I suppose I'll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one.
Given Kristol's feckless war-baiting and insouciant cheerleading, I suppose it's too bad that the "ridicule" he's "[exposing]" himself to is merely "harmless". Seriously, at what other putatively private-sector job can someone be so hugely, consistently wrong, and still continue with gainful employment, still be welcomed on Serious Discussion Shows as a Serious Thinker? What, precisely, does it take for responsible observers to simply take the Mister Microphone away from Young Billy? Karaoke Hour was mildly fun; Karaoke Decade, not so much.
Let's step back from the unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds that have characterized the Bush administration. Let's look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see? First, no second terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- not something we could have taken for granted. Second, a strong economy -- also something that wasn't inevitable.
Well, there was that spate of anthrax attacks post-9/11, for which one scientist was scapegoated before the feebs finally realized that they didn't (and still don't) know. But it's disingenuous for Billy to stake his claim here. First is the rather obvious issue of trying to affirm a negative, by assuming that administration policy is entirely (or even largely) responsible for the absence of additional attacks on the scale of 9/11. I have a stapler on my desk. I have not encountered any elephants. Do I automatically conclude that my stapler is some sort of magical elephant repellent?
As for the economy, strength is obviously a relative metric. Wages are stagnant, though, while prices never are. The vaunted "ownership society" is getting a rude awakening as subprime loans, bundled into equally risky derivatives and hedge funds, are taking a huge dump. It's nice to point at raw GDP numbers (which have been slowing doen anyway), but if these numbers do not redound with sufficient diffusion, then all it means is that some coked-up Wall Street putz is padding his net worth by diddling percentage points based on some regression analysis, while Joe Six-Pack continues to slave away to try to keep up with his mortgage. There is a real house-of-cards whiff to the disconnect between stock market triumphalism and how (or if) the created wealth gets appreciably dispersed.
Look, you don't have to take Kristol's word for it, or mine for that matter. Look in your pocket. Is there more money there? If there is, then it's a stronger economy for you, and if more people can say the same thing in the aggregate, then it's a strong economy overall. But that does not seem to be the case.
It doesn't matter. People like Kristol are not operating in good faith, or from a standpoint of intellectual honesty in the first place. They are cheap shills, renting themselves out to certain breeds of lowlife, people whose operating principle is "Who gives a shit?". Certainly such a philosophy makes it easier for them to accept the consequences of their poor judgment, because they never have to live with those consequences.
Perhpas most offensive is the way these shills continuously use 9/11 as an excuse for all the wrong the Bushies have done. That's nonsense; we knew how they were well before 9/11. It just made it easier for them to rape and pillage the government, salt the earth with their grifter cronies and DoJ flunkies, and consolidate power.
I don't worry too much about the consolidation of power under the unitary executive -- I have absolutely no doubt that Young Billy and the rest of the Cheney Unbound hacks will do a complete about-face on the subject the day after the '08 elections, if they can't squeak out a steal.
One charge that gets consistently leveled at "liberals" by "conservatives" is that of smug arrogance. But I can think of few things more smug or more arrogant than people who have been so consistently and catastrophically wrong about everything, not only having the balls to show their faces in public, but actually having the goddamned nerve to continue to offer their opinions as if they had any credibility left outside the asylum.
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