A sad and teensy flower bloomed this morning in America's op-ed pages that wanted nothing to do with the riotous bouquet celebrating the Obama win, nor with the dour garden of regret for John McCain and the Future Of The Republican Party. And on that lonely little flower was written an editorial by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, who wants you to know that there's one person who has been terribly mistreated since 2004: George W. Bush. FOR SHAME AMERICA. Drag your bloated corpses out of the New Orleans floodwaters and apologize!
Here's Shapiro's opening paragraph:
Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.
I know! Such classless disrespect for the man whose brilliant plan of combining post-9/11 shopping sprees with wars against countries that didn't attack us has yielded precisely the sort of atmosphere of overall appeasement for which our enemies could have only hoped. Why could we not have been been respectful in our classlessness, or more classy in our disrespect.
And remember! Bush really, really, really, really, really wanted to work with Democrats!
This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, "Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust."
Surely President Bush deserves better from Democrats, after a solid record of providing three whole sentences of lipservice to the cause of bipartisan comity! And look: Bush's approval ratings didn't tank just because Bush did a bunch of things that were largely noticeable failures. They dropped because of a nation of millions, determined to hold him back! Or as Shapiro puts it:
It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.
I KNOW. It's as if the person who's in charge of the country should take responsibility for his actions or something, when really, three hundred million individuals should consider whether they are the ones who are wrong!
Oh, but Shapiro waits until the end to lower the big ol' terrifying boom on all of us.
Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies.
Well. Fingers crossed, anyway!