A Delusion of Monumental Proportions
George W. Bush thinks he'll someday join Abe Lincoln on Mt. Rushmore. No need to start blasting granite yet.
 

January 19 2006
Counterbias.com
STEVE HOROWITZ
  

Watching the three-hour profile of Abraham Lincoln on the History Channel the other night, I realized how it is that George Bush can sleep at night.

It's not just a lack of conscience, or that an incurious mind is also an untroubled one.

No, it's worse -- although also funnier -- than that. It's that Bush fancies himself a wartime president, cut from the same cloth as Lincoln.

Of course, if you were Bush, with no justification or moral basis for your actions over a five-year period, you might also look at our most revered president and reassure yourself that he, too, went to war with no official declaration from Congress; that he threw hundreds in jail without charges and with no access to the courts; that he freely squelched dissent as harmful to morale and affording comfort to the enemy; and that he frequently invoked the approval of the Almighty in support of the nation's noble cause.

Of course, the judgment of history overlooks Lincoln's transgressions, as he saved the union and ended slavery. History will look back on George Bush as a justifiably insecure man who went to war to aggrandize himself, feel more confident in his masculinity, and provide cover for a sinister, anti-democratic and unilateralist agenda.

With Lincoln's birthday coming next month, the contrasts between our 16th president and the 43rd become painfully stark.

Lincoln was a skilled debater and a thoughtful, eloquent speaker; Bush can barely string single-syllable words into a coherent sentence. He has his finger on the nuclear button, but can't pronounce it.

Lincoln spent four tortured years agonizing over the deaths of the men he sent into battle; Bush has spent almost three years trying to hide the torture he authorized, while cheerfully touring the country on purely political missions, promoting domestic spying and his war, and throwing himself an obscenely lavish wartime inaugural bash.

Doris Kearns Goodwin recently devoted an entire book ("Team of Rivals") to the fact that Lincoln was confident enough in his intellect and beliefs to staff his Cabinet with men who had opposed his election; Bush makes sure to appoint only yes-men, from whom he can be sure of hearing nary a discouraging word. (Remember the big deal the White House made when he summoned current and former cabinet secretaries for their opinions on Iraq? The meeting lasted all of 45 minutes.)

As one historian said during the History Channel program on Lincoln, "Mediocre presidents hide from bad news. Great ones reach out for it."

Leaving us only to hope that George Bush will someday rise to mediocrity.

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For additional painful comparisons between a beloved leader and a belligerent liar, go to Steve's blog.