Bush Sliced and Diced

From an article in Esquire by Ron Susskind on September 19, 2008, this pretty well sums up the disaster created when Americans elected an incompetent to be their "leader":

One morning in 2001, one of President Bush's most senior economic advisers walked into the Oval Office for a meeting with the president. The day before, the adviser had learned that the president had decided to send out tax-rebate checks to stimulate the faltering economy. Concerned about deficits and the dubious stimulatory effect of such rebates, he had called the president's chief of staff, Andy Card, to ask for the audience, and the meeting had been set.

As the man took his seat in the wing chair next to the president's desk, he began to explain his problem with the president's decision. The fact of the matter was that in this area of policy, this adviser was one of the experts, really top-drawer, and had been instrumental in devising some of the very language now used to discuss these concepts. He was convinced, he told Bush, that the president's position would soon enough be seen as "bad policy."

This, it seems, was the wrong thing to say to the president.

According to senior administration officials who learned of the encounter soon after it happened, President Bush looked at the man. "I don't ever want to hear you use those words in my presence again," he said.

"What words, Mr. President?"

"Bad policy," President Bush said. "If I decide to do it, by definition it's good policy. I thought you got that."

The adviser was dismissed. The meeting was over.

It is one story among many such stories. Why, you might ask, would the president bother to have advisers who are expert in various constellations of policy-making if he then disregards utterly whatever they have to say? The answer is at the heart of the failure of this presidency.

I always had the heebie-jeebies when I watched the cocky George Bush slouch over and pontificate. He was, and is, and ever will be, a complete idiot. He ran the US into the ground. It will take decades to recover from the problems he created and handed to Obama. He was an ideologue who stoked the fires of racism, sectarianism, and petty-mindedness. And the joke is that about 20% of the American public still think he was the grandest, best, smartest President the US ever saw. He has created a flock of true believers who are busy trying to destroy the US under a banner of being "true Americans". Pathetic.