All I really want Bush to do

I feel about President Bush the way a minor character on the old “Cheers” tv series felt about Cliff Claven, the immature, know-it-all U.S. postal worker. Once, when Cliff was delivering himself of one of his half-baked discourses on some nonsensical piece of trivia, an elderly irascible drunk sitting at the bar rudely said to him, “Oh, get outa here.” Cliff replied in a tone of wounded dignity, “Are you telling me you find my information to be lacking in credibility?” And the drunk says back, even more emphatically than before, “No, I’m telling you to get outa here!”

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Ironically, just after I drafted the above, but before I posted it, reader Daniel H. wrote: “Now that the Democrats have got all they can out of Bush, might they impeach him in the House, as their netroots have been urging?”

John Hagan writes:

June 28th is the day the Bush presidency died. As a conservative, and a former Republican, I am putting down my spear, and walking away from even the most nominal defense of this wretched man. As the political wolves on the left circle the White House looking to tear this individual asunder I shall not rise to his defense by word or action.

They can besmirch his family and character, they can accuse him of the most vile acts, they can impugn his every action, and impeach him in a political show trial … I do not care. I will not lift a finger in his defense. Like others have said: Bush and his minions have made war on the American public. Their goal was not to subdue us, or tax us; but to eliminate us, to drive us to our extinction.

Bush now stands alone as a figure of ridicule and scorn. A toxic presence, a unique historical oddity in American history. A sitting president rightly suspected of having a strange obsession with Mexico that has taken on biblical proportions. He has repeatedly put the concerns and interests of this narco-terrorist state above his own nation.

The political wolves are indeed coming for George W. Bush, and I don’t care.

David B. writes:

Remember one of the early emails we exchanged? Bush had announced (for the first time) his amnesty plan in 2001. I told you of a black man where I worked saying, “Bush is going to cause us to lose our jobs.” He blamed it all on Bush, as if Clinton hadn’t thought the same. It would become obvious, however, that Bush was far more fanatical on the subject than Clinton.

We have been fighting this ever since 2001, practically every day for the last year and a half it seems. You wrote me once that you would not support an attempt by the Democrats to impeach Bush, but you would not lift a finger in his defense. Here is a revealing Bush quote from December 2000.

Howard Sutherland writes:

I thought I heard another Dylan reference coming through in your title. Somehow I didn’t really think you want him to be friends with you, though.

GW Bush, get outta the White House! I like that. Can’t happen fast enough.

But where will ex-President Bush II go? I have been speculating there may be some pecuniary motive bolstering his evident messianic Mexicanism. It’s one thing to love Mexicans and want to help them at Americans’ expense. It’s another to commit political seppuku on their behalf, in the face of overwhelming and vocal opposition from your own party’s base. So you know my speculation, based on the evident coziness of the Bush clan with such savory characters as Saudi Arabia’s rulers and Mexico’s ruling oligarchs: Mexicans—perhaps via oligarchs like the Slim and Hank clans, rather than the government directly—may be sweetening the pot so Bush will keep on pushing to make America as Mexican-friendly as possible. It has occurred to me that GW and Laura might set up housekeeping after January 2009 in a lovely (walled and concertina-wired; gated; and well-guarded), extradition-proof hacienda in a Mexican beauty spot such as Lake Chapala or Puerto Vallarta.

Alas, poor Georgie. If I’m right (I admit it’s rank speculation), will the Mexican oligarchy deem Dubya to have earned his reward now the Destroy America bill has failed? It’s true he has served them well with his obstinate, even militant, refusal to enforce federal immigration law and secure our borders. He has served them well by allowing the Mexican matricula consular to become “valid” identification for almost all purposes in the United States, and by allowing Mexican consulates to sprout like mushrooms all across our land. He has served them well by pushing for the SPP of North America, and insisting that Mexican trucks (what sweeping vistas arise of delightful smuggling possibilities, for people and drugs!) have free run of American roads. But he hasn’t closed the deal. If the Mexican government and those who control it start thinking there is nothing more Bush can do, expect them to stop saying nice things about him, and start courting and promoting the most likely Democratic candidate for the White House in 2008. Bush may love them; I suspect they couldn’t care less about him. Just another gullible gringo: someone to ditch when he’s no longer useful.

What about getting Bush outta here a little early? When you look at the malign convergence of affairs foreign and domestic during his incumbency, it’s not so hard to argue that GW Bush is the most harmful president we have had yet. It might be salutary to toss him out to make a point about the constitutional limitations of the presidency and as a warning to his successors that performance matters. In the very unlikely event Bush were impeached, convicted and removed, a President Cheney would pose little threat, as his boss’s impeachment would be a complete rejection of Cheney’s own policies and style. I’m not sure just what a post-impeachment President Cheney would be—something a lot lamer than a lame duck.

I had been thinking it would be a fine thing, for the GOP as well as the country, if a group of House Republicans were to present articles of impeachment to the House based on President Bush’s willful gross negligence of his duties concerning border security and immigration. Now, I would like to go one better. I know this would be piling on after this defeat. I don’t care; President Bush has earned it. The best thing that could happen would be for a bipartisan group of Congressmen to present articles of impeachment. It would have to be an outsiders’ alliance of conservative Republicans and progressive (in the old sense) Democrats: Representatives and Senators who reject both Bush’s handling of immigration and the borders and his conduct of the Mesopotamian Misadventure.

It would not succeed, but it would be a strong statement by Congressmen that they reject the executive over-reaching and selective lawlessness that characterize the Bush administration. It would also be a way for independent-minded Congressmen of both parties to show they reject the mediocre go-along-to-get-along Congressional leadership in both parties.

Probably this is all just a daydream. But if this, or something like it, happened, I would have more faith that we can yet salvage the constitutional, federal republic of states the United States of America is (are?) supposed to be.

Matthew H. writes:

Some comments in response to John Hagan’s remarks about George W. Bush:

In the wake of his recent defeat, and in light of his now obvious uselessness to the Democrats, President Bush will now, as John Hagan has suggested, become the target of a massive attempt at political assassination by his erstwhile pals on the left. As the circle tightens on W, there is a strong temptation to avert our eyes and even to indulge feelings of Schadenfreude. How long have people shouted, “No, No, No!,” as the president blithely rammed his way past with huge new entitlements, open-ended military commitments to save Muslims from themselves and now this mad immigration bill? He deserves it, right?

But let us remember, in our contempt for this extremely disappointing administration, that the Republican Party is the only effective vehicle we have. Bush is our figurehead. Any damage done to him is done to the party. While it is impossible to defend his conduct we must never, never allow ourselves, in unguarded moments, to say anything which will give aid and comfort to our even greater enemy, the institutional left, which transcends the political life of any individual and which only sees, in its apparently imminent triumph over the President, another step in the crushing of any and all opposition to its agenda (i.e., more taxes & entitlements, socialized medicine, further attempts at amnesty, gays in the military, a foreign policy actively opposed to the true interests of this nation, the empowerment of communist-sympathizing sixties holdovers, an EU-style arrangement for North America, the “fairness doctrine,” employment for their legions of dull, resentful, time-servers, plus a bunch of other things they have surely dreamed up someplace, but which they have not yet seen to be expedient to announce). One may ask, “Could they really be any worse?” Use your imagination: A Dem President with two Dem house of Congress. Need I say more?

This is much bigger than Bush. There is satisfaction in seeing a fool get his reward, but it is a satisfaction we can ill-afford to savor when our only vessel, the party is so badly in need of our efforts and our convictions need so much to be proclaimed.

Though we view him as a traitorous leftist in conservative clothing, the wolves of the real left view Bush as an actual conservative. When they are finished rending the meat from his carcass (which should take about twenty minutes) they will be freshly charged up to come after the rest of us.

Let us look past Bush, to survey the wreckage of this administration, gathering our forces with an eye toward the horizon toward which we must advance. Rather than gloating over our leader, fallen in the pursuit of his own folly, let us take up the sword he wielded so badly and use it to strike out against our real enemies.

LA replies:

“While it is impossible to defend his conduct we must never, never allow ourselves, in unguarded moments, to say anything which will give aid and comfort to our even greater enemy, the institutional left…”

What Matthew says is the same old attitude that led conservatives and Republicans into excessive, knee-jerk support for this president all along and thus married the fortunes of conservatism and the GOP to the fortunes of this president, whereas what was needed and is needed is a divorce, so that his loss of power would not mean their loss of power, but their increase of power. That is why I urged in 2004 that while it would be bad in the short run, it would be better in the medium and long run if Bush lost the presidency in 2004. The Senate GOP has just rejected the president’s biggest domestic initiative. Has that weakened the GOP, or strengthened it? Obviously, by divorcing itself from the president on this issue, the GOP has strengthened itself.

RB writes:

I believe it it Aragorn who says in The Lord of the Rings, “The time may come when the hearts of men will fail; but not today.” Now we can celebrate, although we always have to be looking over our shoulders at the possible resurrection of the grandson of Dracula.

I would hope that, at the least, this will mark the end of a little noticed cycle in American history. Everyone knows of the 20 year cycle of presidential deaths in office supposedly brought about by Tecumseh’s curse; Reagan’s survival of his assassination attempt ended that. A more modern cycle is the 21 year Kennedy immigration syndrome. It began in his first term as Senator in 1965 when either though willful ignorance of its ultimate consequences or outright falsehood he pushed through the Immigration “reform” bill. Twenty one years later in 1986 he began lying again as one of the leaders in crafting the first amnesty. Finally in 2007, the Swimmer turned Singer’s latest attempt at deceiving his colleagues and the American people failed.

Given the longevity of those Kennedy’s who don’t die an unnatural death, and given the stupidity of the voters of Massachusetts, had this bill passed we could have looked forward to a nonagenarian Kennedy wheeled out in 2028 to push a new amnesty for the 50 million illegal aliens then in our midst.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 28, 2007 08:05 PM | Send