Garry Wills on Willard: "What can be worse than to sell your soul and find it not valuable enough to get anything for it?"

Willard's way, per GW: "Ask not what you can do for your
country, but what your country can do for your family."

"What vestige of a backbone is Romney left with? Things he was once proud of -- health-care guarantees, opposition to noxious emissions, support of gay rights and women’s rights, he had the shamelessness to treat as matters of shame all through his years-long crawl to the Republican nomination."

-- Garry Wills, in a NYRB blogpost, "What Romney Lost"

by Ken

Maybe I was so convinced -- or maybe just so afraid (after surviving eight years of the "Chimpy the Prez" Bush regime -- that Willard Inc. was going to be elected president that I gave very little thought to a post-candidature Willard. And certainly didn't think to make the connection when circumstances had me writing about George McGovern just a few weeks ago.

Luckily, we have Garry Wills for such things. "What happens to those who lose a presidential campaign?" he asks setting off on a new NYRB blogpost, "What Romney Lost." "Some can do it with heads rightly held high," he writes, "and go on to give valuable service to the nation."

We were reminded of this just two weeks before the recent election, when George McGovern died. Though he underwent a humiliating defeat by Richard Nixon forty years before, he was a man of integrity, some of whose ideas were continued by people who worked in his 1972 campaign, like Bill and Hillary Clinton, veterans of his Texas office that year. McGovern was re-elected to the Senate after his presidential loss, where he performed important services, like defying the cattle, egg, and sugar lobbies to set up national dietary standards. This was a long-time commitment of his. Even before he went into the Senate, he had served as President Kennedy’s point man in the Food for Peace Program. In 1998, President Clinton appointed him his ambassador to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, where he worked effectively to curb world hunger. Above all, though he was a heroic flyer in World War II, he was a principled opponent of useless militarism.

The obvious question then is: "What public service do we expect from Mitt Romney?" Already you're snickering, right? Garry's thought: "He will no doubt return to augmenting his vast and hidden wealth, with no more pesky questions about where around the world it is stashed, or what taxes (if any) he paid, carefully sheltered from the rules his fellow citizens follow."

The roster of modern defeated presidential candidates isn't kind to Willard. Going back to --

BARRY GOLDWATER -- who,

after his massive defeat, stayed true enough to his principled conservatism that the modern Republican Party was a beneficiary of his legacy -- a beneficiary but not the determiner of that legacy. It was Goldwater himself who told the heir to his influence, Richard Nixon, that it was time to cleanse the White House by leaving it. Though Goldwater was a factor in the Southern strategy of Nixon, he was no racist, and no fanatic of any stripe. He was an acidulous critic of the religious right and a strong advocate for women’s rights (like abortion). He had backbone.

Which prompts the thought I quoted atop this post, about Willard's vestigial backbone.

CARTER? GORE? DUKAKIS? DOLE?

Other defeated candidates compiled stellar records after they lost. Two of them later won the Nobel Prize -- Jimmy Carter for international diplomacy, Al Gore for his environmental advocacy. John Kerry is still an important voice for the principles he has always believed in as a Democrat. Michael Dukakis carries on as the college professor he always was, with no need to reject or rediscover any of the policies he championed. Robert Dole joined with McGovern in international nutritional projects.

[Notably missing here, I note, is any mention of a certain Young Johnny McCranky. -- Ed.]

"None of these men," says Garry, "engineered a wholesale repudiation of their former principles." Willard, by contrast, underwent the transformation from a Senate candidate running to the left of Ted Kennedy on gay rights and abortion to a presidential candidate "to the right of Strom Thurmond." ("He decided to hire more expensive lawn care only on the principle of 'I'm running for office, for Pete's sake, I can't have illegals.' ")

Garry contrasts the war heroes McGovern and Dole ("They asked what they could do for their country") with Willard, "who avoided military service as a missionary, said none of his sons of military age could serve because they were serving the nation by helping him, year after year, run for president. 'Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for your family.'" [Emphasis added.]

Many losing candidates became elder statesmen of their parties. What lessons will Romney have to teach his party? The art of crawling uselessly? How to contemn 47 percent of Americans less privileged and beautiful than his family? How to repudiate the past while damaging the future? It is said that he will write a book. Really? Does he want to relive a five-year-long experience of degradation? What can be worse than to sell your soul and find it not valuable enough to get anything for it? His friends can only hope he is too morally obtuse to realize that crushing truth. Losing elections is one thing. But the greater loss, the real loss, is the loss of honor.

#

George McGovern (1922-2012)

To the liberal Democratic faithful, Mr. McGovern remained a standard-bearer well into his old age, writing and lecturing even as his name was routinely invoked by conservatives as synonymous with what they considered the failures of liberal politics.

He never retreated from those ideals, however, insisting on a strong, "progressive" federal government to protect the vulnerable and expand economic opportunity, and asserting that history would prove him correct in his opposing not only what he called "the tragically mistaken American war in Vietnam" but also the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

-- from the NYT obit by David Rosenbaum (who,
by the way, we're told died in 2006)

by Ken

My friend Paul passed along the NYT obit with this note:

My first vote was for George McGovern in '72. He was thoroughly trounced by the incumbent, Richard M. Nixon. We all remember how well that turned out. George was a WWII hero and an incredibly decent human being who led the charge against the Vietnam War before Bobby Kennedy and Gene McCarthy got involved.

RIP, George. I still have your campaign button.

I'll leave you to read the NYT obit, which you can do now without using up one of your precious NYT clicks.  Let me just highlight a couple of things:

* Paul's point: "George was a WWII hero and an incredibly decent human being who led the charge against the Vietnam War before Bobby Kennedy and Gene McCarthy got involved." And, as the NYT obit points out, he "oppos[ed] not only what he called 'the tragically mistaken American war in Vietnam' but also the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan." We'll come back to this, especially that part about his being "an incredibly decent human being." But first --

* The fascinating disclosure made by the NYT in the biographical note for the obit, which is bylined "By David E. Rosenbaum": "David E. Rosenbaum, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times, died in 2006. William McDonald contributed reporting."

Now we all understand. The major media outlets all stockpile advance-written obituaries of famous people for whom they know they will need obituaries when the time comes. The normal practice, as I understand it, is that at certain intervals the obituary is dusted off and brought up to date, so that when it's finally needed it just requires a final freshening up. In this case, reporter Rosenbaum obviously hasn't been available to do any tinkering since 2006.

It's certainly no discredit to Senator McGovern that he was obituarized (is that a word? for our purposes I think it'll have to be) by a dead guy, and a not-all-that-recently dead one at that. On the contrary, since David Rosenbaum was indeed a highly respected political reporter, his assignment to the job originally -- which I'm guessing was well before 2006 -- would seem to do credit to both gentlemen. And the way life works, there's no reason to assume that the designated obituarist won't predecease the subject. Is that any reason to chuck the product? What you do is just what the Times did: You disclose, and give some sort of credit to the person who shepherded the piece as it stood into print.

Still, there's something about this -- I don't know, some sense that for the last however-many years Senator George has been reduced to the status of "waiting to kick the bucket." Yes, he may once have had a certain place in the fabric of history, but now -- in this case going back at least to 2006 (and, as I've already suggested, likely going back a good bit farther) -- there has been just the one thing left for him to do, and how he's done it.


NOW LET ME GET BACK TO THAT PART ABOUT GMcG
BEING "AN INCREDIBLY DECENT HUMAN BEING"

Yes, he was.

And he was, as Paul says, "thoroughly trounced" by a man who was an incredibly indecent human being, who nevertheless has come to look like a statesman and pious visionary by comparison with most of the presidential candidates who have followed him, especially those of his party, and notably including the ones who were actually elected -- Reagan, G.W.H. Bush, and G. W. Bush, not to mention this Willard Inc.

The sad, or maybe tragic, thing is that we seem to have no use for incredibly decent human beings except to chronicle their passing.


WHICH LEADS ME TO SOME THUMB-SUCKING
I COINCIDENTALLY JUST DID TO A FRIEND

There isn't any question about why Republican office-seekers like, is there? (A: God tells them to.)

My friend had mentioned in a note I saw when I got back from my long-awaited "Day on the J Train" with urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum (short version: it was exhausting but incredibly exhilarating) this evening:

I am working on an essay titled 'Why Democrats cannot tell the truth when they run for office." I have doing some thinking on it for quite some time.

It is part of the frustration.

Maybe it wasn't entirely coincidental that I dashed off the reply I did. Maybe somewhere in the tangle of my brain this was connecting to the news of the passing of my kind of patriot, this incredibly decent human being George McGovern. In what I wrote I realize now I took for granted the answer to the question of why Republicans can't tell the truth when they run for office. In the event that it might ever occur to one to consider doing so. Anyway, here's what I wrote:

Good subject, M. As usual, there's a range of factors, depending first on which kind of D's you're talking about.

If it's the new-style corporate-whore D, what are they supposed to say? "Sure, a reasonable person might assume from my network of big-money corporate contributors that I'm in the bag to them. However, I can assure you that I will nevertheless give every consideration to you, my precious constituents." You see how already this last part is a lie?

If, on the other hand, we're talking about the kind of D who actually believes the kind of stuff we believe, and only sort of mumbles about it when no one in particular is paying attention, then I think we have to assume that the person has been persuaded, on the basis of carefully selected "evidence," by corporate-whore political masterminds and consultants like Rahm Emanuel, that talking about deep-seated progressive convictions will cause them to lose.

And you know, there's some basis of truth in this, to the extent that saying such stuff, which if well said might cause considerable spontaneous enthusiasm among potential voters, could at the same time constitute a red flag to the Forces of Darknesses whose financial purse strings were pretty well loosened even before Citizens United. Look what happened to Alan Grayson when he made himself a big enough target. Which is one reason I would dearly love to see him sent back to Congress, without his having in any way stilled or compromised his public voice.

Cheers,
K

RIP, George.


MY FRIEND PAUL ALSO PASSED ALONG
TODAY'S SUNDAY DOONESBURY STRIP

Somehow, it seems part of this discussion (for want of a better word).

DOONESBURY, by GB Trudeau

[Click to enlarge.]

#

Who Will End The War In Afghanistan?

awesome art by Dimitrios Loumiotis

By 1970 I had given up on the U.S. I couldn't sleep at night stressing over my responsibility, as a citizen and a taxpayer (at least a sales taxpayer), for the unending deaths of innocent civilians in Vietnam and Cambodia. I left the country the year before and had no intention of going back. When the Senate debated George McGovern's (D-SD) and Mark Hatfield's (R-OR) amendment to end the war I was, ironically, living in Afghanistan. A friend sent me a copy of the speech, which moved me tremendously. Obviously conservatives prevailed that day (the vote to defeat the amendment was 55-39) but McGovern rubbed every warmongering senator's nose in excrement. Is there someone in Congress, other than, perhaps Alan Grayson, who would have the cajones to say this today?

Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This chamber reeks of blood. Every Senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval and all across our land-- young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or faces or hopes.

There are not very many of these blasted and broken boys who think this war is a glorious adventure. Do not talk to them about bugging out, or national honor or courage. It does not take any courage at all for a congressman, or a senator, or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed. But we are responsible for those young men and their lives and their hopes. And if we do not end this damnable war those young men will some day curse us for our pitiful willingness to let the Executive carry the burden that the Constitution places on us.

So before we vote, let us ponder the admonition of Edmund Burke, the great parliamentarian of an earlier day: "A contentious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood."

Rick Perlstein, in his brilliant book, Nixonland, deals with the reaction from McGovern's esteemed and honorable colleagues after the presiding officer started banging his gavel and insisting his time had expired: "From the Republican side, men rose from their seats: 'Regular order! Regular order!'"

Historian Robert Mann claims McGovern "shocked" his colleagues into deep, stunned silence. And as they started voting, one of them walked up to McGovern and indignantly told him that he had been "personally offended" by the speech. McGovern replied, "That's what I meant to do."

The time has come to start personally offending the bloody pack of murderers on Capitol Hill who are doing this in our name. The Military-Industrial Complex will never get out until we force them to. Obama's way too weak and vacillating to do it-- and surrounded by monsters. We own this war. We've got to stop it.

American military officials are building a case to minimize the planned withdrawal of some troops from Afghanistan starting next summer, in an effort to counter growing pressure on President Obama from inside his own party to begin winding the war down quickly.

With the administration unable yet to point to much tangible evidence of progress, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who assumed command in Afghanistan last month from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is taking several steps to emphasize hopeful signs on the ground that, he will argue, would make a rapid withdrawal unwise. Meanwhile, a rising generation of young officers, who have become experts over the past nine years in the art of counterinsurgency, have begun quietly telling administration officials that they need time to get their work done.

“Their argument,” said one senior administration official, who would not speak for attribution about the internal policy discussions, “is that while we’ve been in Afghanistan for nine years, only in the past 12 months or so have we started doing this right, and we need to give it some time and think about what our long-term presence in Afghanistan should look like.”

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates signaled the military’s position recently when he said that the initial troop withdrawals next summer “will be of fairly limited numbers.” General Petraeus, who has kept a low profile for the past six weeks while conducting a countrywide assessment, is expected to amplify the message during the media offensive he will begin on Sunday, when he is to appear on the NBC News program “Meet the Press.” He is expected to say that the last of the 30,000 additional troops Mr. Obama ordered to Afghanistan last December will not arrive until later this month, and that the counterinsurgency strategy has not been given enough time to succeed.

Hard To Imagine Why No One In Congress Came Up With This Simple Proposal To Fix The Health Care System

Did Blue Shield really give you $75,200? Kewl!

George McGovern lost a lot of credibility-- pretty much all of it-- when he teamed up with the GOP to campaign against employee free choice. He went from being a respected progressive elder statesman to being a waking joke and a pariah. So people may have been surprised this morning to wake up and find such a fine OpEd penned by him in the Washington Post. Could anyone not currently working inside the sausage factory have not come to the same conclusion as McGovern-- that the way to solve the country's health care problem is Medicare for all? As he points out, it is simple and even teabaggers might understand it: "If we want comprehensive health care for all our citizens, we can achieve it with a single sentence: Congress hereby extends Medicare to all Americans."

Obama's speech last week had one fatal flaw-- his insistence that the insurance industry has a legitimate role to play in the country's health care system. They don't-- unless you also consider the role of Typhoid Mary legitimate. This insistence, fueled by obscene campaign donations-- thinly disguised bribes-- is what blocks the path to meaningful health care reform.

Those of us over 65 have been enjoying this program for years. I go to the doctor or hospital of my choice, and my taxes pay all the bills. It's wonderful. But I would have appreciated it even more if my wife and children and I had had such health-care coverage when we were younger. I want every American, from birth to death, to get the kind of health care I now receive. Removing the payments now going to the insurance corporations would considerably offset the tax increase necessary to cover all Americans.

I don't feel as though the government is meddling in my life when it pays my doctor and hospital fees. There are some things the government does that I don't like -- most notably getting us into needless wars that cost many times what health care for all Americans would cost. Investing in the health of our citizens will enhance the well-being and security of the nation.

We know that Medicare has worked well for half a century for those of us over 65. Why does it become "socialized medicine" when we extend it to younger Americans?

...Many people familiar with politics in America will tell you that this idea can't pass Congress, in part because the insurance lobby is too powerful for lawmakers to resist.

As matters now stand, the insurance companies claim $450 billion a year of our health-care dollars. They will fight hard to hold on to this bonanza. This is a major reason Americans pay more for health care per capita than any other people in the world. The insurance executives didn't cry "socialism" when their buddies in banking and finance were bailed out. But to them it is socialism if the government underwrites the cost of health care.

Consider the campaign funds given to the chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over health-care legislation. Chairman Max Baucus of Montana, a Democrat, and his political action committee have received nearly $4 million from the health-care lobby since 2003. The ranking Republican, Charles Grassley of Iowa, has received more than $2 million. It's a mistake for one politician to judge the personal motives of another. But Sens. Baucus and Grassley are firm opponents of the single-payer system, as are other highly placed members of Congress who have been generously rewarded by the insurance lobby.

Far be it from me to call any fine politician a whore but I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Senator Grassley is up for re-election next year and very much counting on the Insurance Industry and the Medical-Industrial Complex to pay the costs. So far they haven't let him down. In the current year the Insurance Industry has already forked over $89,800 to Grassley's re-election efforts. Compare that to the $16,070 they've given to Bernie Sanders-- in his entire career (and not one cent this year)! The Medical-Industrial Complex is also favoring Grassley this year-- so far to the tune of $186,600. And, believe me, Grassley has earned every cent of it spreading shallow lies about death panels and sabotaging reform efforts every step of the way. If America winds up without health care reform, or with inadequate reform, no list of culprits will be complete without Chuck Grassley. Baucus, of course, will be the first name on the list-- or at least fighting for pride of place with Rahm Emanuel.

Yesterday John Amato called me, pretty excited for John, to say he was watching Obama's Minneapolis speech on health care and that the president was sounding more behind the public option than he would if Rahm Emanuel and his corporate buddies were calling all the shots. The audience reaction speaks for itself. John put the video up at Crooks and Liars today and gave me permission to use it here as well:

BUSH AND CHENEY SHOULD BE IMPEACHED

Today's Washington Post carries an op-ed by George McGovern, callin, eloquently for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. Let's hope Pelosi and her detestable Insider cabal are paying attention. McGovern's premise, that the Bush Regime is far worse than Nixon, should be apparent to anyone who has been paying attention since 2000, and McGovern reluctantly comes to the conclusion that the only honorable way for America to move forward is for Bush and Cheney to face impeachment. He seems as dismayed by the ruthless, narrow and blind partisanship of Republicans as by his own party's "lack of courage and statesmanship."

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.

From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged-- perhaps even by a congressional investigation.

In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion-- by far the highest in our national history.

All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?

How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness?

It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an "imminent threat" to the United States. The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks-- another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I have recalled Jefferson's observation: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate of fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents. The same fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative members of the press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and Muslim world-- more than a billion people.

Another shocking perversion has been the shipping of prisoners scooped off the streets of Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other countries without benefit of our time-tested laws of habeas corpus.

Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last August that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie to the country and the world. This is the same strategy of deception that brought us into war in the Arabian Desert and could lead us into an unjustified invasion of Iran. I can say with some professional knowledge and experience that if Bush invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would mark the end of U.S. influence in the crucial Middle East for decades.

Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of their administration, their policies-- especially the war in Iraq-- have increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States. Consider the difference between the policies of the first President Bush and those of his son. When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in August 1990, President George H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world, including the United Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab League, to quickly expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudis and Japanese paid most of the cost. Instead of getting bogged down in a costly occupation, the administration established a policy of containing the Baathist regime with international arms inspectors, no-fly zones and economic sanctions. Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no capacity to threaten others.

Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: "I have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans." Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.

As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, "it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)-- and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws-- that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. . . . A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law-- and repeatedly violates the law-- thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors."

I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won't be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I'd like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin.

This morning's Times of London carries two unrelated stories that Americans still on the fence about impeachment might want to think about. One involves former FBI whistleblower/translator Sibel Edmonds who has given the Times some startling information about Bush Regime officials involved with treason, including selling nuclear secrets to Pakistan. It is also widely believed that Edmonds heard tapes showing that then GOP House Speaker Denny Hastert was taking huge cash bribes from Turkey.

Bush's perverted and criminal Justice Department "has imposed a state secrets privilege order on her, which prevents her revealing more details of the FBI’s methods and current investigations. Her allegations were heard in a closed session of Congress, but no action has been taken and she continues to campaign for a public hearing... One of the CIA sources confirmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. 'We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s,' the source said."

The other Times story isn't about criminal or impeachable offenses. But it's one that may help Americans make up their minds about Bush. In the 1800s people in England enjoyed a higher standard of living than Americans. Since then America has eclipsed the U.K.-- until Bush, who never paid any attention at Harvard Business School, came along. After 8 years of economic mismanagement, likely to result in a severe recession, the American standard of living will have dropped below England's.

Bush has been a failure his entire life. Everything he has put his hand to has turned to shit. There was never any reason to suspect the same would not be true of the United States government. That may make him unpopular enough for an impeachment trial based on his impeachable activities, and for criminal trials for his cronies, to move forward. How much longer will the execrable Nancy Pelosi keep impeachment off the table. Voters in San Francisco owe it to America to remove this disgraceful political hack from office.

#