by va
Apparently Victor Davis Hanson has been tasked with reanimating the corpse that is the Presidency of George "W." Bush. Here he says that Bush's worst problems weren't catastrophic, and that they can be explained by his lack of rhetorical acumen. For example, we may lament "a certain administration haughtiness about the problems in Iraq between 2002-6." But! However! mostly we will remember that No Child Left Behind was a success. Similarly, Mussolini betrayed a certain haughtiness about the wonders of fascism and the prospects of an Italian pact with Germany circa 1939 to 1943, but now we all marvel at his mass-transit wizardry.
And here, in an article Thers mentioned the other day, Hanson says that really, the state of things as Bush leaves office isn't so bad when you think of it in the context of Bill Clinton's departure. "We have now forgotten that by the end of the year 2000, the American economy was sliding into recession. Lame-duck President Clinton had been impeached." I feel a mournful tune coming on: Have you forgotten...
Had I forgotten? If we're supposed to remember the end of Clinton's term when we think of Bush's mess, well, what are we supposed to remember? How did everyone come to terms with the true perils posed to the American Experiement at the dawn of the current millenium? Maybe this editorial cartoon from February '01 will help: 
Shit sure was grim back in the day! Seriously, though, the irony here isn't that Clinton didn't belong in jail while Bush so richly deserves imprisonment, nor that Presidential imprisonment was thinkable back then while for some reason it isn't today. Really, it's this: if in 2001 a handful of Rikers inmates was selected to run the government, who among us can say they wouldn't have done a better job of it?
