< / bush >

I can understand the lack of protests - Bush chickened out on anything except showing up, and it is December in Canada. And Tim's comments below are from a further rightish perspective than mine, but still adequately capture the frustrations. I did want to try my hand at throwing out a draft speech for Bush that might help capture this historic moment - in the "let's look beyond the past and toward the future" kind of vein... But why bother, when this President's idea of diplomacy is to insist only that he was/is/will be right. Read Frum for the echo: Triumph. I am not in Canada these days, but I find it hard to believe that Bush won my country over with a few joking lines that glossed over every damn disagreement we have had with his country since his first election in 2000. And that's the crux of the entire problem. Regardless of the evidence (any evidence, for that matter), all his arguments just degenerate to the issue of "security" or at their worst, the desirability to rid the world of Saddam. Because Canadians really wanted him to stay in power, of course... Fuck, that is an argument I particularly love, because it is such a magnificent example of ducking the actual debate that it might just encapsulate 43's whole Presidency - the reasons for its simplified sucess and yet abject failure. For at this rate, why don't we man the barricades for Kim Jong Il, the Shah of Iran, etc... The reason that Bush is so infuriating (and may I even say, why he inspires such pure hatred) is not necessarily the policies themselves, but his administration's absolute insistence that they are PERFECT. Let me repeat that - not that his policies may not be appropriate to the situation, but the fact that they consider them ABSOLUTELY GENIUS. The idea that his team (mostly from Texas, as they are) have not grasped every nuance and might actually - GASP - be incorrect, is more than the worst blasphemy. Bush is so shocking to those on the Left precisely because of the ideological nature of his certainty. And the rightwing media continues to glory in their triumph, even as the so-called "liberal" media refuses to play ads by a Church who only wants to advertise that all are welcome into their congregation. And so back to the title of this post... inspired by an actual sign viewed from the Canadian protests. A brilliant one indeed. Even not a code-man myself, "the end of Bush" is a day I look forward to with great relish. The end of closemindedness in the White House, we can only hope. And maybe then (only then?) the esteemed Tom Friedman will recover from his newfound rants that so resembles the path trod so recently by Mr. Albert Gore... You can only do what you can.