I wish I still had all my old emails from 1999-2000 where I made arguments against voting for George W. Bush. Over and over again, I argued that Bush would be a total disaster for this country, that it was insane to elect someone totally ignorant of world affairs, that his election would threaten women’s rights and shape the Supreme Court for a half century. I predicted that world events would not remain relatively tranquil; I said he would unilaterally invade Iraq.

But I didn’t predict the near total destruction of lower Manhattan and New Orleans; nor did I predict that Bush would fail to respond to the biggest disasters in our country’s modern history. How could I know that he would be worse than my Cassandric predictions? Had I known he would read a children’s book while Americans jumped 105 stories to their deaths, or that he would play guitar while New Orleans drowned, I doubt anyone would have believed me.

If I had told my conservative friends about No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Presciption Drug Benefit, or the size of the federal deficit, they would have called me a loon.

Bush has been worse than I predicted. Much worse.

Most of it was foreseeable, but the incompetence of the entire administration has come as a shock. The lack of any allegiance to traditional conservative ideas on the size and scope of government has been a jolt. What we got with George W. Bush was the worst of both worlds. We got crony capitalism without any respect for fiscal restraint or civil liberties. We got hawkishness without diplomacy. Looking back, I knew it would be bad. I didn’t know it would be this bad. And yet, most people thought I was being an overwrought, partisan, hysteric. What do they think now?

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