Obamasvatta

Today Barack Obama, four days before his inauguration as 44th President of the United States, said he always thought Bush was “personally” a “good guy.”

I wish the President-elect would give his Jesus-wrapped-in-sunshine shtick a rest already. Sure, I admire Obama’s air of unruffled calm, his zen-like grace under stress, his ability to inspire hope in the midst of crisis. Even I, a conscientious pessimist, hope that Obama will be the Chesley Sullenberger of the financial crisis that Bush and his cronies launched with two expensive wars and eight years of handouts to obscenely wealthy “capitalists.”

Bring the plane down, Barry, and save the passengers, if not the geese—but nobody, not even you, is ever gonna top Hayley Mills as Pollyanna. All right?

Bush is not a good guy. I’ve never understood how anyone ever accepted that he’d be a neat guy to have a beer with. Sure, if I really really needed a beer, I could do it … but for the beer, for Christ’s sake, not for some arrogant, privileged 62 year old with daddy issues who thinks he’s still at the frat house.

Not for some asshole who thought it was funny to snuff out cigarettes on other guys’ skin while he was at the frat house.

Not for a guy whose every achievement has been a free ride provided by his family and his family’s CIA, Fortune 500, and Saudi contacts. A fat Rolodex never made anybody neat or even basically decent.

Not for a guy, who as Texas governor, boasted over presiding over more death-penalty executions (152) than any modern-era governor and even had the vilely bad manners to make fun of one of them (Karla Faye Tucker) by imitating her in a high squeal: “Please please don’t kill me.” Damn, dude, even if I did back capital punishment, adding insult to injury is just mean.

Not for a guy who now brags that we haven’t had a terrorist attack on U.S. soil … at least not since the one he presided over on September 11, 2001. He may as well take credit for no more catastrophic hurricanes since Katrina.

Not for a guy who launched an unjust war against Iraq, sold to the world with falsified info, which has cost 4226 American lives, not counting the 90,000+ civilian deaths attributable to the war.

Not for the guy who defended extreme interrogation techniques like waterboarding so long as we didn’t use the “T” word.

Not for George Double-yuck Bush.

Why in the name of all that’s good and decent does Barack Obama think he has to say nice things about this guy? Admittedly, he qualified the remark by saying he thought Bush loves his family (Bush’s, not Obama’s) and the country. Faint praise indeed, when it’s common knowledge that despots generally love children and dogs—and no doubt their countries too as long as the citizens are flattened under their dictatorial thumbs. But why any praise at all?

Does he have his eye on a Nobel Prize or something? Or does he expect the Vatican to canonize him? Can’t he just be stiffly polite to Bush the way he is around the gay press—to which he communicates in “open letters,” issued like fiats?

OK, President Obama (and, yes, God, that still sounds awfully good), nobody really expects you to throw a shoe at Bush. That thunder’s been stolen. And I get it: you’re a nice guy, who reaches out, who includes everybody, who doesn’t see red states and blue states, only United States. I respect that. America respects that.

But, listen, it’s enough that you’re our President. Be a good one. And give up on trying to be our personal savior, Boddhisvatta, and high-school counselor rolled into one.