Posted by
Paul Wamack on Wednesday, February 18, 2009 8:54:36 AM
It's hard to say farewell to George with a clear head. It's difficult to think over all the media babble and the protesters chanting, to set aside the disinformation and hostility. But one thing is for sure; we won't have George to kick around any more. It's unlikely that he is going to make an international spectacle of himself in the coming years, like Jimmy Carter insists on doing (and why not? He gets awards for embarrassing himself and his country, not to mention the really swell parties.) No, I suspect George will probably follow his father's path; a few photo ops with him waving. Mostly, I imagine he is at least as happy to have it over as the distractors are to see him go. Certainly, the distractors don't have enough self-awareness to be embarrassed for the way they have behaved in this matter.
So it's hard to set aside their shabby behavior to look at George. It's hard to point out his shabby behavior in the face of so much criticism. For instance, I am still displeased that he would not follow through with replacing the Federal prosecutors as has been the political tradition. Not only does this leave the Left in strong command of the law enforcement process (think Scooter Libby), but it makes it that much harder for the next Republican, presuming there will be another along some day, to replace these political appointees with their own. The precedence is broken here, and inevitably the questions will be raised why we can't all follow the example set by George (won't that be a laugh to hear the media holding George's administration and its attempt to bring a New Tone to Washington as an example for future Republican administrations to follow? The poor man couldn't breathe without them screeching like alley cats spoiling for a fight!)
"Bipartisan" simply means one side caved. Peace means that the opposition has been crushed. Putting peace and pacifism as a top priority goal insures that we will all be ruled by thugs and criminals. And so, I am pleased that George has not been bipartisan, has not sought to lay down and call for Peace. At the top of my list of things to thank George for, it would be that he was willing to pursue the militant Muslim terrorists. The evidence of his effectiveness is in the lack of further attacks on Americans, the minimal casualty rate among our soldiers, and the low cost of this war as a percentage of GDP. Despite what the opposition wants to keep saying, this war has cost us much less out of our economy than previous conflicts.
But then there is the matter of the Border Patrol agents. I don't think that George ended up doing the right thing. Everyone (even the Messiah) seems to think that these two men need to be pardoned, and in fact, should never have been prosecuted. I seem to recall that Obama promised to pardon these two -- but then he promised everything to everybody so it's hard to say. But George wasn't going to allow that to happen. George didn't pardon them. He didn't expunge the record. He agreed to let them out, but only as far into the future as the law would allow and without any exoneration for their actions. If he hadn't done this, the two would have gotten out sooner and had Presidential pardons, and George would have been thoroughly upstaged in the process. So he did the barest minimum -- to keep the men in prison for as long as he could and to leave as much stain on their lives as possible. I don't understand what is the matter with George on this subject, and clearly I never will.
It was George who gave this current Congress the big idea of giving away the Treasury, and not just all the money that is in the Treasury to date, but to loot the future generations. It was George who showed the way for this current monstrous Government intrusion / expansion. It was wrong when George did it (and it cost many Republicans the election). That the obscenity is many multiples bigger now is just worse, and it's still wrong. Perhaps History will remember him kindly, perhaps we will look back and say he wasn't as bad as the administrations that followed. Only time will tell.