What A Shame

For the past nine months, George W. Bush has been burnishing what he likes to call his "legacy." Even as a lame duck he assumed he would be able to complete an ambitious agenda, but intervening events, primarily economic in nature, have stalled his efforts. This rude awakening is detailed in today's NY Times:

Mr. Bush began 2008 with ambitious goals: making his tax cuts permanent; renewing his signature education bill, No Child Left Behind; securing an Arab-Israeli peace deal; thwarting the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran; negotiating an international pact on global warming; free trade initiatives; legislation on energy and domestic wiretapping, and securing funding for troops in Iraq.

With the exception of the wiretapping legislation and troop funding, all were stalled or dead even before the economy took its drastic turn. The White House long ago gave up hope on extending Mr. Bush’s tax cuts, and Mr. Bush’s secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, conceded as early as March that prospects for renewing the education bill were all but dead.

While the devastation wreaked by the greed and hubris of the Wall Street robber barons is a serious blow to the country, one that no one can find much good in, it at least has slowed Mr. Bush's final push for glory, something I admit I am taking perverse joy in. It's not that I don't want an Arab-Israeli peace deal, or don't want the curtailment of further expansion of nuclear weaponry, especially by such countries as Iran and North Korea, or a decent national energy plan, it's that I don't want BushCo's version of solutions for any of them.

Sometimes reality intervenes at the right moment. This just might be one of those times.