August 24, 2007
View From Lodi, CA: Dubya—Worst President Ever. And
Immigration Is A Reason.
By Joe Guzzardi
To those of you who voted for George W. Bush in
2000, I forgive you.
But if you voted for Bush
a second time, I’m sorry—I cannot extend the same
graciousness.
I hold you fully and completely responsible for the
terrible condition that our country is in. You have
aided and abetted in America’s demise.
I understand how Bush hoodwinked you the first time
around. Under the
tutelage of the soon-to-be-departed
Karl Rove, Bush ran a smooth campaign with lots of
insincere patter about
compassionate conservatism.
Bush’s 2000 opponent, the bumbling, fumbling
former-Vice President
Al Gore eased the path to the White House for the
relatively inexperienced
Texas governor.
To sum up how inept Gore was: he
could not even carry his home state of
Tennessee—or the
traditional Democratic stronghold of
West Virginia.
But going into the 2004 election, Bush supporters
should have been guided by the old truism: “Fool me
once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.”
I know that the remaining handful of Bush-backers
like to speculate that
Senator John Kerry would have been a worse
president.
But, sorry, I’m not buying that.
You can speculate all you want about how good or bad
Kerry might have been.
But by 2004, we already knew that Bush was a
disaster. And Bush gave not the slightest indication
that his second term would be any better than his first.
So here we are today with 70 percent of the nation
convinced that America is on the wrong track and more
than 60 percent of the opinion that the
Iraq War was a mistake and has been poorly handled.
Yet, according to an Associated Press report,
Bush claimed on August 19th that recent
events in isolated Iraqi cities qualify our mission as a
success.
But how many Americans would consider that more
than 3,700 dead Americans is a fair exchange for six
banks reopening in
Baqubah or local
Ninewa officials establishing a commission to
investigate corruption. [Bush
Claims Success in Iraq, by Deb Riechmann,
Associated Press, August 19, 2007]
Bush’s Iraq strategy is stubbornness.
Iraq is Bush’s biggest mistake. But along with Iraq
are a series of decisions that show such poor judgment
that one can only wonder what—if anything—Bush thinks
about.
I have dozens of questions about Bush’s policies.
Among them are why Bush has:
Bush may have saved his most destructive measure for
last.
In Canada earlier this week, Bush met with Mexican
president
Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister
Stephen Harper to discuss the possibility of forming
a
North American Union that would make one country out
of the three.
As a first step, the U.S., Canada and Mexico agreed
to develop new rules making it easier to cross the
border during emergencies such as epidemics and
terrorist attacks [Harper
Says Security Shouldn’t Harm U.S. Relations,
Bloomberg News, By Theophilos Argitis, August 21,
2007].
Details are fuzzy but I assume this would mean that
during weather disasters like Hurricane Dean, Mexicans
could cross freely into the U.S.?
But would they ever go home?
A decade from now Bush may be more infamous for
having ended U.S. sovereignty than he is for the Iraq
War.
But even if the North American Union fails, Bush’s
legacy will be an ugly one: worst two-term president in
American history—and arguably the
worst president of all time.
Joe Guzzardi [email
him], an instructor in English
at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly
column since 1988. It currently appears in the
Lodi News-Sentinel.
