President Bush: Already Failing In The Future

When it comes to the future, W. already gets an F.

Pompous Bush supporters love to pick a mythical time somewhere out there ahead of us when the big wheels of history will turn and President Bush will be seen as great. Call it future spin. Now that the present looks so ugly, their fallback position is to look forward. As with everything coming from this bunch, it is transparent and stupid.

The thing that looks the brightest about America's future is that President Bush will be gone. He'll no longer have the ability to screw things up....or will he?

There is a very good chance that the full brunt of what President Bush has done with his time in office won't hit us till long after he's back in Crawford. That's when we'll really begin to pay for the damage.

If Time Magazine is correct, that will include rebuilding the military. Fighting an unnecessary war has taken an enormous toll on the army, especially with the caliber of planning that went into it. Just as we are still paying everyday for the contributions of Donald Rumsfeld, we will be feeling George's impact for decades to come.

The economics people are beginning to see what this era really was: A looting of the future to make the top 1% of wealthy Americans much richer. We hear endless stories about how great things are going, but not even the Bush crowd should try and tell us that he's made the economic future of America more solid. All he did was postpone and intensify the day of reckoning for our insane economic policy of borrowing from China and elsewhere to finance a get-rich scam.

We're already paying in some ways for President Bush's economic mistakes, but the brunt of it lies out there ahead. Being a superpower is an economic distinction. It's not how many nukes you have. The Soviet Union had a lot of nukes, too, but it imploded because of a collapsing economy. Many people believe the lazy, quick-fix mismanagement of President Bush could lead to our collapse from superpower status. The elite might be trying to get rich now because they know the whole thing's heading for the rocks. And wait till it's payback time from the rest of the world.

Indeed, at some point in the future President Bush could be seen - not as great - but as the man who brought down this country. The Soviet Union collapsed after their military adventure in Afghanistan. Maybe Iraq will be the beginning of our downfall.

Remember when these right wing blowhards would say we will win in Iraq because we must? Did anyone read Kissinger's latest remarks that we can't win in Iraq? And this is one of President Bush's advisors? Meanwhile we have Colin Powell warning that the army is "about broken"? The exact same people who talked down to the rest of us about how terrific they were at foreign policy and how much they support the troops, have turned out to be the worst thing that has happened to our military since Vietnam. And by the way, veterans from that conflict are still out there right now, wandering the streets homeless, incapacitated by the trauma of that war.

Not even these Republicans who talk so glowingly of how great President Bush will look someday, will disagree with one thing about our future: We'll be living with thousands and thousands of veterans from Iraq who need medical care for perhaps another 70 years. So even though Bush will be long gone, he will still be costing this country billions a year in heartbreak and medical costs till around the year 2077. Thanks, George.

To these self-righteous Republicans basking in the glow of their own patriotism, I understand your position. You think Bush will one day be seen as a great leader because that's the only place you have left. Besides, it's so easy to do. There's no work involved and that's in keeping with the "spin first" strategy of the laziest President in history.

Here, I'll show you. Watch me do some future spin for you: "I know Sanjaya is being ridiculed now, but some day in the future he will be considered as great as Marvin Gaye." Gee, that was easy.

The future is the only place where George Bush can possibly look good so you seize on it. Of course, when we get there we'll know that he's already screwed that up, too.
America's Broken-Down Army | TIME