the Bush legacy: the big-ass hole on Church St.

I would like to assert, for the record, that everyone will expect the incoming president to start protecting us Tuesday afternoon. If terrorists engage in a major attack on American soil 9 months from now, the Republican party and the nation's media will have no compunction about placing the blame for it squarely at the feet of President Obama. This will be especially true if it becomes clear that President Obama was warned beforehand by such things as a National Security Memo titled "Bin Laden determined to strike within U.S." and sidelined his Terrorism Czar to shut up his constant yapping about the gathering threat.

To this day, I still find it maddening that even liberals in the papers and on TV persist in giving Bush a pass on what is without a doubt his single most egregious failure as President, and one of two moments at which his neglect led to the deaths of hundreds (or thousands) of Americans. Quite the contrary: he was able to ride that failure to 80+% approval ratings in 2002 and 2003. It was the defining event of his first term (perhaps of his entire presidency) and the root cause of his re-election. It was the justification for Afghanistan and Iraq, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, for warrantless wiretapping, the War on Terror, and the USA PATRIOT Act. It was the pretense for his entire foreign policy, and to my knowledge he had no domestic policy aside from tax cuts.

I still have yet to see any evidence refuting the biggest political blasphemy of the 2000's: that 9/11 was George W. Bush's fault. The only thing I see refuting it is the almighty narrative that Republicans Are Better On National Security Than Democrats. It is one of many reasons why our grandkids are going to cackle at our unending stupidity when they read about the turn of the 21st century.