A small man indeed

Scott at Poetic Leanings has some food for thought for all those whose intense and inexplicable need to find George W. Bush infallible has them refusing to acknowledge reality: The man they worship is a small man indeed.

UPDATE: Driftglass has a post along the same lines:

I have relatives who Dubya beats metaphorically bloody and on whose arms and legs this Administration economically stubs out cigarettes. And yet every morning, through split-lips and swollen eyes, they defend him. Ferociously. It wasn't his fault...or he did the best anyone could...or Liberals would be worse...or it never really happened at all.

Because to allow even a little bit of doubt to seep in, would be to admit that they have made one HUGE fucking mistake. That virtually everything they believe is a massive lie perpetrated on them by monsters who secretly despise them for their weakness and cowardice.

Their whole identity would implode and frankly Republicans would rather die (and take everyone else with them) that ever admit they were wrong.

There is parity between Katrina and Bush in that the Republicans were given ample warning of what a disaster Bush would be. Flare were fired off. Klaxons sounded. Criers ran though the streets and the firebell rang in the night.

And still, the Republican Faithful did nothing. While the hellstorm of consequences that electing criminals and incompetents and bastards to office was bearing down on this country in full fucking view, the Freepers and the Neocons and the Christopaths picked their toes, called us traitors, whined about gays and got positively nutty insisting that their comic book superstitions be taught as Science.

This is the Party that preened and prattled about their “Mandate” being the trump card over every issue. That voting for a stupid thing somehow made it smart, and voting against Science and Reality made those things go away. And that no day of reckoning would every come as long as they voted to keep hitting the Snooze Button.

OK fuckers, go ahead. Vote Katrina away. Vote NOLA back to vitality and beauty and charm. Vote the dead back to life.

In the end what you got for your vote wasn’t a Messiah, or a Moses or a Solomon.

In the end all you got was what you were AMPLY warned you would get. George W. Bush. A hollow idiot. The Bicycle Chief. The Vacationer-in-Chief. A dry-drunk, half-wit coward. A Potempkin President who would fall apart if the stink of the Real World every made it past his retinue. A prop levee that would fail when the wind started blowing.

In the end, Bush failed the only test of leadership that matters, on the only platform he every really ran on.

Character.

DAMN, he's good. I wish I could write like that.