Bush is counting on an historical perspective

To show he's done a good job:

Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 promising Americans peace and prosperity. He delivered neither.

The 43rd president, who gives his farewell speech to the nation tonight from the East Room of the White House, leaves behind a legacy that includes the weakest job-creation performance since Herbert Hoover’s presidency and the longest U.S. wars since Richard Nixon was in office.

The country is grappling with its deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression, a yearlong recession, soaring budget deficits, and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its standing in the world has fallen, with polls showing most nations view America less favorably than they did in 2001.

“From the perspective of the present moment, it is pretty hard to regard this as anything but a failed presidency,” said historian David Kennedy of Stanford University in California.

With the Bush minions eyeing January 20th as the time they can spill the beans to Seymour Hersh, and people pretending they've known all along that Bush wasn't a true Republican, I don't think Cheney can shred documents fast enough to silence the truth. We will still be discovering new horrors about the actions the Bush administration did a decade from now.

So, time may heal all wounds, Georgie, but it also exposes all the lies. Trying to cloud things by spewing nonsense may have gotten you a passing grade in college, but it won't work here. Your presidency was an unmitigated disaster and we won't forget.

Ever.



Update: If you read only one thing today, read Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post. Here's a bit:

President Bush famously asserts that history's verdict on his presidency won't come until he's long dead. But far from waiting until his corpse is cold, the verdict is largely in before he's even left the building.

Some things just aren't gonna change, no matter how much time passes. Here is Bush's legacy, in part:

He took the nation to a war of choice under false pretenses -- and left troops in harm's way on two fields of battle. He embraced torture as an interrogation tactic and turned the world's champion of human dignity into an outlaw nation and international pariah. He watched with detachment as a major American city went under water. He was ostensibly at the helm as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression took hold. He went from being the most popular to the most disappointing president, having squandered a unique opportunity to unite the country and even the world behind a shared agenda after Sept. 11. He set a new precedent for avoiding the general public in favor of screened audiences and seemed to occupy an alternate reality. He took his own political party from seeming permanent majority status to where it is today. And he deliberately politicized the federal government, circumvented the traditional policymaking process, ignored expert advice and suppressed dissent, leaving behind a broken government.

The truth smarts, doesn't it, Georgie?