Have you noticed? As the Bush administration draws to a close, officials and individuals involved in the last terrible eight years have been throwing up a hilarious, terrible smokescreen. They're pretending to be arguing for remembering the Bush years as something other than a catastrophe.
Condi Rice's volley, that people will "soon thank Bush for what he has done" was the first of the guffaw-inducing arguments.
Then Karl Rove claimed George Bush was a closet intellectual who enjoyed reading histories and biographies. You can take this argument seriously, as Richard Cohen did, and argue that Bush's reading list is indicative of someone who doesn't actually want to learn. That would be beside the point. Or you could laugh at the notion that the "Is our children learning?" President is, in fact, learning himself. That is what they want you to do.
Laura Bush got in on the act as well, pretending that her husband's term was anything but a failure.
Of course it was a failure. That's not the point, and they know it.
Listen closely to Condi's argument:
If you're making historical judgments before an administration is already out -- even out of office, and if you're trying to make historical judgments when the nature of the Middle East is still to be determined, and when one cannot yet judge the effects of decisions that this President has taken on what the Middle East will become -- I mean, for goodness' sakes, good historians are still writing books about George Washington.
This is the argument that they want us to have. They want us to argue about history. They want historical judgments. This is their hilarious, terrible smokescreen. They know that they'll never win an argument about whether or not the Bush administration was a catastrophe. The list of failures is too extensive for me to even start delving into. That's the terrible nature of the smokescreen.
They don't want actual, legal judgments.
They want us to talk about failures because FAILURE IS NOT ILLEGAL. They want us to talk about how historians will view the Bush administration because HISTORIANS CANNOT BRING THESE PEOPLE TO ACTUAL JUSTICE.
Let's put some more funny stuff in the Wall Street Journal about how Bush likes to read. Then everyone will argue whether or not he likes to read, why would they be lying about reading, etc. etc. OH DON'T MIND THIS ILLEGAL MANIPULATION OF INTELLIGENCE TO START THE IRAQ WAR. Forget about the Downing Street Memo. Let's talk about what books Bush read!
It is hilarious, of course, that Condi Rice would come out and say that people will be thanking Bush for what he has done. Even the obtuse, incapable, and incompetent Secretary of State can't believe that. What she can believe, what she knows, is that she is wrapped up in any war crimes case, in any criminal investigation of the Bush administration.
It's easy fodder for comics, for politicians, and yes, for Kossacks.
If we sit here and laugh at their smokescreen, if we gasp at the audaciousness of their smokescreen, then we're doing what they want us to do - what they need us to do.
Ignore the fact that they're sneaking out of office behind this smokescreen, in the hope that, on January 21 2008, we'll be too busy moving on to investigate the worst Presidency in American history.
So the next time Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, or even Bush himself, comes out at makes an implausible argument about how history will regard his presidency, remember, history hasn't happened yet. And the book won't close - shouldn't close - on the Bush Administration until there has been a thorough investigation of the illegal and unconstitutional tactics of the Executive Branch.