I hope so.