Dept of Valedictions: Bloggers on Bush on Bush

As DaveNoon says,  "I suppose everyone has a punch-the-wall-with-your-face moment in this interview."    The transcript is here.

The Rude Pundit nailed perfectly its most remarkable aspect.

What's fascinating about the interview, other than the usual parade of Carroll-esque non sequiturs, obvious statements spoken as if they're great revelations, and general rambling bullshittery, is how often Bush comes to the brink of admitting actual, conscious sin and error before veering away. If he was in a confession booth with a good old-fashioned Irish priest, that bad-ass motherfucker of the cloth would be throttling Bush through the lattice, screaming, "Say it, you bastard, say it."

For instance, Gibson asks Bush if the election was a "repudiation of the Bush administration." El Prez answers, "I think it was a repudiation of Republicans. And I'm sure some people voted for Barack Obama because of me." Oh, so fuckin' close to confession, but then he follows up with "I think most people voted for Barack Obama because they decided they wanted him to be in their living room for the next four years explaining policy" and then, just to make sure that stupid people understood him, he adds, "In other words, they made a conscious choice to put him in as President." Damn, nice to know that it was sentient beings who were in the voting booths of America.

The interview continued like that, with Bush stating some disappointing thing that happened on his watch without recognizing his role in any of it.... Shit has happened during his presidency, he's willing to admit. What a man....

The Rude Pundit's favorite head-slapping moment happened just after that last statement. Gibson asks if the intelligence was right, would the Iraq war have happened, and Bush at first interprets the question in his favor, speculating about Saddam Hussein, "[I]f he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely."

Then Gibson clarifies, asking if the intelligence was right about the actual facts, not Bush's beliefs, to which Bush says, "You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate." So after speculating, he refuses to speculate. Goddamn, it takes a confidently dumb person to do that without caring or correcting himself.

Crooks and Liars:

As always with Bush, the Buck Stops Over There, Or There -- Anywhere But Here.

On the question of what the interview shows about Bush's character, we thought Roy Edroso's remarks had the ring of truth:

Now here he is on ABC, wanly wishing the intelligence on WMDs "had been different, I guess," and calling Iraq "a do-over that I can't do," regretting his inability to guide his own party on immigration, regretting also that "the tone in Washington got worse" -- something that, despite the bipartisan advertisement of his Texas tenure, he never, ever attempted in any way to fix -- and weakly defending his Administration's attempts to "safeguard" a financial system that is plummeting toward collapse.

Why does he bother? Because it's done, and he's used to doing the done thing. Here too is a ritual that he knows he can execute. I've never heard of a CEO who really thought he screwed things up -- there are always exigencies, market conditions, and such like that made a mess of a helluva good plan. But I've seldom seen a CEO make a stink at the end of his tenure, either, however ignoble. With his fatalistic l'envoi, Bush is showing what, in his world, is class. He could tell us all what a shit deal he got dealt, but two-term Presidents don't kick. So he just reads the toplines and brasses it out.

He knows we're disappointed, and it's not that he wouldn't have preferred us to be proud but hey, he's not running for anything anymore except the exit. He never needed us to understand, he just needed us to cooperate, and if he has any fondness for the people he led for eight years, it's because we did cooperate, right up until it didn't matter.

The Rude Pundit waxes poetic.

He talks endlessly about history's judgment while saying he doesn't care. He wants redemption, but the price of such grace is to admit you've sinned, and when you see these interviews with the man, all you can think is that you've never seen damnation so clearly in someone's lost eyes.

Was that what it was, though?  The RP may see Bush like that, but we didn't get the impression that Bush does we think he'll say as Blair did---though in fake Texan---"Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right."  And the really sad, horrifying part is that he'll mean it.

Memeorandum has MORE!

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