No Retreat, No Humility

President Bush clearly plans to go down swinging. Even though he’s getting bludgeoned on multiple fronts, he won’t back down. His party’s house is on fire, but he and many of his true believers refuse to leave.

And even though Alberto Gonzales fired US Attorneys for purely political purposes, lied to at least one Senator about the process, attempted to lie to the media about the rationale and changed his story multiple times, Bush refuses to get rid of him or even chastise him.

Speaking to the press, Bush attacked the critics of Gonzales, saying cynically that “there’s a lot of politics in this town.” But Bush is apparently blind to the total politicization of many branches of government by his own team. A strong argument can be made that no presidency has been more politically divisive nor injected politics where it has never been tolerated before than the Bush Administration.

Another flagrant example of Bush’s hypocrisy came during his press conference today attacking the bill recently passed by the House restricting spending in Iraq and setting a timetable for withdrawal. Bush promised a veto and pointed out that it was passed by a narrow margin, implying that the House has only a shaky mandate for change. But Bush was elected by the slimmest margin in history and conducted himself as if his mandate came from a landslide.

(He and GOP pundits don’t want congress to influence war strategy, but they fail to understand that the public would rather congress micro-manage the war than Bush continue to mismanage the war.)

Going further, Bush ridiculed the House bill for containing “too much pork.” But every single spending bill he signed while Congress was under Republican control contained vast and unprecedented pork. He never once complained.

This type of grotesque, deceitful hubris was also displayed recently on the Daily Show, where UN Ambassador John Bolton made an appearance. His attitude toward host Jon Stewart could best be summarized as, “I know more than you do about every subject under the sun, so shut up and let me explain things.” His arrogance was repulsive, and consistent with the attitude of the Bush administration. And his comments demonstrated shocking ignorance, especially concerning historical facts about the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln.

Take as another example disgraced and indicted ex-Congressman Tom DeLay, who appeared recently on Meet The Press. Neither cowed nor contrite, his new book is entitled “No Retreat, No Surrender.” Like Bush, DeLay is constitutionally incapable of taking responsibility for, or even acknowledging, mistakes or blunders. Listening to him, the President and GOP have done absolutely nothing wrong in the past six years and the 2006 elections were just an aberration.

Such astonishing hubris, lack of insight and absence of humility are the fatal flaws that guarantee the demise of the failed neo-conservative experiment. And even though that demise is well under way, people like Bush, Cheney, Bolton, DeLay and their myopic faithful are incapable of grasping the fact. They plan to go down swinging. And go down they will. In 2008, the GOP will suffer a TKO. Not only will the next president be a liberal, but the Senate may garner a veto-proof sixty or more Democrats when the dust finally settles.

Until then, Bush and his arrogant, incompetent Administration will apparently continue to obstruct justice, thwart the Constitution, lie to the public, mismanage the war and rage against agents of change elected by the public. What a sad disgrace.

- JT Compton