George W. Bush is the most morally, intellectually and emotionally unfit, unsound and dangerous president in my lifetime.
Call me a hater, over-the-top, someone deservedly out on the lunatic fringe.
That’s fine. Because I haven’t called for a plane to plow into the New York Times building or the doing away with a certain Supreme Court justice, I’m going to make you defend your cheapshot christening of me. And I won’t expect increased or frankly, any bookings on to the various televison talk show whoredoms because of my wackiness, as you put it.
Yes, Bush is a worse president than Richard Nixon, who at least had a degree of aptitude and acumen with foreign policy (boy, is it tough to type that). And Nixon wasn’t so lightweight, insecure and a cardboard cutout of a leader a la Bush. Although he surely regretted this, Nixon had a Richardson, a Cox, a Goldwater, even a Haig and a Kissinger at times within his administrations and party who possessed some degree of drawing-the-line resolve and wouldn’t always or absolutely go supine to the most maddest and sickest of Nixon’s directives.
Yes, Nixon pathologically lied about Vietnam but he inherited the quagmire–he didn’t deviously mix the brew that has developed into the Iraq quicksand like Bush has done.
Nixon didn’t politicize so-called terror threats (other than the silly Domino Theory) to aid his re-election prospects like Bush has implemented. It wasn’t necessary for Nixon to instill fear (loathing, however, is a different story) into the American populace–he somehow was able to draw the line before employing such tactics, something Bush would never consider deleting from his arsenal.
Nixon didn’t ruthlessly exploit anything like the the greatest of American tragedies, 9/11. Nixon never deliberately poisoned the hearts and minds of Americans with continuous conflicting and confusing statements about his equivalents of Saddam, Hussein, 9/11, Iraq, Niger, WMDs and the like so he could proceed with his messianic rearrangement of the world.
Where are Nixon’s horror chambers that match Bush’s Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay? Where is Nixon’s call for the implementation of torture and the end of habeas corpus for those deemed unworthy? George Bush has never been able to let go of his joyous childhood hijinks of blowing up of frogs–he’s just graduated to humans now.
Nixon, unlike Bush, never had a expanding legion of ex-generals and national security professionals railing against him on multiple fronts.
Nixon rarely demonstrated a ‘my-way-is-the-only-way’ and ‘this-is-not-for-discussion’ prevailing attitude. He was capable of and would engage in back-and-forth (well, maybe not with Dan Rather) discussion. Bush is too fearful of exposure to do so–his immaturity and hollowness would appear.
Nixon never needed to publicly hail himself as the decider or a gut-level practioner who strenuously avoided facts and analysis as if they were the avian flu. Look at this Bush record of judgment: Putin is a good guy, Cheney is tops, Rumsfeld is the best available Porter Goss will make Americans safer–not to mention a longtime association with Karl Rove, who would gladly have pounded additional nails into Jesus on the cross if primetime coverage was available.
I am no Nixon apologist–far, far from it. He’s someone who should have never risen beyond a Secretary of State or advisor-type position, if that. But, as I have stated before, George Bush’s Peter Principle position should have never gone beyond Grand Marshall of the Crawford Crawdad Festival. The damage Nixon did to our country and elsewhere took decades to repair and heal. We’re looking at centuries for Bush.
