Saint Superman Surveys Just a Part of the Vast Field of Wreckage

George W. Bush: God’s gift to Barack Obama and American Liberals. We will be paying for his catastrophic administration for a very long time. Yes, there is an absurd messianic hope in the incoming President. But in addition there is a huge national sigh of relief akin to the feeling one has after a blinding headache goes away.

So: thanks, Mr. Bush for Roberts and Alito (who seem to have been picked, as Harriet Miers was picked, first because you found them useful to your unitary executive theories, not because you were all that interested in doing something about abortion). I hope that one day they will have the chance to prove prolifers were right to hope in them, though we still don’t really know. Thanks for (sort of) doing something about stem cell research. Thanks for keeping American policy on abortion at sub-Carthaginian levels (albeit doing nothing about numbers of abortions that would have extinguished Carthage in half a year). Thanks for trying to do something to save Terri Schiavo.

No thanks for a disastrous war of choice that failed the test of Just War teaching at multiple levels and transformed Iraq into a charnel house and America into a state in which the President could order the torture of anybody he pleased. No thanks for ineffectually presiding over the destruction of huge portions of the American economy and fading into the woodwork while underlings tried to handle it. No thanks for making clear that the main thing we had trusted you on–domestic security–was entrusted into the hands of a crony whose expertise was in horse racing when Katrina hit. No thanks on never seeing a spending bill you didn’t love. No thanks for becoming the face of American conservative Christianity. No thanks for replying “So what?” when it was pointed out that Al-Quaeda was not in Iraq till we chose to go to war there. No thanks for wrecking, more effectively than any Dem could have dreamed of, the work of conservatives–especially social conservatives–probably for the next generation. And no thanks for having no regrets, no second thoughts, and an abundant reserve of Generation Narcissus good feelings about yourself as you go. It’s been a disaster and the buck stopped with you. Obama is president because this year, two men ran against you and Obama ran a far more effective campaign against you than McCain could.

Now the question is: how quickly will the perfectly justifiable revolt against Bush founder upon the truth of Chesterton’s observation that revolutionaries know far better what is wrong, than what is right? I fear an administration this sodden with hubris at the outset will not have long to wait. But, of course, as we discovered with the last Administration, it is we who will experience the effects of the hubris. The Best and the Brightest will retain serene confidence that they know what is best for us. The only thing I have more of than regret for voting for Bush twice is dread for what lies ahead under Obama.

But still, Happy Inauguration Day. This equivalent of Easter Mass in the American civil religion is due the honor we should pay Caesar and I’ll not begrudge people their revels. It’s much to be preferred to palace coups, assassinations, civil wars, and the various other painful methods fallen man has devised to govern himself elsewhere.