Even the L-dotters will have trouble calling Bush a genius for this one

Here is a fuller excerpt (I’ve only give bits of it before) of President Bush’s statement at a news conference after the Hamas election:

QUESTION: Mr. President, is Mideast peacemaking dead with Hamas’ big election victory? And do you rule out dealing with the Palestinians if Hamas is the majority party?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Peace is never dead, because people want peace. I believe—and that’s why I articulated a two-state solution early in my administration so that—as a vision for people to work toward, a—a solution that recognized that democracy yields peace and the best hope for peace in the Middle East is two democracies living side by side.

So the Palestinians had an election yesterday. And the results of which remind me about the power of democracy.

You see, when you give people the vote, you give people a chance to express themselves at the polls, they—and if they’re unhappy with the status quo, they’ll let you know. That’s the great thing about democracy. It provides a look into society.

And yesterday, the turnout was significant, as I understand it. And there was a peaceful process as people went to the polls. And that’s positive. But what was also positive is that it’s a wakeup call to the leadership.

Obviously, people were not happy with the status quo. The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find health care. And so the elections should open the eyes of the old guard there in the Palestinian territories.

I like the competition of ideas. I like people that have to go out and say, “Vote for me and here’s what I’m going to do.” There’s something healthy about a system that does that.

Based on the above, I propose that Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution be amended to read as follows:

“The President … shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors; or for being an irredeemable half-wit.”

A reader congratulated me for proposing the impeachment of President Bush. I informed him that I was not doing so, but was making a joke by way of making a serious point about Bush’s performance in office. As I write this, there is on C-SPAN a meeting of leftist Democrats who are actually talking about impeaching Bush as their goal, spinning off one indictment of his “war crimes” after another. They are off the planet. The right approach to Bush for conservatives is to do on several key issues, such as his dhimmi stance toward Muslims and his promotion of open borders, the same thing we did regarding the Harriet Miers nomination: to rise up in righteous outrage and force him to change his course. The conservatives’ revolt against the Miers nomination showed the true power of the conservative movement and of the American people, but, tragically, it was the only time they have shown it in the last five years.

The reader I mentioned writes back:

I was making a joke too. But in the second part, I was serious about impeaching him over the border issue. His outright REFUSAL to enforce immigration laws is tantamount to treason.

My reply:

If one is being ironic or making a joke in e-mail, one must in some way indicate that it’s a joke, with an emoticon or whatever. This is a well known problem with e-mail.

Your second point is a serious point. I retract my dismissal of impeachment. I do think a reasonable case could be made for that. His chief responsibility is to to defend the country and he is blatantly disregarding it.

An Indian living in the West writes:

“The President … shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors; or for being an irredeemable half-wit.”

That was hilarious.

Why can’t America produce great Presidents any more? Reagan was a decent president (though not a great President) and he towers above these Lilliputians like a giant.

Since Eisenhower (about whom many have misgivings), the US has had:

1. Kennedy (a nothing glamorised by the media for his good looks and his ability to charm Hollywood actresses)

2. Johnson (a liar, a crook and a man who introduced some of the worst changes in American society by massively increasing the welfare state)

3. Nixon (a very bright and intelligent man but unfortunately a man with dubious ethical standards)

4. Carter (need I say more)

5. Reagan (see above)

6. George H W Bush (a bright man but ultimately ineffectual)

7. Clinton (probably one of the three worst Presidents in history – a letch, a liar and a crook who would sell his country in the blink of an eyeball if he had the chance)

8. George W Bush

Compared to this, America had some of these names in its list of Presidents in its first fifty years:

1. George Washington

2. Thomas Jefferson

3. John Adams

4. James Madison

So why has the quality of American presidents continued to slide towards such mediocrity? America has several times as many people as it had at the time of independence. So the pool of men to choose from is greater than it ever was. But the quality only seems to get worse by the day!

This is an old phenomenon. Athens in the fifth century B.C. had a citizen population of (if memory serves) around 100,000. It produced Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Pericles, Herodotus, Thucydides, Socrates, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plato, and many other greats; I don’t know the names offhand of the sculptors, but they created the most sensitive sculptures of the human form that have ever existed, and that today, 2,500 years late, can still move and affect us like nothing else in the world. What made it possible? While there are many factors, material and spiritual, but two things stand out in my mind: a belief in truth, and a kind of collective aspiring for a higher ideal. I was just reading in a book on Renaissance painting that the Florentines of the 15th century did not want merely to study or imitate the Greeks, but to create achievements that would equal theirs, and they did. I think other factors are ethnocultural homogeneity and a decent standard of living without great wealth and comforts and without great poverty. On a material personal level, the Athenians lived modestly, even during their imperial age. Their wealth went for their public buildings, like the Parthenon.

On another point, I think it’s going way too far to call John F. Kennedy a nothing. I don’t think he should have been president, but he was nevertheless a man of extraordinary talents.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 05, 2006 12:57 AM | Send