What I'm Reading: a Time essay about a failed presidency

While on my recent trip to Florida, I alternated between reading Time Magazine and Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope. I was underlining things like crazy in Hope, and will have plenty of thoughts to share on that, but I thought I'd write today about a Joe Klein essay in the Dec. 8 issue of Time. The subtitle says "Bush's disappearing act during the economic crisis is a fitting coda to a failed presidency." I love this line: "At the end of a presidency of stupefying ineptitude, he has become the lamest of all possible ducks." Late in the article: "This is a presidency that has wobbled between those two poles -- overweening arrogance and paralytic incompetence."

So what do you think Joe Klein really thinks?!!

I was just trying to think of what it is about George W. Bush's presidency that I dislike the most, and I think it is the reckless, thoughtless squandering. The squandering of good will towards America that the world was ready to offer in the aftermath of 9/11 due to our arrogance and ignorance towards the cultures we invaded, the squandering of America's financial resources that took us from a budget surplus to the deep hole of deficit, the squandering of our military's strength by overextending our reach, the squandering of American lives in a war we didn't need to have.

I see that Bush is in the headlines today, as he has been forced to react to the automobile industry crisis. It would be great if he could end his presidency with something positive. And then I can't wait for him to go away.