What's the Bush Legacy Worth? I'd Say 20 Years

If you can stomach it, read excerpts from George W. Bush's "interview" with his sister (?) for National Public Radio on his legacy: "I came to Washington with a set of values, and I'm leaving with the same set of values."

Values.  I did a word search in the White House transcript for words like "torture," "financial crisis," and "depression," but came up with naught.

True to form, the born-again President looks to a higher Father: "I have recognized I am a lowly sinner seeking redemption."  How convenient.  We'll never know whether he'll be redeemed, as that's between him and his Creator.

Earthbound punishment for torture is another matter.  According to lawyer Scott Horton - Justice After Bush: Prosecuting An Outlaw Administration - in the current Harpers

18 U.S.C. § 2340 makes it a crime for any “person acting under the color of law” to “inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control.” The penalty for this crime—as Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel carefully noted in a 2003 memo on the subject—is up to twenty years in federal prison.

Twenty years...  That's about as long as it will take for the United States to dig out from the mess he has created.  Two decades of undoing the harm to the nation's working and middle classes.  Twenty long years of hard labor - starting with an Obama Administration - to build up the nation's moral standing in the world, after the blustering buffoons (Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld) squandered the country's ability to lead.

The White House released the transcript on "Black Friday."  How appropriate.  As he prepares to scurry off to Crawford - maybe the only place safe from international arrest warrants - Bush leaves behind a country where Black Friday shoppers literally - and lethally - stampede in the rush to the bottom.  Into a Wal-Mart, to buy what?  Melamine-tainted Chinese-made candy?  Toxic toys?  Quite a Christmas that will make.

Quite a legacy, Mr. Bush.