Folly’s Brilliant Flower

As the presidency of George W. Bush drunkenly stumbles towards its pathetic end, we are witnessing two interesting pieces of media theatre. The first piece is low comedy and it has the President giving interviews to tame journalists in an attempt to rewrite history so it will cast a more favorable light on the past eight years of his reign

As I watch the interviews of Our Dear Leader trying to justify his driving the ship of state onto the rocks of war, debt, and disaster I can’t help but thinking that George W. Bush is an exception to Socrates’ statement that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

The second piece of media theatre is a series of farces written by Former Members of the Bush Administration (FMBA). The purpose of these farces is to distract attention from and judgment of Bush’s incompetent presidency by reminding us that whatever his many failings, Dubya fought the good fight when it came to the Global War On Terror, or whatever they’re calling it these days.

One such piece of theatre is Peggy Noonan’s Dec. 4, 2008 editorial in the Wall Street Journal. Ms. Noonan’s main point:

“There was no grousing about John McCain, and considerable grousing about the Bush administration, but it was almost always followed by one sentence, and this is more or less what it was: "But he kept us safe." In the seven years since 9/11, there were no further attacks on American soil. This is an argument that's been around for a while but is newly re-emerging as the final argument for Mr. Bush: the one big thing he had to do after 9/11, the single thing he absolutely had to do, was keep it from happening again. And so far he has.”

Since most American politics and political memory is very short-term, Ms. Noonan’s case is valid. Bush kept us safe from terrorist attacks on American soil.

Of course one could point out that Al Qaeda, the Iranians, the Syrians and other Islamist parties have no need to attack American soil because the President provided them with 146,000 targets in Iraq and another 30,000 in Afghanistan. Why hazard an expensive and possibly futile attack on American soil when you can kill Americans by exploding car bombs in Mosul or Kabul. The President didn't do a very good job of keeping citizens of the Gulf Coast safe in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina or preventing the collapse of the American financial system. But let's not be petty because Bush kept us safe from terrorist attacks on American soil.

In the coming days, there will be more attempts by President Bush and his apologist to rewrite the history of the past few years to portray him as one of America’s greatest Presidents because “he kept us safe.” If you wish to look beyond the next news or election cycle, it might be wise to remember the words of historian Barbara Tuchman in her book, March of Folly (1984, New York, Knopf, p. 19).

“In between flashes of good government, folly has its day. In the Bourbons of France, it burst into brilliant flower.

“Louis XIV is usually considered a master monarch, largely because people tent to accept a successfully dramatized self-estimation. In reality he exhausted France’s economic and human resources by his ceaseless wars and their cost in national debt, casualties, famine and disease, he propelled France toward collapse that could only result as it did two reigns later, in the overturn of absolute monarchy, the Bourbon raison d’etre.”

Substitute George Bush for Louis XIV and America for France and you have fairly good description of the last seven years. Yes, he kept us safe, but he left the Republic sorely and unnecessarily wounded in the process. We can respect the president for what little he has achieved, but we can also contradict the President's and FMBA’s attempts to spin the Bush administration's dismal achievements so history will see it and him in a more favorable light. He is the American Louis XIV, Folly's Brilliant Flower.

Capitano Tedeschi

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