The Toady has No Spots
Another day, another Andrew Roberts op ed insisting that “history will show” Bush to have been the greatest leader of all time. We’ve seen this before from Bush’s favorite historian. But today’s piece of flattery possesses an strange, urgent quality. Roberts reaches for the highest apple on the ingratiation tree:
Films such as Oliver Stone’s W, which portray him as a spitting, oafish frat boy who eats with his mouth open and is rude to servants, will be revealed by the diaries and correspondence of those around him to be absurd travesties, of this charming, interesting, beautifully mannered history buff who, were he not the most powerful man in the world, would be a fine person to have as a pal.
Anybody feeling a bit sick?
Share
Filed under: Uncategorized
You have to admit that he made a fine pal to Roberts. But for the rest of us, a man who can’t drink, can’t speak properly and never admits he’s wrong is far from ideal company. I can’t imagine getting stuck on a canoe with him for an hour or two fishing.
“Anybody feeling a bit sick?”
After the amount Roberts must have drunk to pen that magnum opus of factual dissonance, I bet he’s feeling sicker than a duck on roller-skates right about now.
Shorter Roberts – In the future everyone will love George Bush just like I do, so long as they only use my books to teach history at school and ignore everything else.
Tony,
You forgot, “and make as much money as I do from loving him.”
It takes a long time to have historical perspective. Things look different in 10-20 yrs then they do today.
Once I got my sense of literal mindedness past the idea of someone being able to eat without opening their mouth at some point–the qualities that might make a great pal are completely different from those that make a person qualified to be POTUS.
So what if he’s a charming history buff? The invasion of Iraq all by itself proves he never actually learned anything from all that history he read–because if he had learned from it, he would have known enough to not do it.
I know it can seem obsessive to keep focusing on how bad Bush has been but boy, the guy just keeps coming and coming. Richard Clarke details how his anti-terrorist efforts and warnings were just absolutely gutted by Bush and Rice when they came into office, and yet here comes Bush in his farewell address today lecturing us—*us*!—that “we must never let down our guard”!
Just few shows ago John Stewart aired a clip of Bush speaking just a week or so before Israel went into Gaza and bragging about how his great roadmap had laid the groundwork of trust between the parties. And as Stewart then said “Doesn’t this guy understand *anything*?”
Even worse than Roberts’ statements I just found that farewell address nauseating. I forgot who said it about whom, but isn’t there a great quote somewhere of someone telling this or that utter disaster of a leader something along the lines of “Go, just go, and for God’s sake have the decency to not insult our intelligence by trying to explain or defend yourself. Just go and begone and make way for those of us who must now live with the wreckage you are leaving in your wake.”
Said about some failed Brit Prime Minister? I don’t recall, and above is just general gist, but boy oh boy does it ever seem to strike the right note to me.
I think his presidency will be an example of America’s decline morally, economically as special interest groups ran the country into the ground. He is a tragic character caught in the spirit of the times and a victim of his own ignorance and blind faith in his decisions.
I believe Tom B might be alluding to the 1940 condemnation (quoted in Sir Harold Nicolson’s diaries) of Neville Chamberlain, uttered in Parliament by former Colonial Secretary Leo Amery: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!” Not that Amery originated those phrases; he was recycling an outburst by Cromwell.
Thank you R J. If that was it I obviously remembered it atrociously, but like I said, the invocation of pure and utter exasperation struck me at least as apt as hell.
The expression slightly modified to include “go quietly” was also used by several British journalists when Tony Blair left office…
Yes, I’m feeling a bit sick – at the misnamed American Conservative’s childish, hysterical and monomanically repetitive spite. Maybe if you actually read what Roberts and some other real conservative historians have to say it would improve your education.