One thing you can give the Bush administration credit for is stubbornness. It appears to me they are going to go down, spewing their misguided policies right to the last day. They’ll probably be executive ordering things that will make our heads spin as President Elect Obama is being sworn in. I found the pundit’s perspectives today of Obama’s reported discussions with President Bush as he “toured” the White House quite interesting. It was reported that Obama made a plea with Bush to use some of the “Bailout” money to prop up the US auto industry. Supposedly, Bush agreed to do this provided Obama drop his opposition to the Columbia Free Trade fiasco. This is beyond the pale to me! Is Bush really amenable to having the collapse of General Motors and maybe Ford Motor Company as the next part of his legacy. Let’s do a little inspecting as to what that would look like.

First, there’s the slight legal problem that Bush is potentially looking at. I think his “negotiating” would be more in his interest, both short term and long term, to try to convince Obama that all of the laws he broke were broken in a patriotic spirit. Not that Obama necessarily has the last say. Take for example if Obama was smart enough to nominate Patrick Fitzgerald to be attorney general. This is the guy who prosecuted “Scooter” Libby and appeared to be close to going after Cheney and Rove in the CIA leak scandal. I have a feeling that someone like Fitzgerald has enough respect for the “rule of law” that many of the Bush cronies would be walking on egg-shells while awaiting his decisions on who to prosecute for what crimes. And then there’s the congress with a solid majority – hopefully willing to enforce the supeonas that have been refused during the last two years of Bush’s administration. This could be a real problem for W, Cheney, Gonzales, Rove, Rumsfeld, and others. I personally have written to Obama pleading with him to restore the credibility to our legal system by investigating the Bush administration and letting the evidence determine the outcome of the investigations.

This does not even bring into account the possibility of foreign governments demanding accountability for the known torturing of “enemy combatants” by this seemingly unconscientable group of politicians. There is undeniable evidence that the order for torturing, clearly violating the Geneva conventions – set up by us, came directly from Bush’s White House. OK, so you have the legal problems that are likely to stain the legacy. Then there is the war in Iraq. I suppose you could lump this problem in with the legal problems, based on all the lies, forged documents, and incompetent decisions, but I believe ultimately it will go down as the biggest blunder of any president in US history – virually bankrupting our military and our economy in one felled swoop. For a group of greedy oil executives who never faced the reality of war first hand – Bush and Cheney and the others tried to act so tough on this one. How they sleep at night is beyond me – but Bush’s legacy takes a big hit here that nothing he could say to Obama would fix. The irony of it all is that before Bush leaves office the Iraqi government appears to be on the verge of forcing Bush to accept the same timeline Obama has been proposing for at least two years “regardless of conditions on the ground.” Another irony is that the oil profits will likely fall into the hands of the very countries Bush/Cheney were trying to prevent from getting them.

Then there is our economy. A quick look back on history brings up so many parallels to 1929 that it is a bit scary even for those of us who have been predicting the demise of “trickle down” economics for many years. I thought the Clinton plan of paying as you go, along with the prosperity that went with it, had put a fork into this failed philosophy. But unfortunately Clinton’s inability to control his personal behavior gave the republicans just the opening they needed (along with some devious practices at the polls – and a strategically placed brother to their candidate in Florida). I couldn’t believe it when Bush wiped out the 250 billion surplus with a stroke of a pen in his first few months at the helm. Then he prosecuted a war with 100% borrowed money while telling us (US citizens) that the way we could sacrifice was to “keep shopping.” I could never understand why there wasn’t more outrage to that statement, but I’ve come to understand that the consolidation of the media has led to strict control of the so-called liberal media by about five conservative republican controlled corporations. As far as I’m concerned, journalistic reporting is a thing of the past. Our airwaves are controlled by people looking for ratings – on “both sides of the isle.”

The reality for Bush, however, is a place in history (infamy) right along side Herbert Hoover. He gave his Vice President control of the economy and Dick Cheney was quoted as saying “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” He said this while adding insult to injury as the Bush administration compounded their initial tax cuts with an assault on capital gains taxes, inheritance taxes, and dividend income taxes. Of course, for most of us, none of those taxes makes a hill of beans of a difference – but they managed to pull it off by getting millions of Americans to support their ideas through virtual brainwashing from media outlets such as Fox “news” and right wing talk radio. On top of the huge debt incurred during Bush’s “watch” his economic advisors virtually eliminated any oversight on the financial sectors of the economy and their greed is taking us all into the “toilet” so to speak. For example, my voice and people’s voices like me have been essentially meaningless except for the few people who listened to us and refused to take out sub-prime loans and got their own finances in order before the collapse of the economy started to destroy one family’s after another’s financial situation. But we will all suffer for the millions of people who had no one to advise them to avoid these sup-prime loans like the plague – people who listened to the Bush predators who were laughing all the way to what was then “the bank.”.

The final straw for Bush has been the mismanagement of the crisis once it became obvious to everyone that the economy was crumbling (I guess that shouldn’t surprise anyone due to the fact everything else they have done has been mismanaged). Bush’s theory (which he got from Reagan) that the government is the “enemy” has come back to bite him where “the hair is short.” Lack of regulation not only exaserbated the incompetence it has led to an inability to manage the crisis. The decision to let Lehman Brothers go into bankruptcy while bailing out Bear Stearns was a bit puzzling – and the consequence was certainly misjudged completely by Henry Paulsen and Ben Bernanke (it’s interesting to me that Goldman Sachs was “next” along with Morgan Stanley when Paulsen decided the government had to step in – Paulsen of course was Goldman’s CEO prior to becoming Treasury Secretay). This led to the wild bailout where $700 Billion was allocated for who knows what – with the result of that being higher executive compensation among other things – and, of course, it has done nothing to stop the hemoraging of housing prices which is the catalyst for the collapse in the first place.

Even when these guys resort to the largest dose of “socialism” this country has ever seen (The Fed had pumped in over a trillion dollars prior to the “bailout”) they keep giving the money to themselves probably believing their own lies that it will eventually “trickle down” to us everyday folks. I guess the fact that the congress went along with the bailout will give them someone to blame as they try to defend their legacy. But the truth is that Bush has messed up this country to the point that it will be difficult to restore our stature in the world, our economical place in the world, and our economy at home. So when Obama was suggesting Bush support spending some of the “bailout” money to rescue the auto industry – an industry that actually employs millions of hard working “blue collar” Americans he should jump at the chance to do something right for a change. If General Motors goes the way of Lehman Brothers the effects will be exponentially greater. And if the President elect feels that the crisis can’t wait until January 20th, then President Bush would be well advised to listen. It’s hard to imagine Bush’s legacy getting any worse, but the failure of General Motors will make Herbert Hoover look like an economic genius compared to Bush!