Unintentional Comedy from Wall Street Jounal

Stumbled across a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal entitled, "The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace." Apparently Bush tried his hardest to build bipartisan bridges and protect our freedoms and received nothing but scorn. Wow. And here I thought Bush was an intellectually lazy, partisan, power hungry, vindictive, morally hypocritical sack of crap who demanded loyalty over competence and was totally in the tank for the business partners of his friends and family.

The author, one Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, spends a lot of time commenting on how Bush was damned if he did, damned if he didn't in his decisions, insofar as he couldn't make either party happy. In doing so, the editorial conveniently overlooks the reasons why Bush failed to satisfy either party--he repeatedly made incompetent, hasty, poorly planned, and generally half-assed manuevers.

In such a circumstance, it is the JOB of the representatives of either party to criticize the poor decisions and lousy performance of the commander-in-chief. Perhaps the author thinks the grotesque attempts to expand executive power that have taken place in the Bush administration should include freedom from accountability or criticism. We first tried that with John Adams and the Anti-Sedition laws. It doesn't hold water now.

Shapiro identifies himself as having been part of the 2004 John Kerry campaign. Apparently this is supposed to make it seem as though he is a Democrat who sees the true greatness and nobility of the Republican Bush. On the one hand, claiming a role in Kerry's campaign does not fill me with respect for anyone's political insights. On the other hand, if you go to his website, you'll see that Shapiro appears rather conservative for a mainstream Democrat, so much so that he seems to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. Plus he's most famous for being obsessed with the JonBenet Ramsey case and being accused of crossing ethical lines during his journalistic investigation. He also wrote a book on the Kobe Bryant trial.

Anyway, the followup comments on the editorial are filled with people either expressing their disbelief or people talking about how fantastic Bush was and how things are going to suck as soon as he's gone. Ah, people, things suck NOW.

People unwilling to acknowledge Bush's incompetence, arrogance, and all around jackassery (go read this book of administrative quotes on the leadup to the war in Iraq) continue to amaze me as much as people who insist that Reagan was a brilliant President who defeated communism, shrank government, and boosted the economy. (All of which involved increasing the size of government, running up huge deficits, and pushing through federal spending at more than 4.5% of national GDP no less than four times, according to the current Office of Management and Budget.)