Lord knows I have my problems with President Bush. He taps the federal
coffers like a monkey smacking the bar for another cocaine pellet in an
addiction study. Some of his sentences give me the same sensation as falling
backward in one of those "trust" exercises, in which you just have to hope
things work out. Yes, the Iraq invasion has gone badly, and to deny this is
to suggest that Bush meant for things to turn out this way, which is even
crueler than saying he failed to get it right.
But you know what? It's time to cut the guy some slack.
Of course, I will get hippo-choking amounts of e-mail from Bush-haters
telling me that all I ever do is cut Bush slack. But these folks grade on
the curve. By their standards, anything short of demanding that a
half-starved badger be sewn into his belly flunks.
Besides, the Bush-bashers have lost credibility. The most delicious example
came this week when it was finally revealed that Colin Powell's oak-necked
majordomo Richard Armitage - and not some star-chamber neocon - "outed"
Valerie Plame, the spousal prop of Washington's biggest ham, Joe Wilson. Now
it turns out that instead of "Bush blows CIA agent's cover to silence a
brave dissenter" - as Wilson practices saying into the mirror every morning
- the story is, "One Bush enemy inadvertently taken out by another's
friendly fire."
And then there's Hurricane Katrina. Yes, the federal government could have
responded better. And of course there were real tragedies involved in that
disaster. But you know what? Bad stuff happens during disasters, which is
why we don't call them tickle-parties.
The anti-Bush chorus, including enormous segments of the mainstream media,
sees Katrina as nothing more than a good stick for beating on Piñata Bush's
"competence." The hypocrisy is astounding because the media did such an
abysmal job covering the reality of New Orleans (contrary to reports, there
were no bands of rapists, no disproportionate deaths of poor blacks, nothing
close to 10,000 dead, etc.). It seems indisputable that Katrina highlighted
the tragedy of New Orleans rather than create it. Long before Katrina, New
Orleans was a dysfunctional city in a state with famously corrupt and
incompetent leadership, many of whose residents think that it is the job of
the federal government to make everyone whole.