I don't think it is myself but I'm cynical when it comes to this administration.

"Published

on Tuesday, September 27, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
George Bush in Hell
by David Michael Green



You would not want to be George W. Bush right now.

Not that you ever would anyhow, but especially not

now. Indeed, there are indications that not even George W. Bush wants to be George W. Bush right now.

That

second term in office, the one that just a year or two ago seemed so precious that he was willing to launch a war

just to obtain it, now feels like a life sentence. Plans for four years spending political capital now look a lot

more like endless months of capital punishment.

The Bush Administration has nowhere to go but down, and that

is precisely where it is headed. Poll data show that even members of his

solid-to-the-point-of-twelve-step-eligibility base are now deserting him as his job approval ratings plunge like so

much Enron stock, lately crashing southward through the forty percent threshold. With almost his entire second term

still in front of him, Bush is poised to set new records for presidential unpopularity. That scraping noise you

hear? It's the sound of sheepish voters creeping out to the garage late at night, furtively removing "Bush-Cheney

2004" bumperstickers from the back of their SUVs when no one is looking.

Meanwhile, as the scales fall from

the eyes of the hoi polloi, even the one constituency which could plausibly make the claim that Bush has been good

for America (read: their wallets), is speaking the unspeakable as well. Robert Novak, of all people, wrote a column

last week chronicling his experience watching rich Republicans at an Aspen retreat bash the idiocy of Bush

administration policies on Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, stem-cell research and more. Perhaps these folks realized when

they saw Trent Lott's house go under that Mother Nature doesn't care whether you're rich and well-connected any

more than does al Qaeda. You may be on Karl Rove's Rolodex, but now Bush is taking you down and your yacht too, not

just forgotten kids from the ghetto who enlisted in the Army as the only alternative to a life of poverty.



Even conservative columnists like David Brooks (though not Novak) are writing articles nowadays accurately

describing the changed mood of the American public. Where those powerful currents are heading is unclear, but given

the radical right experiment of the present as their point of departure, there would seem to be only two choices. We

can either go completely off the deep-end and finally constitute the Fascist Republic of Cheney, or we can turn to

the left, toward some semblance of rational policymaking. The latter seems far more likely, especially as America

increasingly regains its senses after a long bout of temporary insanity. These are bad bits of news for poor George,

but worse yet is that they are only the first signs of the coming apocalypse. The real fun stuff is just around the

corner. I'll confess to more than a little schadenfreude as I contemplate the ugly situation staring Republicans

officeholders in the face right now. They are tethered to a sinking ship, and have only two lousy options to choose

from as November 2006 approaches. One is to stay the course and drown. The other is to start renouncing Bush and his

policies, appear to voters as the complete hypocrites and political whores many will prove to be, and then still

drown anyhow. Nobody could be more deserving of such a fate, with the possible exception of Democrats like Hillary

Clinton and John Kerry who have been even more hypocritical yet in facilitating many of the president's disastrous

policies.

Watching these GOP opportunists jump ship will certainly be fun, but the greatest fun awaits the

president himself. Bush has now lost everything that once sustained him. That includes 9/11, now safely in the

rearview mirror for most Americans. That includes his wartime rally-around-the-flag free pass, as he has failed to

capture America's real enemy, while lying about bogus ones to justify an invasion pinning our defense forces down

in an endless quagmire. That includes, post-Katrina, the ridiculous frame of Bush as competent leader, and the

former reality of the press as frightened presidential waterboys.

And that's the good news for W. The bad

news is all the chickens coming home to roost. The economy is anemic and fragile, and yet Bush has played the one

card in his deck ostensibly (but never really) intended to remedy the country's economic woes. (Remember during the

2000 campaign when times were flush and tax cuts were the prescription? Remember in 2001 when the economy was in a

recession and tax cuts were still the prescription?). In any case, Bush's one-note economic symphony has succeeded

in producing precisely the cacophony of disaster that progressive commentators have predicted all along: massive

deficits, little or no economic boost, a hemorrhaging of jobs overseas, and a vastly more polarized America of rich,

poor and a disappearing middle class.

Another angry chicken, of course, is coming home in the form of

devastating storms and a grossly incompetent administration to deal with them. Bush is not entirely responsible for

Hurricanes Katrina or Rita, of course, but he is partially responsible for them by his willful ignorance of the

global warming issue. And he is more than a little responsible for the carnage and damage done, because of his

budget-slashing on preventative structural projects, because of his deployment of needed-at-home Guard forces to

Iraq, because of his staffing of the government with completely incompetent crony hacks, and because of his and

their astonishingly lame performance in responding to a known crisis. Where I come from, a president who remains on

vacation during possibly the worst natural disaster to hit this country, praises his FEMA chief for doing a "heckuva

job" when the guy doesn't know what any American with a TV set has known for 24 hours about New Orleans, and then

later fires him for poor performance, is a president who should be impeached for those reasons alone.

The

other demons awaiting George W. Bush just around the bend are multiple and grim. One of these days (right?), Patrick

Fitzgerald is actually going to move on the Treasongate story, and signs suggest that multiple heads will roll

within the White House. The political damage will be even worse than the legal, though, as Bush's clean and

patriotic image will be smashed beyond repair, as no one will believe that he himself didn't know all along who

committed treason by outing an American spy, and as he will likely lose the key magicians who have kept him afloat

for five years and more. Oh well. W's loss will be Leavenworth's gain.

And there is more. The Jack

Abramoff investigation has now been tied to the White House. There are also presumably an infinite number of other

scandals waiting to explode (can you say 'Halliburton'?) should the Democrats capture either branch of Congress

next year, not least of which being those concerning the Downing Street Memo revelations. Gas prices are off the

charts and home heating bills are supposed to soar this winter. Jobs are disappearing, along with pensions and

healthcare coverage, inflation is likely to rise, and voters are surly already.

But, of course, the biggest

cross for Bush to bear is the one he built for himself, and thus the most richly deserved. In Iraq, simply put,

there are no good options. None for America, that is, but even fewer for George W. Bush.

What can he do?



He can't win. America (or, more accurately, America's oligarchy) is clearly losing the war as it is. It is

a fantasy to imagine that, at this late date, more troops could pacify the resistance. But even if that were so the

political consequences to Bush, especially given his promise of no draft on his watch, would be devastating and

rapid. American public opinion has already turned decisively against the war. Imagine if there were a draft and all

the bumper-sticker patriots across the land had to actually make a sacrifice for their president's transparent

lies. All hell would break loose, and the Republican Party would be dead for a generation.

He can't lose.

The major downside to wrapping yourself in the flag, landing on aircraft carriers, labeling yourself a "war

president", and being marketed in an election campaign as the reliable national security choice is that you had

better deliver. Egged on by the likes of Cheney, Wolfowitz and Perle, Bush no doubt thought Iraq would be a fine

little walk in the park from which he would benefit politically for the rest of his presidency. (Nor, assuming this

president possesses anything resembling a conscience, need he have concerned himself with resulting deaths, since he

told Pat Robertson "we're not going to have any casualties", and he may have even believed it.) Unfortunately for

all concerned - most especially the Iraqis and American soldiers - Bush's presidency would be one very real

casualty indeed should he decide to pick up his marbles and leave the arena, and so he will not, no matter the

carnage or the futility. Doing so would be effectively admitting that there was no legitimate reason for the war in

the first place. Everyone now knows that, of course, but were Bush ever to even hint at it, he would be committing

instant political suicide. He can't draw. One option is to find some - any - kind of stability, declare victory and

go home, saying we got Saddam, we brought democracy, yada, yada, yada. But how many Americans are now going to be

fooled by calling an Iraq ruled by militants of one stripe or another a victory, after all the hooey about fighting

for democracy in the Middle East? How many think replacing Saddam with a brutal dictator of another name is worth

the price of 2,000 American troops and two or three hundred billion dollars? How many will be convinced that Iraqi

women having fewer rights than they did under Saddam Hussein, of all regimes, represents a win for the home team?

How many will still be unschooled enough to look at a Iranian-dominated theocracy in Iraq and call that a triumph?

Moreover, even these total disasters presume a stability of some sort which may be little short of fantasy at this

point. When the Saudi foreign minister goes public with his concerns that Iraq is careening toward civil war, you

know you're in deep, and no amount inanities sanctimoniously uttered by Scotty McClellan can keep the truth at bay.



He can't get help. Now there's a good one. Maybe the French have finally seen the light and realized what

a mistake they made by not bringing something to the party in 2003, eh? No doubt there's a long queue of countries

behind them wanting to commit forces to the farces that are decomposing in the Cradle of Civilization. Luckily for

George Bush you can still thumb your nose at the rest of the world and have them come to your rescue afterwards.

Just think of what a pickle he would be in if that weren't the case...

He can't divert attention. Time

was, a government in trouble at home could throw a little war in some hell-hole abroad and divert public attention

away from their domestic or other foreign failures. Kinda like Reagan in Grenada, or the Argentinians in the

Malvinas, or Thatcher in the Falklands. Yet, while the American public has managed to massively and repeatedly

disappoint still sane observers in recent years, it doesn't appear to be in any mood for more of Mr. Bush's Fun

With Foreign Policy antics. Not that the country any longer has the available military force to pull it off anyhow,

but it hardly seems that an invasion of Iran right now would have much effect diverting attention from Iraq, even if

it could somehow successfully be done, another fantasy in its own right.

In short, George W. Bush is toast,

as is the whole regressive conservative movement of which he is but the most egregious exemplar. Not even another

9/11 would be likely to help him, as the security president who fails to provide security is the nothing (but simply

failed) president. The demise of the right is now likely be true even if Democrats continue hurtling down their

current path toward breaking all world records for political cowardice by a major party. Indeed, the worst of the

Democrats may now also be in trouble amongst the base - as well they should be - for their cozy associations with

the right, enabling its destructive march to the sea these last years.

It is thus too bad, as we emerge from

the nightmare of the last quarter-century, that so many of us lefties are atheists, agnostics or otherwise debauched

secular humanists. Not only have we had to suffer the reign of Bad King George here on Earth, we can't even have

the satisfaction of knowing that he'll be spending the rest of eternity rotting in Hell.

The good news,

though, is that he's already there, and the flames are only beginning to warm him up. Perhaps that is why Time

describes the dry heaves of a young staffer who had to breach the fantasy bubble and tell this "cold and snappish"

president the unhappy truth about an issue, or the National Enquirer's report that Bush, who according to a family

member is "falling apart", is back to drinking.

Thus does a new possible ending to the Bush administration

suddenly emerge as a real possibility. Previously, I had assumed that our long national nightmare would be over in

one of three ways, either with Bush somehow managing to finish his term, with him being impeached, convicted and run

out of Washington, or with him being impeached, convicted and then refusing to leave, precipitating a constitutional

crisis and even, possibly, a civil war. Now I see a fourth very real possibility.

It was all fun and games

when everybody loved him. When the guy who had failed at everything in life except having the right last name all of

a sudden was showing those elitist snobs who was tops after all. When the man with a Texas size inferiority complex

got to be adored by millions as if he were some kind of religious icon.

But what if that all changes? What

if Diminutive George, just like LBJ before him, can't leave the completely scripted bubble his staff manufactures,

just as such set-pieces become increasingly difficult to sustain? What if the Peevish President can't escape - even

by going to Crawford or Camp David - the mothers of dead children, the baby-killer taunts, the

stinging-because-they're-so-accurate chickenhawk accusations, the calls for his own daughters to go to Iraq, the

possibility that everyone was right about him all along when they dismissed him as the family clown? What if all of

a sudden, it sucks being president? Why bother, then?

It is clear now that one way the Bush administration

might end would be with the president's resignation, in order for him to duck into more tranquil quarters. Who

knows, maybe he could spend his days getting tanked in Crawford, not writing another book, or going into exile,

perhaps in the south of France.

Of course, a pardon deal would have to be prearranged with Cheney, if they

haven't convicted him yet, or with Hastert if they have. And, equally certainly, the resignation would be put down

to "the president wanting to spend more time with his family", or some such ludicrous McClellanism, no more or less

plausible than the rest of his daily fare. But the truth would be plain for all to see. The frat-boy party-time

president who condemns kids less than half his age to the hell of futile battle in support of his lies would himself

be deserting as commander-in-chief when the fun part ended. Kinda like he did last time he wore a uniform.



History, it would seem, all too rarely delivers justice. The privileged few go out of this life richer than

they came into it, while the poor often leave even poorer, not to mention sooner. Those who commit unspeakable

crimes sometimes become presidents or prime ministers, while those who dare speak truthfully of those deeds are

crushed owing to the threat posed by their honesty.

Even more rare yet are the cases in which history

delivers justice with a deliciously deserved irony. But George Bush has provided us with just such a case. And the

very delicious irony is that he is now being undone by a cynical choice he himself made to go to war in Iraq with

other people's blood and other people's treasure, for the purpose of enhancing his tenuous self-esteem and the

power of his presidency.

Goodbye, George. May you know precisely the rest and precisely the peace someone

who would do such a thing deserves."

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra

University in New York. Email: pscdmg@hofstra.edu.