But the conference's head-scratchers reveal what the Bush Legacy Project is all about.
His chief mistake -- pushing privatization of Social Security after the 2004 election, the "I've got political capital, and I'm going to spend it," assault, in ignorance of the metaphor's real meaning, see because you spend cash and you invest capital. Spending political capital is like eating your seed corn -- turns out to be a pivot on his pet domestic issue.
The problem with his failed bid to put Gramps into the thresher of the stock market was not, it turns out, that he should have been paying attention to Iraq as it spiraled into an unrivalled shitstorm, no no no, it was that the PSA putsch set back his work on immigration.
I believe that running the Social Security idea right after the '04 elections was a mistake. I should have argued for immigration reform. And the reason why is, is that -- you know, one of the lessons I learned as governor of Texas, by the way, is legislative branches tend to be risk-adverse [sic]. In other words, sometimes legislatures have the tendency to ask, why should I take on a hard task when a crisis is not imminent?
Why indeed? Looks pretty smart from this vantage, tho'.
The point is this: though the president tacked toward the Pawlenty-big-tent faction, saying that he should have made immigration reform -- whatever that means in reality, its connotation is "immigration crackdown" -- a top priority, more serious than fixing Iraq in 2004, is music to the ears of those in the Hensarling Quasar.
The point of the Bush Record, among other PR salvos, is that 43 was competent. Why else would anyone publish "The Policies of the Bush Administration," than to say, "See, we did too have policies..." And we shouldn't have let some of them slip through our hands. Circumstances beyond our control.
What all this means is that Bush denies responsibility for any ethically consequential decisions. His one mistake was a mistake of political calculation. The rest of the bad stuff that happened to him is exactly that, stuff that happened. "Disappointments," as the man says. WMD, Abu Ghraib, chaos in Iraq, Bin Laden free, all "disappointments." Other failures of conscience aren't even disappointing: Katrina, for instance. And let's not start on 43's essential bloodthirst regarding Gaza. On a day when 90,000 civilians were marched out of Gaza, during a week where the 900th civilian death was announced, the President had this to say:
And a definition of a sustainable cease-fire is that Hamas stops firing rockets into Israel. And there will not be a sustainable cease-fire if they continue firing rockets. I happen to believe the choice is Hamas's to make. And we believe that the best way to ensure that there is a sustainable cease-fire is to work with Egypt to stop the smuggling of arms into the Gaza that enables Hamas to continue to fire rockets. And so countries that supply weapons to Hamas have got to stop. And the international community needs to continue to pressure them to stop providing weapons.
Hamas, obviously, if they're interested in a sustainable cease-fire, needs to stop arming. And then, of course, countries contingent to the Gaza need to work to stop the smuggling.
[snip]
The challenge, of course, has been to lay out the conditions so that a peaceful state can emerge -- in other words, helping the Palestinians in the West Bank develop security forces, which we have worked hard to do over the past years. And those security forces are now becoming more efficient, and Prime Minister Fayyad is using them effectively. The challenge is to develop -- help the Palestinians develop a democracy -- I mean, and a vibrant economy in their -- that will help lead to democracy.
And the challenge, of course, is always complicated by the fact that people are willing to murder to stop the advance of freedom. And so the -- Hamas, or for that matter al Qaeda, or other extremist groups, are willing to use violence to prevent free states from emerging. And that's the big challenge.
And so the answer is -- will this ever happen? I think it will. And I know we have advanced the process.
I'll probably be coming back to that piece later.
Suffice it to say, Denial is in full effect in the Bush White House, years after it became cliche. The man showed Anger when contradicted, particularly about Katrina. He has Accepted that, even though he made no bad decisions, certain calculations, "Mission Accomplished" among them, were wrong.
And now, as a competent, ideologically sound and successful ex-president, George Walker Bush can go back to doing what he does best: raising Cash. Immigration top priority, Palestinians die, Iraq no problem, Cash rules everything around me. Give him a few years for the dust to settle, and we'll see him in Oklahoma City or Sugar Land TX, pimping his memoirs on behalf of Jeb Hensarling, or in Richmond's West End pimping Eric Cantor. Wait for it.
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