One of the lasting legacies of George W. Bush will be that an entire generation of Americans will live out their lives with a mental archive full of moments where we stared in mortified disbelief that a man so manifestly stupid and shallow can somehow be elected President of the United States.
Filtering out the real atrocities like unjustified invasion, torture, domestic spying and the other really heavyweight sins, we all still have a bushel of unwanted memories where something Der Fratboy has done or said gave us that same sinking, cold paralysis one typically associates with things like having your toddler blurt out the nasty name you call your boss at home, or the grim discovery that you left tit has been hanging out the whole time you were talking.
Today, I added another such Presidentially-inspired embarrassment to my archive.
Froomkin directs our attention to a snippet this Reuters piece
The president set a brutal pace for his accompanying riders, who included two Secret Service agents, White House spokesman Tony Snow and this reporter, who managed to gasp his way through the 12 1/2-mile (20-km) ride.
"What I would give to be 16 again!" Bush yelled out at one point as he mashed the pedals of his Trek bicycle through a wooded area.
In fact, Bush does not ride quietly, constantly shouting out in his Texas twang the names of trees and geographic features and yelling at himself to pedal faster.
"Air assault!" he yelled as he started one of two major climbs, up Calichi Hill, which he named for the white limestone rock from which it is formed.
"Air assault?" While the Middle East descends into chaos largely as a consequence of his "if we smash it, God will make it all better" policy towards the region, this prissy little Yuppie retard is crying "air assault!" before peddling his powdered ass up some hill on his bike? Are you fucking kidding me?
Whichever Democrat wins the White House in '08 will surely have many disasters to clean up, but the one consolation will be that whomever it is will look like a fucking genius when compared to the current occupant.