Shock News: Bush Was A Jerk

"It would be like putting Camilla Parker Bowles in charge of the Princess Diana Foundation."

A minor flunky from the last days of the Bush Presidency has written a tell-all pot-boiler in which Bush comes across as at best a nincompoop (note: I said he was a jerk in 1999...). Here is a sample:

When White House press secretary Dana Perino was told that 77 percent of the country thought we were on the wrong track, she said what I was thinking: “Who on earth is in the other 23 percent?” I knew who they were—the same people supporting the John McCain campaign. Me? I figured there was no way in hell any Republican would vote for that guy. John McCain, the temperamental media darling, had spent most of the past eight years running against the Republican Party and the president—Republicans on Capitol Hill and at the White House hated him. Choosing John McCain as our standard-bearer would be the height of self-delusion. It would be like putting Camilla Parker Bowles in charge of the Princess Diana Foundation.

And yet. I think Bush was a horrible President, a murderous incompetent (previous incumbents are hardly better, oftentimes, they just didn't come across as such a moron), around whom all sorts of sinister and creepy shit swirled, especially after Sept. 11th. A New York Times column, however, wonders if another verdict is possible: that Bush acted to stop even greater tragedy in two areas — Iraq, with the troop surge, and the collapsing U.S. economy, with the bailout billions — it's just that his actions are overshadowed by the fact that Iraq and the economy were wrecked by Bush and Bush only.