Once in a while I stumble across a piece in that old-school medium we call a newspaper, and it impresses me. This hasn't happened in a long, repeat LONG, time. So I feel compelled to share the salient pieces of the article: The Ghost Following Bush.
Being a History buff, this is the type of "mythology" I want nailed to the Legacy of George W, to defeat the spin his supporters will trot out after his dismal terms come to an end.
On an Autumn night 300 years ago, Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell, hero of the British Navy, was approached on his quarterdeck by a sailor with a warning. According to the sailor's calculations, the fleet was headed straight for disaster. But Sir Clowdisley was a bold leader unburdened by doubt. He was dead certain he was headed in the right direction.
"Such subversive navigation by an inferior was forbidden in the Royal Navy," according to Dava Sobel in her brilliant book "Longitude," and so "Admiral Shovell had the man hanged for mutiny on the spot."
The 57-year-old Sir Clowdisley stayed the course, oblivious in his ignorance and upright in his optimism, until, one by one, his ships wrecked in the Scilly Isles with great loss of life, including his own.
Here's the money quote from the article:
Sir Clowdisley kept coming to mind as I was reading Robert Draper's "Dead Certain, the presidency of George W. Bush." Dissenters were not hanged in the Bush White House, but their exclusion from the quarterdeck was the bureaucratic equivalent of the long drop. At least Admiral Shovell had a man in uniform willing to bring him bad news.
I don't know about you, bt I am picking up Drapers book today!
I love this next bit:
"I made the decision to lead," Bush told Draper. "And therefore there'll be times when you make those decisions; one, it makes you unpopular; two, it makes people accuse you of unilateral arrogance. And that may be true. But the fundamental question is: Is the world better off as a result of your leadership?"
The article does a masterful job at pre-empting the claims that will come from this administration and the Republican party, long after this disastrous footnote in history has passed.
Read it Here
then pass it along to your Republican friends. It doesn't use too many big words.
I leave you with the closing shot:
Bush looks to the ghosts of Churchill, and Harry Truman too, as heroes who were at one time considered failures, upon whom history now smiles. But, sadly, it's too late. It is the ghost of Sir Clowdisley that crowds the Oval Office.
We need more media like this.