Not Ready for Prime Time Acting

George Bu$h is finishing up the role of his lifetime, and his press is doing the best they can to make up his role.

...Katrina registers within him as a failure to take symbolic action (“Could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge?”). The Iraq War is a string of unfortunate “rhetoric” and symbolism. (“Clearly putting a ‘Mission Accomplished’ on an aircraft carrier was a mistake.”) Abu Ghraib: “a huge disappointment.” Not finding weapons of mass destruction: “a significant disappointment.” Weak, watered-down words from a man who seems utterly disconnected from what will soon be his legacy.

This is a man who throughout his adult life has been in flight – into alcohol, into religion, into ideology (he still manages to wax rhapsodic about tax cuts) – into behaviors and intellectual postures generally that allow him to escape the necessity of looking at reality and engaging fully and honestly with it. How I wish he were nothing more than a fictional character, a foil perhaps for Jack Bauer.

As a TV show, Bush’s presidency might have been entertaining. His performance on Monday morning was just sad. Now that it’s all over, it is hard not to feel pity for this limited character as he leaves the stage, so obviously worn down with his running, so obviously embittered, so obviously incapable, for the life of him, of seeing where he went wrong.

Somebody should give that man an Oscar before they send him to prison.

This is Judith Warner speaking. The same person who once characterized the "Reagan Revolution" as the formative error era of her life and now imagines that everything's changed again. But in a good way.

The urbane and articulate and liberal Ms. Warner has, as they say down South, has met her ex-Leader's impression of the Country Boy.

Ms. Warner let me suggest the value of "of looking at reality and engaging fully and honestly with it."

Bu$hie was highly successful. Bu$hie gets away with rape, robbery, and murder. His brothers will be back soon to finish the job. Meanwhile, their Ba$e's latest master thespian will be sworn in on January 20th.