I think it is absolutely remarkable how much we are hearing about President-Elect Obama's plan to fix the economy, or what he is saying about the economy today, or who is economic advisors are. There is an across-the-board concession that there is nothing President Bush can or will do to solve this that I would have never predicted. I assumed we'd hear little about him as the campaign heated up, but even now that it's over people don't give a hoot what the guy's up to. It even seems like Republicans wish Obama could just take over tomorrow. Heck, it kind of even seems like President Bush wishes he could leave. Everything he says just rings of "ya know, I'm outta here in two weeks anyway."
As an aside, when I look at him these days, for some reason I always get this feeling in my gut where I feel a little sorry for him. Of course, when I look back at all the crap he's pulled I'm snapped back to life, but it just seems like deep down he's got some sort of sad puppy look about him. Am I crazy? Anybody else getting this?
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I'm with you on the kicked-puppy feelings. Carly and I recently watched Recount, the HBO movie dramatizing the 2000 Florida recount, and it really highlighted the fact that W Bush is simply a pathetic puppet for truly crazy and/or evil people. After eight years of the W Bush White House I still cannot reconcile the horrible crimes and decisions of the administration with the image of a pretzel-loving baseball fan who is a blast to get drunk with. When he was first elected I think it is safe to say that quite a few of us used the luck argument: W Bush was in the right place at the right time with the right friends and family backing him. Now it almost seems as if that luck was rather dramatically less than good: he has the worst approval/highest disapproval ratings of any president since records begin, he has the reputation of being a cut-taxes-and-spend warhawk with useless and illegal domestic policies, and publishers are more interested in his wife's book than his (a bit of information I picked up from a worker at Strand Books). At some point, though, one still must blame W Bush for all that went wrong because even after he semi-legitimately achieved the most powerful office in the country he let the misdirection and puppetry continue. Sorry for the disorganization of the previous paragraph.
ReplyDeleteIs there any mechanism by which Bush can cede the presidency to Obama right now? I guess if Obama took over for an extra 65 days he would lose his shot at a second term because no one president is supposed to have more than eight years. Alas. Perhaps Bush can violate the Constitution one last time...
I thought the rule was that you could run for a second term if your zero-eth term was less than two years. Looking into it ...
ReplyDeleteYep that's the rule. You may remember LBJ was not only eligible to run in 1968, but shocked the nation when he announced that he wouldn't.
ReplyDeleteHe had served 14 months of JFK's term.
Someone should tell this to W Bush. Odds are he may not have heard of LBJ.
ReplyDeleteThanks for doing the research.
The movie "W" - while mediocre, in my mind - also highlights, as Bart put it, W Bush as a "pathetic puppet for truly crazy and/or evil people." It (that sense, not just the film) does make you feel for him...but for me it's less actual sympathy/empathy and more a concession that he may not be Satan. That role falls to Rove and/or Cheney and/or Rumsfeld.
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