Let us all take a moment and celebrate the achievements of George Bush, now that the full moon wanes on his administration and the pardons are readied to be delivered. When George Bush came into office, America was troubled with a vast budget surplus, peace and stability, cheap oil prices, a decreasing crime rate, low unemployment, a functional but deficient social security system, modest but effective environmental regulations, and a split Supreme Court.
After George improved the education system so that America is now– what is it? 21st in the world? And then solved the social security crisis by doing nothing, he eased everyone’s health care concerns by providing elderly Americans with a confusing and expensive drug plan. He open the nation’s forests and wildlife preserves to oil drilling and forestry where-ever he could, and made it easier for America’s manufacturers to sell defective products without consequence, which didn’t stop them from shipping most of those jobs to China. Did I mention the trade deficit?
Or the unimaginable increase in military spending which has succeeded in creating millions of new enemies in Pakistan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia? He did nothing for peace in Palestine but that’s a lost cause anyway. He corrected the crazy perception that most independent scientists believe that humans are causing global warming by arranging an overwhelming number of oil industry employees to say they’re not.
He appointed partisan political hacks to the Justice Department to correct fears most Americans have that the justice system is above partisan politics.
He managed the mortgage crisis so effortlessly that naive observers are still convinced he did nothing. He managed health care so effectively using competition to drive down costs so precipitously that most Americans now claim they don’t need health insurance.
The inevitable George Bush presidential library should have one volume in it, with the title, written in crayon. “How I helped a small number of wealthy Americans become even more wealthy.”
Added December 2008: How much was Bill Clinton paid? He and Hillary have together collected over $109 million in the eight years since leaving office. “Pretty good wages, for one little kiss….”
Americans, this is how your government works.
Paying Off George Bush
[2022-05-12: I am leaving this in because I was wrong, and I admit it, and you should know it. George W. Bush has had a generally honorable post-presidency life, painting, and giving anodyne speeches here and there, and showing up for appropriate ceremonial events. Of course, the election of Trump, which gave us one of SNL’s better jokes in recent years: the Will Ferrell as Bush going “how do you like me now” has transformed everyone’s appreciation what we now see as a fundamental decency in George W. Bush utterly lacking in the current Republican Party. It should also be acknowledged that the Clintons were far more avaricious in cashing in the post-presidency boom in speeches and fund-raising events.]
You will not have seen the likes of this before– when George Bush leaves office, he will embark on the greatest orgy of corporate pay offs in the history of Capitalism.
George’s corporate Svengali’s can’t pay him now, of course. That would be unseemly. And illegal, of course. But they are waiting in the wings flush with gratitude for the President who delivered more to them they could even have imagined in their wildest dreams. He gave them tax breaks, deregulation, corporate-friendly judicial appointments. He gave them Alito and Roberts and the ironically titled “Clear Skies” act. He gave them oil and ethanol and mythologized global warming. He gave his friendly military contractors billions and billions of dollars in fat government contracts with embarrassingly little oversight. He gave them everything they asked for.
And now, the reward.
The reward will look like partnerships and speaking engagements for unprecedented amounts of cash– he won’t even really have to move his lips– just show up and smile and cavort. The reward will look like Board appointments and investment opportunities and parties and jets and jewels and medals and awards and statues and presidential libraries in the name of the president who never reads or learns or studies or thinks.
Perhaps Laura, a former librarian, might find something to do at his.
There will be highways and airports and bridges named for the man without the slightest interest in building anything that would benefit anyone except his corporate cronies.