I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing Americans were going to the polls sooner than Nov. 4, and that the inauguration of the new U.S. president needn't wait until January.
In the meantime, what can be said of the remaining months of the least competent president since James Buchanan (1857-1861)? Bush has four times recently addressed the nation with words of reassurance on the global credit crisis, and each time the Dow has responded with a three-digit plunge. Bush is, as a commentator on the "News Hour With Jim Lehrer" said Friday, "forgotten but not gone." His government is more accurately described as the Paulson-Bernanke Administration.
Sanguine fellow, though, give Bush that. Here's a couple of excerpts from the New York Times' most recent White House Memo:
“[Bush] said that if it was going to happen at all [the global financial meltdown], he was glad it was happening under his presidency, because he had a good group of people in D.C. working for him,” Dru Van Steenberg, one of several small-business owners who met with Mr. Bush in San Antonio earlier this week. The president expressed the same sentiment, others said, during a similar private session in Chantilly, Va., the next day...
At a closed-door fund-raiser in St. Louis last Friday night, Mr. Bush was humorous and relaxed, said John C. Danforth, the former senator from Missouri, who was there. The president sounded a note about “tough times,” in reference to the economy, and “seemed relieved” that his presidency was nearly over, Mr. Danforth said.
Eight years on, and the kindest sobriquet I can summon is "George the Unready."
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