Farewell to All That — Bob Herbert Joins In

An awful lot has been said and written lately about the failed Bush Presidency and about his upcoming good riddance and good comeuppance.

I have tried my hand at it.

But today, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert truly says it all and says it best in his “Add Up the Damage.”

Of course, Bush defenders, if there are any left out there, will bristle because Herbert doesn’t mince his words—because he tells it like it is, and like it has been for the past eight miserable years.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the Bush mindset was his crude joking about the U.S. not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while our troops were dying and getting maimed there because of such false claims:

A year into the war Mr. Bush was cracking jokes about it at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association. He displayed a series of photos that showed him searching the Oval Office, peering behind curtains and looking under the furniture. A mock caption had Mr. Bush saying: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.”

And Herbert concludes:

[Bush] told ABC’s Charlie Gibson: “I don’t spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history. I guess I don’t worry about long-term history, either, since I’m not going to be around to read it.”

The president chuckled, thinking — as he did when he made his jokes about the missing weapons of mass destruction — that there was something funny going on.

At the beginning of his column, Herbert enjoins Americans:

When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don’t think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry — a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches — over the damage he’s done to this country.

I would only note that such a polite “loud, collective angry howl” should be followed by an equally polite “loud, collective cheer” by four million people gathered for the inauguration of our 44th President at the Washington Mall.

A polite, neat, eco-friendly, legal, symbolic mountain of shoes in front of the White House during “move-out day” might also be appropriate.