POLITICS AND NATURE

Here the nation goes again, W is making a go of moderating the peace process within the last year of his administration. Something he attacked Bill Clinton for, but now things have changed. He seems to be refusing to take much of a part in things going on at Annapolis, thinks the U.S. should be a sideline member of the process (maybe he's right). Never mind the fact that he's doing what he's said he didn't believe in before, or that he ignored the situation for the past seven years, he has provided a certain measure of leadership now and for that, his nation should be proud.

Of course, moderate liberals have been brought to the precipice of hope many times since January of 2001. Every time his head in the sand, arrogant ideal of leadership, leads toward something that is hopeful, he fucks it up. Everyone wishes he was correct when proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" and then back peddled saying he just meant one particular mission.

At meetings of American states and to the U.N. this past year, it would be hard to argue with some of his goals and he spoke with a certain clarity of thought, but then he was so demeaning to the rest of the nations involved, it is no wonder the rest of the world hates his administration. He is an almost unbelievably terrible leader exhibiting his arrogance by things like;

Landing on the aircraft carrier; 

Assuring the nation that Iraq would take no time in the first place;

Claiming he would never use a "litmus test"; 

Arguing that he would never subject this nation to such Clintonesque measures like nation-building; 

Once involved in nation building, having failed the job in Afghanistan;  

Speaking down to, not only fellow citizens, but other world leaders;

Thinking FEMA did a great job in Katrina;

Paying members of the press to report the White House's party line;

Ignoring environmental problems;

Building up the deficit;

Refusing to talk to other nations, there is this thing called diplomacy, that he doesn't seem to believe in;

Asserting that winning 51% of the electorate in an election as a war president is a "mandate" giving him "political capital"

Intending to "spend that capital" he, in his pea sized brain believes he gained;

Trying to force Social Security privatization without talking to people in his own country;

Allowing no bid-contracts to companies formerly run by his V.P. in Iraq and Louisiana;

Demonizing people that disagree;

Refusing to veto anything until this year when, all of a sudden, he has a renewed belief in the power of the veto;

And this list can go on.

Yet, here he is, with little more than a year in office, quietly riding off into the sunset of what will most likely be viewed by historians as the worst and last president of the twentieth century, or what will hopefully be the worst first president of the twenty first century.

A leader so lacking in any ability to work with anyone outside his little interior realm of advisors and sycophantic ideologues chasing the dream of re-establishing the imperial presidency they believe was lost with such a vindictive spirit against the honorable Richard M. Nixon who, in their views, did nothing whatsoever wrong, that he has lived like the boy in the plastic bubble for close to seven years now.

It's like the surge. The surge is so successful, that the violence in Iraq has fallen to the levels of violence experienced back in 2006. And this, according to these bizarre and just downright unbelievable people working out of the people's house on Pennsylvania Avenue, is success. It is another area where many of us hope they are doing something right at the top of the system, finally.

But, good old Joe Biden was interviewed on the News Hour last night and gave an idea that seems to have merit. If things are working now, now is the time to take political action, which the president is not doing.

Bush's failures are almost humorous. When he got elected I, for one, thought he would simply be a kind of goofy dude in the presidency that wouldn't do a whole lot of harm, probably spend a bunch of time chopping wood on the ranch, and maybe Rumsfeld would actually reduce the bloated budget of the pentagon. Nope. I was wrong.

So here we are. Annapolis has begun and Bush is taking the lead. Despite the fact that Olmert and Abbas (Abu Mazzen is a much cooler name) have been meeting with each other for weeks now trying to gain some trust, a point that is extremely important in any sort of long term problem solving. Well, good luck to W, although I feel fairly positive he will fail at this as well before he heads back to the ranch for the rest of his days.