An Obituary For The Bush Years

J. Kingston Pierce, guest blogging over at The Reaction, has a post up today you really have to read all of - Bush Age: The Meltdown.

So much for Rove and Bush's dreams of a "permanent Republican majority" in the United States. Thanks to a combination of arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence on the part of the prez and his partisan minions (add "malfeasance" to that list, and you can drag Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, and Randy "Duke" Cunningham under the big tent), GOPers have gone from being masters of the universe to being scorned failures, the butts of jokes. Conservative voters, disappointed by the administration's rampant overspending and increases in the size and scope of government, aren't motivated to storm the polling booths in November. However, Democrats -- shut out by Dubya and Company over the last five-plus years -- certainly are. "If Republicans manage to hold on to their majorities," opines John Dickerson at Slate, "it will be because they have perfected the ability to use gerrymandering, pork-barreling, and other toll-keeping powers to maintain themselves in office, much like the Democrats they turned out of office in 1994".

It is a comprehensive obituary for the Bush presidency but I'm not so certain of the writer's seeming confidence that what is to come will be better. I will have more confidence of that when I have seen or heard some of the foremost political leaders - from either party - promise to rollback the dangerous and undemocratic precedents of powerhoarding set by The President-As-Monarch should their party gain the White House in '08.