The Lame Good Bye

Maureen Dowd has another excellent column in the New York Times that rightly trashes the Chimperator and the disaster that he has left as his legacy for the country on so many fronts. The man is an embarrassment and sadly he still he cannot admit his errors. Back before the launch of the ill-conceived Iraq War I e-mailed friends that I thought the war a huge mistake and that I believed the Chimperator's hubris and brain dead type of religious belief would be his downfall and huge risk to the nation. Unfortunately, I was correct and one can only hope that the majority of Americans have learned the lesson to never put an incurious, "born again Christian" in the White House. Here are highlights from Dowd's column:

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As Barack Obama got to town, one of the first things he did was seek the counsel of past presidents, including George Bush senior. As W. was leaving town, one of the last things he did was explain why he never sought the counsel of his father on issues that his father knew intimately, like Iraq and Saddam.

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When W. admits the convoluted nature of his relationship with his father, diminishing a knowledgeable former president to the status of a blankie, you realize that, despite all the cocky swagger we’ve seen, this is not a confident man. That is vividly apparent as we watch W. and Obama share the stage as they pass the battered baton. One seems small and inconsequential, even though he keeps insisting he’s not; the other grows large and impressive, filling Americans with cockeyed hope even as he warns them not to expect too much too soon.

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W.’s parlous presidency, spent trashing the Constitution, the economy and the environment, was bound up, and burdened by, the psychological traits of an asphyxiated and pampered son. . . . W. was immune to doubt and afraid of it. (His fear of doubt led to the cooking of war intelligence.) Obama is delighted by doubt. It’s astonishing that, as banks continue to fail and Americans continue to lose jobs and homes, W. was obtuse enough to go on TV and give a canned ode to can-do-ism. “Good and evil are present in this world,” he reiterated, “and between the two of them there can be no compromise.”

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His decisions have been, for the most part, disastrous. If he’d paid as much attention to facts as fitness, 9/11, Iraq, the drowning of New Orleans, the deterioration in Afghanistan and the financial deregulation orgy could have been prevented. . . . Right now, though, it’s a huge relief to be getting an inquisitive, complicated mind in the White House. W. decided there was no need to be president of the whole country. He could just be president of his base.