The Bush legacy appeared to be as catastrophic as it could be. A financial system the envy of the world for its stability, transparency, and efficiency reduced to banana republic volatility through the administration's indifference and lack of oversight. Lurching from banking crisis to banking crisis like Argentina is our fate until a grown-up restores sanity. Recession, rising unemployment, and a household debt and housing meltdown are but some of the concomitants of Bush economics. A federal surplus bequeathed by Clinton, transformed into a multi-trillion budget deficit by Bush financial alchemists.
A two front military quagmire consuming lives and treasure at profligate rates to utterly no purpose. Iraq and Afghanistan, both running sores for whatever foreign conqueror witless enough to take them on, from the Macedonians to the British to the Soviets. Thanks to Bush we're now "it". There are no good potential outcomes and myriad possibilities for conditions on the ground far worse than they are now. In addition to achieving no good from these military adventures, the material weakening of our armed forces, leaving us unable to properly cope with the next crisis.
A judicial system that set the standard for fairness and impartiality, irreparably tarnished by Bush corruption. U.S. attorneys fired for partisan reasons replaced by party hacks, then deployed to prosecute political opponents on false charges for political gain. A Supreme Court already sullied by the partisan mediocrities appointed by Nixon, Bush I, and Reagan, now broken by the appointment of additional mindless servants of Republican party interests.
A make-believe "war on terror" that like earlier outbreaks of unreasoning panic and paranoia in our history is the administration's excuse to repeal fundamental rights. Mass wiretapping, the establishment of an international gulag of prison camps for illegally detained innocents, even torture, as though the Bush minions were taking their orders from the ghost of Stalin. The consequent tarnishing of the nation's good name, perhaps permanently, in the eyes of our friends around the world. The deserved scorn and reciprocal contempt for the rule of law among our enemies.
The deliberate sabotage of every governmental agency designed to serve the public, from FEMA to OSHA to EPA to HUD and beyond, by gutting budgets, employing incompetents, and calculated malfeasance. The resulting perfect dysfunction of government on every occasion when it is called on to perform for those whom it is supposed to serve.
The further breakdown of bedrock public goods such as education, transportation, and health through a carefully contrived combination of willful destruction and malign neglect. Reducing public discourse to the level of imbecility through relentless propagandizing of shameless transparency. The loss of any shreds of trust in government through ceaseless lying and distortion.
Incredibly, that's not all. With the Russian invasion of former Soviet satellite Georgia, militarized and encouraged in military and diplomatic recklessness and folly directly by Bush, the administration is well on the way to losing the cold war we'd already won. Funded by soaring oil prices caused in no small measure by Bush foreign and economic policy, a resurgent Russia appears on the way to rolling back the freedom won by its former vassals. Just in time to pick up the slack from the waning though never believable war on terror, Mr. Bush is ushering in Cold War II. The only surprise is his doing so in August, a month his advisers always maintained is not the time for new product introductions. But perhaps that's simply a measure of how far events have spun out of the control of Bush's band of the criminally insane.
A dinner neighbor the other day postulated that the president is actually a weapon, deposited here by UFO and deployed against us by a hostile alien civilization. Given the destruction he's wrought, and that under our very noses, this might be the most plausible explanation for the legacy of George W. Bush.