The Best of Bush

How did a guy who spent so much time pandering to the right get so much wrong?

His days are numbered, his new home in a Dallas suburb has already been selected, and hopefully he's packed and ready to go.

When George Bush finally leaves the White House, the world will breathe a sigh of relief.

It's been a long time coming.

Once he'd finally been crowned victor of the 2000 election by the Supreme Court, I said, "It'll only be four years."

In Bush speak, I had totally misunderestimated the guy.

Someone should have clued Bush onto what many of us already know: Listening to Dick will get you in trouble. Instead, Bush cosigned with his veep's decision to invade Iraq which provided the administration its most spectacular blunder.

But hold on, the good news doesn’t end there.

Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the $3 trillion budget, the attempt to add an amendment to the Constitution banning same-sex marriage, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, a totally whacked foreign policy, the recession, wiretapping of citizens without court orders, Guantanamo, the suspension of habeus corpus, and the sense that "reality is wrong" that pervaded the Bush administration.

But rest assured, kids, this guy won't become some sort of elder statesman like Jimmy Carter or globe-trotting do-gooder like Bill Clinton.

I see a future for Bush on the big screen. He's already shown he has a flair for drama --Remember the GI Joe/Mission Accomplished landing on the aircraft carrier? And this guy is mos def a comedy genius, right up there with Sarah Palin. With his misplaced modifiers, nonsensical sentences, and general awkwardness, he's generated enough laughs to last a lifetime. I'll probably still be chuckling in my grave.

Following is a countdown of my favorite Bushims from the past years. The only question is: what did I leave out?

5. Jesus and George: In 1999, when he was just a presidential candidate, Bush was asked in a debate in Des Moines Iowa to name his favorite political philosopher or thinker. He responded:

"Christ, because he changed my heart." He went on to add, "When you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as the savior, it changes your heart. It changes your life. And that's what happened to me."

That's right, because when I think of Jesus' philosophy, I too think of Bush's with us-or against us, wanted-dead-or-alive posturing, adherence to enhanced interrogation procedures like waterboarding, and kidnapping suspected terrorists and other enemy combatants and stashing them in secret CIA prisons/and or Guantanamo.

George Bush and the Prince of Peace. Yeah, they're practically the same person.

4. Best of friends: A New York Times article earlier this year stated that Bush had relied too much on personal relationships in dealing with world leaders. There's no better example than what Bush said upon meeting Vladimir Putin, then President of Russia, in 2001:

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue...I was able to get a sense of his soul"

Given Putin's reluctance to give up power, belligerence toward Georgia, and restrictions on the press, Bush's words rang hollow. Even John McCain had better sense, piggybacking on Bush's statement during Election 2008: "I looked into Mr. Putin's eyes and I saw three things: a K and a G and a B."

3. Mistakes?: When asked at a 2004 press conference what his biggest mistake had been, Bush offered the following:

"I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it...You know, I just--I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet."

Self explanatory.

2. Do it BIG: Addressing the $700 billion bailout package and the crisis which engulfed the American economy, Bush offered these words on how Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and other department staffers came up with the package:

"I said, what's it going to take to make sure Main Street doesn't get affected by the policies of Wall Street? And this is what they came up with, and this is big ticket, because it's a big problem....And I believe this is going to work. We had the considered judgment of a lot of capable people. It's not only just here in Washington, but our people were listening to a lot of other voices. And we took our time to come up with a strategy and a plan that would address the problem. And you bet it's big, because it needed to be big."

Bush at least deserves credit for breaking down information in such a way that even a pre-schooler could understand. It would be difficult to find someone that doesn't understand the concept of "bigness."

1. Brownie. Someone let dear, departed Marie Antoinette know that she's officially off the hook as the most out of touch world leader of all time. Pilloried for years for her alleged "let them eat cake" quip, Bush really takes the gold with this statement made after Hurricane Katrina:

"Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job."

Never in the history of the world has someone so ill-equipped wielded so much power.

Bush's poor decision making and dubious choice to head federal agencies is best illustrated with his most memorable quote to date. As the world witnessed the carnage in New Orleans, Bush was, well, Bush. His praise of FEMA director Michael Brown, formerly head of a race horse association, left many mystified. So while Brown was being praised, folks were holed up in the Superdome and begging for clean water in the midst of the largest public health crisis this nation has ever witnessed.