When President Bush leaves office he'll start earning a handsome pension. He also gets a big allowance for staff salaries, office space lease, travel, office supplies, and other expenses. The former president will continue to enjoy twenty-four hour Secret Service protection. The all-in cost to taxpayers of maintaining Mr. Bush in retirement? Millions of dollars per year. And here's the thing: Bush doesn't do any work right now, and he's hardly about to start when he retires. Rachel Maddow reported yesterday that the presidential agenda on Wednesday contained exactly zero appointments. Out of office Bush, unlike former President Carter, isn't going to monitor elections around the world or support Habitat for Humanity. Unlike former Presidents Clinton and Bush I he's not going to be a goodwill ambassador, representing the U.S. at the scenes of international disasters. Who'd want the master bungler of Katrina at a disaster site? All he'd do is turn catastrophe into cataclysm.
So all those millions of dollars taxpayers are going to be spending on Bush's retirement will net us precisely nothing in return. Some would argue that, considering he can do us no further harm as a former president, it's actually money very well spent. A good point. But there's still the matter of all those millions. We could send dozens of smart poor kids to college for that money. We could build parks, housing, schools, hospitals. We could, in short, invest that money in many useful ways instead of wasting it on George's future downtime.
Supposing we did. Not that anyone actually cares what happens to Bush in retirement, but it would be inhumane to simply cut him loose. There are a fair number of people not at all well-disposed to him right now. Some are victims of the economic catastrophe he engineered. Others have suffered loss of limbs or loved ones in his two senseless wars. Still others might have been wrongfully imprisoned, tortured, or ruined during his reign of terror. Bush has a lot of enemies, and however justified their animus, it might diminish us as a society to simply throw him to the wolves.
How to maintain Bush in retirement, safely and at minimal cost? Throw him in jail. Permanent residence at a Club Fed would cost mere tens of thousands instead of millions each year. He'd be out of trouble and out of sight, even if the lingering damage from his presidency couldn't quite put him out of mind. Prison would be the perfect place for Bush. Besides which, all these compelling reasons apart, he deserves it.