Back in December 2005, Texas Senator John Cornyn pioneered what became the Republican Party's "give me death" defense of President Bush's program of illegal NSA domestic surveillance. "None of your civil liberties matter much," Cornyn announced, "after you're dead." As ABC revealed in its shocking expose of NSA personnel monitoring the private phone calls of Americans abroad, your civil liberties don't matter much while you're living, either.

Despite President Bush's repeated assurances that "I'm mindful of your civil liberties," NSA operators "hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home." According to two NSA staffers featured by ABC, the so-called "terrorist surveillance program" was used to listen in on the calls of American soldiers and aid workers overseas:

[Former Navy Arab linguist David Murfee] Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of “cuts” that were available on each operator's computer...

"We knew they were working for these aid organizations," [former Army Reserves Arab linguist Adrienne] Kinne told ABC News. "They were identified in our systems as 'belongs to the International Red Cross' and all these other organizations. And yet, instead of blocking these phone numbers we continued to collect on them," she told ABC News.

For his part, Senator Cornyn was far from alone in propagating the Republican's unconscionable justification of Bush's FISA lawlessness. (Lawless, that is, until August 2007, when the Democratic Congress codified President Bush's regime of domestic surveillance.)

On February 3rd, 2006 Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, who infamously stonewalled the Phase II investigation into the misuses of pre-Iraq war intelligence, similarly claimed:

"You really don't have any civil liberties if you're dead."

Three days later, the Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions regurgitated the same talking point during a break in Senate testimony by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

"Over 3,000 Americans have no civil rights because they are no longer with us."

During his failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney perpetuated the sham. Completing a candidate questionnaire in December 2007, Romney argued for an unlimited expansion of presidential powers, including this stunning response:

1. Does the president have inherent powers under the Constitution to conduct surveillance for national security purposes without judicial warrants, regardless of federal statutes?

Intelligence and surveillance have proven to be some of the most effective national security tools we have to protect our nation. Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive and the President should not hesitate to use every legal tool at his disposal to keep America safe.

As it turns out, of course, President Bush's surveillance regime was not legal. And as his water carriers like Cornyn, Sessions, Roberts and Romney show, the Republican Party doesn't worry too much about civil liberties, whether for the living or the dead.

As ThinkProgress noted this morning, McCain joked about his authoritarian streak during an interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board. Bemoaning the gridlock in Congress he helped manufacture over passage of the bailout bill, McCain kidded:

"I just want to make a comment about the obvious issue and that is the failure of Congress to act yesterday. It's just not acceptable...This is just a not acceptable situation. I'm not saying this is the perfect answer. If I were dictator, which I always aspire to be, I would write it a little bit differently."

If McCain's guffawing sounds familiar, it should. On at least three occasions before and after becoming president, George W. Bush laughingly praised the virtues of dictatorship:

"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it." (President George W. Bush, July 26, 2001.)

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." (President-elect George W. Bush, December 18, 2000.)

"You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier." (Texas Governor George W. Bush, July 1998.)

In the grand scheme of things, the Bush-McCain joy in jesting about undermining American democracy is a sideshow. After all, Lindsey Graham notwithstanding, the policies of George Bush and John McCain are almost indistinguishable on health care, taxes, Iraq, the Supreme Court, overturning Roe v. Wade, Social Security privatization and a host of other issues.

But their childish displays say a lot about presidential temperament. At the end of the day, George W. Bush didn't merely poke fun at the poor, African-Americans, children, the blind, the free ride for Scooter Libby and even the lack of WMD. With his illegal domestic surveillance, suspension of habeas corpus, regime of detainee torture and purging of U.S. attorneys, Bush proved his jokes no laughing matter.

And now John McCain, whose dangerously out-of-control temper renders him unfit for command, laughs about playing dictator. Sorry, Senator Graham, but we've already had one of those.

With each passing day, Sarah Palin's handling of TrooperGate grows more and more reminiscent of George W. Bush's management of the PlameGate affair. President Bush, after all, in October 2003 proclaimed "I want to know the truth" about who outed covert CIA operative Valerie Plame and promised to fire anyone in his administration responsible. Now, after pledging in July that voters should "hold me accountable" in the dubious firing of Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, Sarah Palin like Bush before her is adopting the "ongoing investigation" evasion.

That's the message coming from the McCain campaign. As CNN reported Wednesday, not only is Palin refusing to cooperate with the Alaska legislature's probe she once promised to assist, the McCain camp has now declared a cone of silence over the entire affair. As ThinkProgress summarized:

McCain campaign officials said yesterday that "they are done answering questions" about Sarah Palin's firing of Alaska's former Public Safety Commissioner. Palin's lawyers have agreed to "general parameters of immediate cooperation" with the investigation she requested from the state Personnel Board, which hired Anchorage lawyer Timothy Petumenos to conduct the inquiry. Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton said the state investigator has "asked to keep things confidential, so we will respect those wishes."

"The governor waived confidentiality, and Mr. Petumenos has just stated as of this moment that he would like for things to remain confidential," Stapleton said. "So that is why we are telling you as of today, we are no longer going to be discussing aspects of this as directed by Mr. Petumenos."

If that line sounds familiar, it should. As the revelations mounted in the fall of 2003 regarding the Bush administration's payback against Valerie and Joe Wilson over the President's bogus claims of Iraq seeking uranium in Niger, the White House shut down inquiries from the press with its ubiquitous "ongoing investigation" talking point.

By mid-2005, as the investigation by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was closing in on Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby, President Bush and his hand-puppet Scott McClellan had perfected the "ongoing investigation" stonewall. While Bush himself on July 13, 2005 announced "We're in the midst of an ongoing investigation and I will be more than happy to comment further once the investigation is completed," it was McClellan who two days earlier offered the purest - and most comical - rendering of the same dodge:

"Terry, I appreciate your question. I think your question is being asked relating to some reports that are in reference to an ongoing criminal investigation. The criminal investigation that you reference is something that continues at this point. And as I've previously stated, while that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment on it. The President directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation, and as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, we made a decision that we weren't going to comment on it while it is ongoing."

The rest, as they say, is history. Bush, who on October 7, 2003 said, "I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official," commuted Libby's sentence in the PlameGate affair. As for McClellan, the former press secretary emerged from his persistent vegetative state to author a tell-all book about his duplicity - and gullibility - in the service of the Bush White House.

And now with Sarah Palin and TrooperGate, history is seemingly repeating itself. As Marx famously said, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." If the American people let her get away with it, that farce could be the Vice President of the United States.

Emerging Thursday from her undisclosed location for her first encounter with the press, John McCain's stealth running mate displayed a shocking ignorance of American foreign policy 101. During her initial softball interview with ABC's Charles Gibson, Palin seemed blissfully unaware of the Bush Doctrine:

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

PALIN: I agree that a president's job, when they swear in their oath to uphold our Constitution, their top priority is to defend the United States of America.

For his part, Gibson in his hopeless effort to tutor Sarah Palin also came up short. As I wrote in June 2007, preventive war (what Gibson deemed "anticipatory self-defense") is only one leg of the broken stool that is the Bush Doctrine:

That wheezing sound you may have heard this week amid the chaos in Gaza, the carnage in Baghdad and the conflict in Lebanon was the final gasps of the Bush Doctrine in its death throes. Just two years after the President and his neo-conservative allies basked in the glow of their self-proclaimed moment of triumph, the Bush Doctrine of no safe havens for terrorists, American preventive war and democracy promotion is discredited, discarded - and dead.

For more on the evolution of and short-lived conservative crowing over the Bush Doctrine, see:
''The Myth of the Bush Doctrine."

For more on the decline and fall of the Bush Doctrine as an idea whose time never came, see:
"The Death of the Bush Doctrine."

For background on the New York Times revelations today that President Bush belatedly authorized strikes by U.S. special forces against Taliban and Al Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan, see:
"This Just In From Afghanistan: Bush Doctrine Still Dead."

UPDATE: Sarah Palin may not know anything about the Bush Doctrine, but she didn't hesitate to recycle Bush's effort link Iraq to the 9/11 attacks.

At the White House on Wednesday, press secretary Dana Perino played down the Bin Laden danger to her lame-duck boss' flatline political standing, if not to the American people:

Q: But Osama bin Laden is the one that - you keep talking about his lieutenants, and, yes, they are very important, but Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11 -

PERINO: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, and he's sitting in jail right now.

But back in January 2006, President Bush was singing a much different tune. Trying to fight back against the growing public outcry over his illegal domestic wiretapping program, President Bush used the Bin Laden bogeyman once again during remarks at the National Security Agency. Bush lashed out at his critics:

All I would ask them to do is listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take him seriously. When he says he's going to hurt the American people again, or try to, he means it. I take it seriously, and the people of NSA take it seriously.

By May 2007, Bush turned to the specter of Bin Laden to justify both his regime of surveillance at home and his war without end in Iraq. During a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy, the President outlined a plot that connected Osama bin Laden and the head of al Qaeda in Iraq to terror plans intended to hit U.S. interests and the United States itself. A serious Bush intoned:

In January of last year, Osama bin Laden warned the American people: "Operations are under preparation and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished."

Of course, George W. Bush did not take Bin Laden seriously five years earlier. Questioned about his silence regarding Bin Laden in the months following the American failure to capture the Al Qaeda chieftain in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, a nonchalant Bush on March 13, 2002 downplayed his significance:

So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you...I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.

Bush may have been embarrassed by his failure to capture Bin Laden in 2002, but by the fall of 2004, he faced the prospect of American voters who seemed to recall the murder of 3,000 of their countrymen. In the third presidential debate with John Kerry, a childlike Bush on October 13, 2004 tried for a "do over" of his statement two and a half years earlier:

Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations. Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden.

Which brings us full circle. In the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush used the specter of Osama Bin Laden to rally what had been a faltering presidency. In a show of frontier bravado, Bush talked tough about Bin Laden just days after the 9/11 attacks:

There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, "Wanted: Dead or Alive."

Seven years later, it is the Bush presidency itself which is dead. Bin Laden remains at large even as Bush's calamitous tenure winds down. In his waning days in office, George W. Bush is simply immune to further declines in popularity.

Which, according to Bush's Law, must mean Osama Bin Laden doesn't matter much anymore.

But in the case of George W. Bush, absence does not make the heart grow fonder. He may gone from the podium in Minnesota, but the arrogant, despicable, mean-spirited words that he regurgitated at the Republican Convention eight years ago are not forgotten.

On August 3, 2000, George W. Bush addressed the RNC and uttered the now broken promise that has come to define his failed presidency. Accepting his party's nomination, Governor Bush promised to restore "honor and dignity" to the White House. But as events continue to show, a more accurate - and ironic - mantra for the lawless Bush White House would be "no controlling legal authority."

At the time it was delivered, Bush's acceptance speech at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia was an arrogant, deceitful broadside against the Clinton/Gore years. But the very words Bush used to tar Al Gore with the blight of the Lewinsky scandal may now constitute the epitaph for the Bush presidency:

"So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not only uphold the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God."

That hateful address (video excerpts here), of course, was filled with exactly the kind of lies and taunts - the smallness - that came to define George W. Bush. His false charges about American military readiness ("Not ready for duty, sir!"), his long since abandoned philosophy when it comes to using American force ("the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming"), his smearing of Al Gore that foreshadowed his own legacy ("he now leads the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but the only thing he has to offer is fear itself") and his obscene claim to be a "uniter" ("I will not attack a part of this country because I want to lead the whole of it"), all were in keeping with the dark Bush character.

Bush broke all of these promises. But his original sin, from which all other of his crimes and errors flow, is his pledge to usher in new period of higher ethical standards as part of a "responsibility era." Bush, who previously sneered at Gore's "no controlling legal authority" defense of his 1990's Buddhist temple fundraising efforts, raised the ethical bar further that October:

"In my administration, we will ask not only what is legal but what is right. Not just what the lawyers allow, but what the public deserves. In my administration, we'll make it clear there is a controlling legal authority of conscience."

Eights years later and Bush's 2000 standard of "not only what is legal but what is right" is in tatters. Just last month, Bush's own Justice Department issued a report which concluded that Monica Goodling, the former White House liaison for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, violated federal law and DOJ policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren't faithful Republicans or conservative activists.

And that's just the beginning. Plamegate, the Libby pardon, the Abramoff affair, doctoring scientific reports, the end of habeas corpus, detainee torture, the politically-motivated firings of U.S. attorneys, illegal domestic surveillance, the theory of the unitary executive and the unprecedented assertion of executive privilege all show a President committed to doing neither what is legal nor right. And then, of course, there's Iraq.

How fitting then that Bush's would-be Republican successor John McCain, the man who promised to run a "respectful" campaign, chose to launch a wave of attack ads and character assassination against his Democratic rival.

Americans can't erase the Bush presidency, but they aren't condemned to repeat it. So with the arrival of the GOP convention without that party's president, remember that it was eight years ago that Republican George W. Bush promised us he would "uphold the honor and dignity" of his office.

No doubt, absence doesn't always make the heart grow fonder.

That's the word from the architect of John McCain's health care proposals, John Goodman. No one in the United States is uninsured, Goodman, pronounced, because Americans have access to emergency room care. As the Dallas Morning News reported:

Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American - even illegal aliens - as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care. So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

For a candidate who diagnosed the economic downturn as "psychological", the semantic solution to the crisis in medical coverage is unsurprising. And to be sure, with its GOP "Emergency Room" health care plan, the McCain campaign is just following in the footsteps of Republicans deniers George W. Bush and Tom Delay.

During a July 2007 visit to Cleveland, President Bush unveiled his emergency room cure for the ills of the U.S. health care system. Rejecting the expansion of the successful - and even more popular - State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), Bush assured Americans that there was no crisis in medical coverage:

"I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."

In November, indicted former House majority leader Tom Delay took Bush's health care clown show overseas. Speaking in the UK, Delay announced:

"By the way, there's no one denied health care in America. There are 47 million people who don't have health insurance, but no American is denied health care in America."

But while his comments were greeted in England (as the AP reported) with "derisive laughter," no one was chuckling back home.

As it turns out, of course, millions more Americans are denied - or are forced to deny themselves - health care each year. Just days after Delay spoke, a new report from the Economic Policy Institute showed a dramatic decline in employer-provided health care. That drop-off from 64.2% of Americans covered through workplace insurance in 2000 to just 59.7% in 2007 added 2.3 million more people to those without coverage. And in June, a devastating new assessment from the Commonwealth Fund showed fully 25 million Americans are now "underinsured," a staggering 60 percent jump since 2003. All in all, 42% of the people in the United States under age 65 have insufficient insurance - or simply none at all.

(As it turns out, the recent dip in the number of uninsured to 45.7 million is due almost exclusively to expanded state and federal government insurance programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP. Of course, John McCain joined President Bush in opposing the expansion of the popular program providing coverage for children.)

And to be sure, America's overflowing emergency rooms do not have the capacity, staffing or funding to be the health care solution of last resort. A 2006 report by the Institute of Medicine revealed that U.S. emergency rooms can barely cope with the volume of patients in the best of circumstances:

The study cited three contributing problems to the rise in emergency room visits: the aging of the baby boomers, the growing number of uninsured and underinsured patients, and the lack of access to primary care physicians.

The report found that 114 million people, including 30 million children, visited emergency rooms in 2003, compared with 90 million visits a decade ago. In that same period, the number of U.S. hospitals decreased by 703, the number of emergency rooms decreased by 425, and the total number of hospital beds dropped by 198,000, mainly because of the trend toward cheaper outpatient care, according to the report.

And that's in the best of times; the forecast for the worst of times is grimmer still. A March 2008 study from the House Oversight and Government Reform showed an American ER system woefully unprepared to handle a "predictable surprise" of a terrorist attack on the scale of the 2004 Madrid bombing:

The results of the survey show that none of the hospitals surveyed in the seven cities had sufficient emergency care capacity to respond to an attack generating the number of casualties that occurred in Madrid. The Level I trauma centers surveyed had no room in their emergency rooms to treat a sudden influx of victims. They had virtually no free intensive care unit beds within their hospital complex. And they did not have enough regular inpatient beds to handle the less severely injured victims. The shortage of capacity was particularly acute in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Particularly acute in Los Angeles, indeed. As CBS reported, security cameras captured the death last year of Edith Isabel Rodriguez in a Los Angeles emergency room lobby, a woman who lay without help on the floor for 45 minutes as hospital personnel passed by.

And the scene was repeated on June 19 in New York, where 49 year old Esmin Green collapsed and died while waiting almost 24 hours in the emergency room of a psychiatric hospital. (The video of the CBS segment is available here.)

Later this summer, John McCain will address the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. There, he will talk in glowing terms about the McCain health care plan, one virtually identical in its outlines - and dismal shortcomings - as that of President Bush. As Minnesota Public Radio recently detailed, the emergency rooms of Minneapolis and St. Paul are prepared to handle the GOP faithful should they become sick before, during or after McCain's speech.

Then again, in the America of George Bush, John McCain and the Republican Party, no one is denied health care, not even the "whiners." They can always go to the emergency room.

No doubt, history will not be kind to George W Bush. And to be sure, Bush is already returning the favor. Apparently stunned by the Russian assault on Georgia, President Bush forgot his invasion of "sovereign" Iraq and declared, "Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century". As it turns out, John McCain, Condoleezza Rice and Mitt Romney all failed the same test on 21st century history.

While unwilling to acknowledge that he had misread Vladimir Putin's soul back in 2001, President Bush on August 11th issued a tough statement about Moscow's massive retaliation against Tbilisi:

"It now appears that an effort may be underway to depose Russia's duly elected government. Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century."

While Bush misspoke in describing "Russia's duly elected government," his point about a nation threatening a democracy was a none-too-thinly veiled effort to distinguish Moscow's invasion of Georgia from his own in Iraq.

For her part, Secretary of State Condi Rice didn't even bother with that feeble distinction. Rice, who in a replay of her pre-9/11 failure apparently missed the memo "Putin Determined to Strike in Georgia," also selectively edited the Iraq war out of the 21st century. On August 18th, she said:

"But I just want to emphasize again, Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used, that will make it - that - when it wishes to deliver a message, and that's its military power. That's not the way to deal in the 21st century."

Bush's would-be successor John McCain, too, got it wrong. On August 13th, McCain as part of his effort to capitalize on the Georgia crisis pronounced:

"In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations."

That's McCain's selective amnesia would extend to the Iraq war is unsurprising. He wasn't merely wrong at almost every turn in the run-up to and the occupation of Iraq, he also happened to be one the war's biggest cheerleaders. Quick to cite the September 2001 anthrax attacks as a potential pretext to attack Saddam, in January 2002 McCain simply exhorted Americans, "next up, Baghdad!"

Then there's Mitt Romney. Rumored to top John McCain's list of potential running mates, Romney told right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt that Russia's assault on Georgia should cost it the 2014 Olympic Games:

"Well, Hugh, my own view is as the Caucuses are a hot spot, and as Russians have shown their willingness to act militarily against a sovereign nation, that the International Olympic Committee ought to revisit locating the Games elsewhere."

(Romney's willingness to parrot John McCain's talking points as part of his transparent effort to join the ticket borders on the comic. When Romney endorsed the Arizona Senator in February, he signaled his desire to follow John McCain follow Osama Bin Laden to the "gates of hell.")

With the leading lights of the Republican Party having failed 21st Century History 101, the task was left to the ever-excreable Dick Morris to explain it away on Fox News. Appearing on Hannity and Colmes, Morris comically argued that the American invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq came at the request of a democratically-elected government in Baghdad. Attacking Barack Obama's self-evident message to the Russians that "it helps if we are leading by example," Morris argued:

"Where he's wrong is that we went into Iraq at the invitation of the government, not as an invasion."

"We're in Iraq as the result of a democracy asking for us to come in there. It's not an invasion."

And so it goes. The best and brightest of the GOP fundamentally misrepresent recent history, yet theirs is labeled the party of national security. And John McCain, the man who repeatedly failed the commander-in-chief test on Iraq, gets glowing grades from the media just the same.

One of the most enduring moments of the 9/11 Commission hearings came when Condoleezza Rice casually recalled the now infamous August 6, 2001 presidential daily brief (PDB). "I believe," she said, "the title was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'" Now almost exactly seven years later, Secretary of State Rice seems to have missed the warning signs once again. Having sent mixed messages to Tbilisi in July and on vacation as Russian armor poured into the country, Condi Rice ignored the alarm, "Putin determined to strike in Georgia."

The latest failings of George W. Bush's putative Russian expert were detailed by the New York Times this morning. In early July, Condi Rice traveled to Georgia to show support for President Saakashvili in the face of Russian violations of his nation's air space. But while Rice offered "defiant" public support for Georgia amid the growing tensions with Moscow, behind the scenes she was cautioning Saakashvili against precipitous military action in South Ossetia. As the Times described:

During a private dinner on July 9, Ms. Rice's aides say, she warned President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia not to get into a military conflict with Russia that Georgia could not win. "She told him, in no uncertain terms, that he had to put a non-use of force pledge on the table," according to a senior administration official who accompanied Ms. Rice to the Georgian capital.

But publicly, Ms. Rice struck a different tone, one of defiant support for Georgia in the face of Russian pressure. "I'm going to visit a friend and I don't expect much comment about the United States going to visit a friend," she told reporters just before arriving in Tbilisi, even as Russian jets were conducting intimidating maneuvers over South Ossetia.

But when the conflict exploded last week, Rice was missing in action. In a haunting echo of Bush's prolonged August 2001 getaway to his Crawford ranch, Secretary of State Rice was on vacation as Russian forces pounded Georgia. As AFP reported on Monday, days after the start of hostilities:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has also been noticeably absent on the diplomatic scene, having failed to interrupt her holidays to fly to Tbilisi in support of the Georgian government.

Instead senior State Department official, Matthew Bryza, who oversees the Caucasus region was sent, two days later than planned, to join a joint EU-US mediation effort to win a ceasefire.

Rice's absence did not go unnoticed either in Washington or in the press. Despite claims by the State Department that Rice made more than 90 calls regarding the crisis over the weekend, yesterday the Los Angeles Times simply asked, "where's Condoleezza Rice?" The Wall Street Journal theorized that Rice "seemed so preoccupied with Iraq, Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict that she didn't have time to fashion an effective response to Russia's muscle-flexing on its borders." For his part, even John McCain highlighted Rice's inaction, stating "the Secretary of State should begin high-level diplomacy, including visiting Europe."

Better late than never, President Bush announced today that he is dispatching Secretary Rice to the region, including visits to France, Russia and Georgia. But as the Bush administration contemplates its response to the ongoing Putin/Medvedev assault on Georgia, in Tbilisi President Saakashvili warned of dire consequences for the United States:

"America is losing the whole region, and this is the region of eastern and central Europe."

That region is supposed to be the area of greatest expertise for the ersatz Soviet guru Condoleezza Rice. But as she showed in assessing the threats posed to U.S. national security by Al Qaeda in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and now Russia in 2008, Condoleezza Rice apparently doesn't know a "grave and gathering danger" when she sees one.

UPDATE: You know things are bad when President Bush postpones his annual Crawford vacation.

At the time it was delivered, Bush's acceptance speech at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia was an arrogant, deceitful broadside against the Clinton/Gore years. But the very words Bush used to tar Al Gore with the blight of the Lewinsky scandal may now constitute the epitaph for the Bush presidency:

"So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not only uphold the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God."

That hateful address (video excerpts here), of course, was filled with exactly the kind of lies and taunts - the smallness - that came to define George W. Bush. His false charges about American military readiness ("Not ready for duty, sir!"), his long since abandoned philosophy when it comes to using American force ("the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming"), his smearing of Al Gore that foreshadowed his own legacy ("he now leads the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but the only thing he has to offer is fear itself") and his obscene claim to be a "uniter" ("I will not attack a part of this country because I want to lead the whole of it"), all were in keeping with the dark Bush character.

Bush broke all of these promises. But his original sin, from which all other of his crimes and errors flow, is his pledge to usher in new period of higher ethical standards as part of a "responsibility era." Bush, who previously sneered at Gore's "no controlling legal authority" defense of his 1990's Buddhist temple fundraising efforts, raised the ethical bar further that October:

"In my administration, we will ask not only what is legal but what is right. Not just what the lawyers allow, but what the public deserves. In my administration, we'll make it clear there is a controlling legal authority of conscience."

Eights years later and Bush's 2000 standard of "not only what is legal but what is right" is in tatters. Just this week, Bush's own Justice Department issued a report which concluded that Monica Goodling, the former White House liaison for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, violated federal law and DOJ policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren't faithful Republicans or conservative activists.

And that's just the beginning. Plamegate, the Libby pardon, the Abramoff affair, doctoring scientific reports, the end of habeas corpus, detainee torture, the politically-motivated firings of U.S. attorneys, illegal domestic surveillance, the theory of the unitary executive and the unprecedented assertion of executive privilege all show a President committed to doing neither what is legal nor right. And then, of course, there's Iraq.

How fitting then that Bush's would-be Republican successor John McCain, the man who promised to run a "respectful" campaign, chose this week to launch a wave of attack ads and character assassination against his Democratic rival.

Americans can't erase the Bush presidency, but they aren't condemned to repeat it. So with the imminent arrival of the GOP and Democratic national conventions, remember that it was eight years ago that Republican George W. Bush promised us he would "uphold the honor and dignity" of his office.

Happy anniversary, America.

(This piece originally appeared at Crooks and Liars.)

As he faced reelection in 2004, George W. Bush famously committed to cut the deficit in half in five years. But that promise, as the Washington Post, CNN and others noted at the time, was premised upon two parallel frauds.

First, Bush's pompous prediction used as its baseline a wildly inflated White House deficit forecast of $521 billion, well above the CBO's estimate and the actual FY 04 figure of $413 billion. More importantly, President Bush conveniently chose 2009 as his finish line, the year before his tax cuts were set to expire. Making them permanent (which John McCain now endorses) would blow another $2.2 trillion hole in the federal budget by 2014. In addition, other required costs (such as the Medicare prescription drug plan) and likely federal tax code adjustments (most notably fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax) would add hundreds of billions more in red ink to the national ledger. And all of that is before the deluge of Social Security and Medicare expenditures looming with the retirement of the baby boom generation.

Nonetheless, when the budget deficit dipped last year to $163 billion, the Bush administration proclaimed victory and vindication. On its web page titled, "Fiscal Discipline: Managing for Results," the White House crowed:

"The deficit has been cut in half three years ahead of the President's 2009 goal. Historic revenue growth and a continued commitment to spending restraint contributed to this reduction."

As it turns, not so much.

The new numbers from the OMB are grim, reflecting a slowing economy, a dismal housing market and declining corporate income tax collections, all of which have combined to produce a drop in federal revenues from 2007 to 2008. While the White House ratcheted down its estimates for economic growth (1.6% for this year, down from 2.7% in its February forecast and 2.2% for 2009, down from 3.0%), federal spending is slated to jump by 8% this year and 6.5% in 2009 (including the cost of the economic stimulus package). Worse still, as the Washington Post noted, "next year's record figure includes only $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which could cost three times that much."

The changing fortunes of Bush's bogus budget boast five years ago are on display on the White House web site. In February 2004, the White House claimed President Bush was committed to "staying on course to cut the deficit in half within 5 years" for FY 2005. The 2006 overview promised to exercise "responsible spending restraint in order to achieve the President’s goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009." As mentioned above, in 2007 the White House prematurely proclaimed mission accomplished in halving the budget deficit, adding that the President's budget will "produce a balanced budget by 2012." Unfortunately, 12 months later the White House web site announced that "the President's FY2008 Budget reduces the deficit each year and reaches a balanced budget within five years." Amazingly, Bush's FY 2009 budget overview stands by his comically irrelevant pledge to "ensure that near-term deficits are overcome and we achieve a surplus in 2012."

In historical terms, at 3.3% of GDP the Bush deficit pales in comparison to Ronald Reagan's record 1983 red ink hemorrhage of 6%. Still, Bush's stage-managed mission to halve the budget deficit was not accomplished.

And that, in so many ways, is the legacy of George W. Bush.

That the Republican water carrier and New York Times columnist David Brooks would blast Barack Obama's Berlin speech was utterly predictable. (Kevin Drum even predicted the title of the piece, "Playing Innocent Abroad.") To be sure, by slandering Obama's call to "remake the world" with epithets including "saccharine," "treacle," and "Disney," Brooks did not disappoint. Of course, even less surprising is that back in 2005, David Brooks had only glowing praise for President Bush's democratization agenda and its audacious vision to "imagine new worlds."

On Friday, Brooks wasted little time in excoriating Obama for his optimistic call for a new internationalism in which American global leadership restored could help tackle the challenges of terrorism, sectarian strife, economic prosperity and climate change:

"Obama speeches almost always have the same narrative arc. Some problem threatens. The odds are against the forces of righteousness. But then people of good faith unite and walls come tumbling down. Obama used the word "walls" 16 times in the Berlin speech, and in 11 of those cases, he was talking about walls coming down...

...But substantively, optimism without reality isn't eloquence. It's just Disney."

Ironically, Brooks opened by noting that "radical optimism is America's contribution to the world" and that "Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush preached their own gospels of world democracy." Ironic, because when the optimistic preacher in 2005 was President Bush, David Brooks was all for it.

During his February 2005 State of the Union address, Bush declared that the mission of the United States was nothing less than to end tyranny and dictatorship worldwide:

"The only force powerful enough to stop the rise of tyranny and terror, and replace hatred with hope, is the force of human freedom...And we've declared our own intention: America will stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

That Republican's radical vision was one David Brooks could get behind. Joining giddy conservatives like Rich Lowry and Charles Krauthammer in premature celebration of the Bush Doctrine, Brooks lauded the Bush agenda for bringing what then seemed like a wave of democracy around the world.

In February 26, 2005 column (titled "Why Not Here?"), Brooks' assessment was a mirror image of today's Obama diatribe. Looking to the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, pro-democracy protests in the Palestinian territories and elections in Iraq, Brooks proclaimed that all across the Middle East - and the world - people were asking "why not here?"

Amazingly, Brooks then cited Ronald Reagan's own 1987 Berlin speech as invoking the world of possibility the visionary George W. Bush had imagined:

It's amazing in retrospect to think of how much psychological resistance there is to asking this breakthrough question: Why not here? We are all stuck in our traditions and have trouble imagining the world beyond. As Claus Christian Malzahn reminded us in Der Spiegel online this week, German politicians ridiculed Ronald Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech in 1987. They "couldn't imagine that there might be an alternative to a divided Germany."

But if there is one soft-power gift America does possess, it is this tendency to imagine new worlds. As Malzahn goes on to note, "In a country of immigrants like the United States, one actually pushes for change…We Europeans always want to have the world from yesterday, whereas the Americans strive for the world of tomorrow."

Apparently, the mere act of changing the speaker's name - and party affiliation - produces a 180-degree turn from David Brooks.

The image of tearing down walls wasn't the only historical device Obama deployed in Berlin on Thursday. He repeatedly harkened back to the 1948 American airlift which saved the city and busted the Soviet blockade. Obama's was not merely a metaphor for a reinvigorated trans-Atlantic partnership, but a call for renewed American global leadership. Alas, David Brooks is comfortable only when American dictates, not when America leads.

Back in 2005, Brooks concluded his piece by exhibiting the same symptoms of conservative hubris which have backfired so tragically for the United States. Just months before Russia's authoritarian swing, carnage in Lebanon and the Hamas triumph in Palestine, Brooks insisted Bush deserved accolades for prompting the cry of "why not here?":

"But this is clearly the question the United States is destined to provoke. For the final thing that we've learned from the papers this week is how thoroughly the Bush agenda is dominating the globe. When Bush meets with Putin, democratization is the center of discussion. When politicians gather in Ramallah, democratization is a central theme. When there's an atrocity in Beirut, the possibility of freedom leaps to people's minds."

But that was then and this is now. Barack Obama speaks of a "new dawn in the Middle East" or all of Europe choosing "its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday," And that, according to David Brooks is "Disney."

It's been a very busy week for war crimes and war criminals. In some good news for the cause of justice and the upholding of international law, Bosnian Serb mass murder Radavan Karadzic was finally captured in Belgrade, just days after the International Criminal Court charged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with crimes against humanity in Darfur. But for Americans, those positive developments were offset by news that the Bush administration's own war crimes trials - and potential pre-emptive pardons - put the United States in the same discussion with Sudan and the Republica Serbska.

To be sure, the long-overdue capture of Karadzic is a cause for celebration. On the run from peace-keeping forces in Bosnia since 1996, Karadzic had been hiding in plain sight in Serbia's capital. Between 1992 and 1995, the butcher of Srebrenica was responsible for ethnic cleaning and massacres in the Balkans that claimed at least 100,000 lives.

Which puts him in the same class as the killer in Khartoum, Sudan's al-Bashir. A week ago Monday, the ICC charged the Sudanese president on three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes for his campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing that has killed as many as 300,000 people in Darfur.

As ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo acknowledged, the strategy risks ending any prospect of cooperation between the government in Khartoum and the international community for bringing peace-keeping forces and humanitarian relief to Darfur. But as its ambassador to the UN Abdalmahoud Abdalhaleem Mohamad made clear to CNN's Fareed Zakaria, Sudan - like the United States - will not subject its officials to the jurisdiction of the Court:

ZAKARIA: But of course, you know that other governments that did not recognize the Criminal Court were still forced to extradite their leaders. I'm thinking of Yugoslavia.

MOHAMAD: No. I don't care about them.

As far as we are concerned, we are not members. We have been told these days repeatedly that the ICC is an independent body. And so, OK, if it's an independent body, I am not a U.N. organ.

We have full right to be part of it or not. And we choose not to be part of it, like the United States.

Sadly, Mohamad is right about the company Sudan keeps. In May 2001, President Bush renounced the ICC treaty signed by Bill Clinton the previous December, claiming "This is a body based in The Hague where unaccountable judges and prosecutors could pull our troops, our diplomats up for trial." During a 2004 debate with John Kerry, Bush taunted American allies supporting the Court, arguing, "You don't want to join the International Criminal Court just because it's popular in certain capitals in Europe." By that November, the Republican Congress was threatening to cut off economic aid to governments who refused to sign immunity agreements which would shield U.S. personnel from being surrendered to the Court.

Insistent on avoiding accountability for potential crimes abroad, the Bush administration may now be acting to prevent it at home as well. As the New York Times reported on Saturday, key conservative figures are urging the White House to "grant pre-emptive pardons to officials involved in controversial counterterrorism programs." The President, they argue, can and should move proactively to shield wrong-doers in his administration:

Such a pardon would reduce the risk that a future administration might undertake a criminal investigation of operatives or policy makers involved in programs that administration lawyers have said were legal but that critics say violated laws regarding torture and surveillance...

...Several members of the conservative legal community in Washington said in interviews that they hoped Mr. Bush would issue such pardons - whether or not anyone made a specific request for one. They said people who carried out the president's orders should not be exposed even to the risk of an investigation and expensive legal bills.

"The president should pre-empt any long-term investigations," said Victoria Toensing, who was a Justice Department counterterrorism official in the Reagan administration. "If we don't protect these people who are proceeding in good faith, no one will ever take chances."

Which brings us to America's first war crimes trial against terror detainees at Guantanamo Bay. This week, prosecutors opened their case against Osama Bin Laden;s driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan, whose 2006 Supreme Court case overturned the Bush administration's previous regime of military tribunals. But in what be the first challenge to President Bush's regime of torture and so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," the presiding judge Monday barred evidence obtained from Hamdan under "highly coercive" conditions during his detention in Afghanistan.

No doubt, the indictment of Sudan's al-Bashir and the apprehension of Karadzic are victories against the forces of what Jane Mayer deemed The Dark Side. It is one of the tragic legacies of President George W. Bush, one few Americans could have imagined, that the United States government would join them there.

Siegelman, sentenced to 7 years in prison on trumped-up bribery charges brought by the Rove-directed DOJ, came to Netroots Nation with a simple message. Just days after Bush's Brain was a no-show before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the matter, Siegelman insisted Congress must hold Rove in contempt:

"If you believe all roads lead to Rove, this is the shortest route to get there."

On Friday, I had the opportunity to catch up with Governor Siegelman after his main-stage interview with Air America Radio host Sam Seder. Throughout our conversation, Siegelman was clear about the stakes:

"This is not about Don Siegelman. It's about restoring justice and protecting our democracy."

No doubt, Siegelman's tale is a horror story. Seder detailed the ten-year war waged by Karl Rove and the Alabama Republican Party against the Democratic Governor dating back to the mid-1990s. After denying his 2002 reelection courtesy of election night ballot counting irregularities, the U.S. attorney's office in Alabama finally succeeded in prosecuting Siegelman in 2006. (Back in February, CBS 60 Minutes detailed the case, involving businessman Richard Scrushy's appointment to a state board after his contribution to a state education lottery fund.) His legal fees have already reached a staggering $2.5 million

For his part, Siegelman believes the issue in his case is "the preservation of our democracy" which "cannot exist if the government can prosecute people they don't like." And one of his greatest challenges is getting the American people to come to grips with a seeming nightmare scenario:

"No one wants to believe the President lied to get into war, that elections can be manipulated or stolen, and that the Department of Justice was used as a political weapon. People just don't want to believe it."

But with growing outcry over his case, revulsion over Rove's snubbing of Congress and the launch of his new web site ContemptforRove.com, Siegelman sees a tipping point at hand. "We're getting really close to getting this cracked open," he said. Thanks in part to "pressure coming from the blogs", Siegelman added, "the balloon is about to burst."

Surprisingly, Siegelman showed a grudging admiration for Karl Rove in much the same way one might respect a master thief. Bush's consigliere, Siegelman claimed, learned two critical lessons from Richard Nixon's experience during Watergate. First, "you don't need a secret unit in the White House" when you have the DOJ at your disposal. And second, as the missing Bush administration emails suggest, "you don't leave evidence around like Nixon did with the tapes."

Moving on from Rove's modus operandi, Siegelman insisted Congress needs to act and act now. Failing to hold Karl Rove in contempt immediately risks sending the "wrong message that some people are above the law." If people see that "Rove did it and he didn't get caught," the Governor warned, "it could become part of American political culture likely to happen again." And to get to the bottom of Rove's involvement in this episode and the broader prosecutor purge of Alberto Gonzales, Siegelman sees just one path:

"Congress is the only hope. It's the only place people can turn to give them the truth. They deserve to know what happened."

Last week, Rep. John Conyers' House Judiciary Committee rejected Karl Rove's assertion of executive privilege by a 7-1 vote. As Sam Seder suggested, to make that claim, Rove necessarily must have discussed the issues at the heart of the Committee inquiry with President Bush. When I pressed him on that point, Siegelman said simply, "only Karl Rove can answer the question."

Despite his conviction, his prison sentence and being initially branded on appeal as a "special prisoner" barred from out-of-state travel (a designation usually reserved for organized crime figures or potential terrorists) – despite it all - Don Siegelman sees signs of hope for his case and his country. "John Conyers has reaffirmed my faith," he said. He also praised House members Robert Wexler (D-FL), Linda Sanchez (D-CA) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Republican Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) for their efforts to hold Rove and the Bush administration accountable. A bipartisan group of 54 state attorneys general signed a letter in his defense. Looking ahead, Siegelman believes not only that the "DOJ must be sacrosanct," but that it will be, provided we have "an attorney general and U.S. attorneys who see their duty to this country first, not a political party."

Still, time is running out. "The longer we wait, the less important" getting to the truth about the hijacking of the Justice Department will be to the American people consumed by the fall election, the slowing economy and the dual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While Siegelman's liberty rests with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, he says ours depends on Capitol Hill. Sensing his own fierce urgency of now, Governor Don Siegelman issued a final call to action to pressure Congress:

"We've got Rove against the ropes. It's time to deliver the knockout punch. Bring him in and put him in a chair."

(This piece was originally posted at Crooks and Liars.)

Back in February, President Bush famously admitted "I hadn't heard that" when asked about predictions that gasoline would soon hit $4 a gallon. Today, Bush dropped jaws again on the topic of spiraling fuel costs, belatedly acknowledging, "I've heard of it now."

Then a few moments later, the President made his case for offshore drilling. After admitting that expanded drilling in ANWR and off the nation's coastlines won't have any near-term benefit on gas prices, Bush like McCain and Phil Gramm before him turned arm chair psychologist:

"I readily concede that, you know, it's not going to produce a barrel of oil tomorrow, but it is going to change the psychology."

If that sounds like something that John McCain might have said, that's because it is.

On more than one occasion, Sigmund McCain claimed the Americans' pain at the pump psychosomatic. At a town hall meeting in Fresno in June, McCain finally overcame his own cognitive dissonance on the issue of offshore oil drilling. Acknowledging the inescapable conclusion that expanded oil exploration off Florida and California wouldn't lower gas prices for years, McCain insisted it was nonetheless the right tonic for Americans' economic woes:

"I don't see an immediate relief, but I do see that exploitation of existing reserves that may exist -- and in view of many experts that do exist off our coasts -- is also a way that we need to provide relief. Even though it may take some years, the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial."

While Dr. McCain's about-face on offshore drilling is new, his conclusion that the deepening American economic crisis is merely psychological is not.

Last month, John McCain prescribed his summer gas tax holiday for America's depressed drivers, explaining "In the short term I'd like to give you a little relief for the summer on the gas tax." But back in April, McCain told Fox News host Neil Cavuto that his placebo was just what the doctor ordered for Americans' fragile psyches, if not their pocketbooks:

"I'm very concerned about it, Neil. And obviously the way it's been going up is just terrible. But I think psychologically - and a lot of our problems today, as you know, are psychological - the confidence, trust, the uncertainty about our economic future, ability to keep our own home. This might give them a little psychological boost. Let's have some straight talk, it's not a huge amount of money."

Of course, George W. Bush and John McCain aren't alone in diagnosing Americans' economic distress as just a figment of our imaginations. As McCain adviser Phil Gramm insisted just last week, "this is a mental recession."

Just one month after airing an ad declaring "only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war," John McCain once again joked about creating carnage in Iran. On the stump Tuesday, McCain added killing Iranians with cigarette addiction to last year's musing about "bomb bomb Iran." Whether he's yukking it up over conflict with Tehran, following Osama Bin Laden to the "gates of hell" or just being the "worst nightmare" of Al Qaeda and Hamas, John McCain sounds more and more like the man he seeks to replace.

McCain's latest less-than-presidential performance came in response to a question about rising U.S. exports to Iran. Informed that those shipments include $158 million in cigarettes:

McCain said, "Maybe that's a way of killing them." He quickly caught himself, saying “I meant that as a joke” as his wife, Cindy, poked him in the back.

In his defense, McCain claimed he was merely being ironic "as a person who hasn't had a cigarette in 28 years." Needless to say, the ironies don't end there. Despite his failed 1998 effort to advance anti-smoking legislation opposed by the tobacco lobby in the Senate, John McCain brought on Big Tobacco lobbyist Charlie Black to lead his campaign. (That might also explain why McCain backed off supporting Ted Kennedy's bill to have the FDA regulate tobacco and voted against raising cigarette taxes by 61 cents a pack to fund an expansion of SCHIP.) And despite John McCain's call for global divestment from Iran, the lobbying firms of top McCain aides Black and Rick Davis include clients doing business with Tehran.

The bigger irony, of course, is that John McCain is undermining his own effort to put distance between himself and George W. Bush. McCain's June ad was a dig at Bush's "cowboy way" typified by belligerent, teenage age taunts like "dead or alive," "bring 'em on," "I'm a little envious," "kick ass" and "we're smoking them out." Yesterday's pathetic episode was just another invitation to voters to view John McCain and President Bush as two peas in a pod.

Ultimately, even the perpetually unapologetic George W. Bush recognized that "using bad language like, you know, 'bring them on' was a mistake" which raised doubts about his presidential temperament. As for John McCain, who giggles about bombing - or at least smoking out - the Iranians, we're still waiting for a similar acknowledgement.

Until then, expect more messages like the one John McCain delivered last October to workers at a small arms factory in New Hampshire:

"I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will shoot him with your products."

Over at the National Review on Saturday, Kathryn Jean Lopez suggested a novel future for George W. Bush after he completes his disastrous tenure in the White House. The most unpopular President in modern times, Lopez insists, would "make an awesome high-school government teacher." But leaving aside for the moment his obvious aversion to academic study and the English language (as well as the U.S. Constitution), Bush has already made up his mind about his "post-service service." Upon leaving office, President Bush has said he plans to "replenish the ol' coffers."

Ignoring the inconvenient truth that many Republicans don't want the radioactive George Bush at their own national convention in Minneapolis, the NRO's Lopez would foist him instead on American schoolchildren:

"A totally crazy Saturday-morning thought: Wouldn't George W. Bush make an awesome high-school government teacher? Wouldn't it be something if his post-presidential life would up being that kind of post-service service? How's that for a model? Who needs Harvard visiting chairs and high-end lectures? How about Crawford High? (Or wherever?) Reach out and touch the young before they are jaded, or break them of the cynicism pop culture and possibly their parents have passed down to them. Whatever you think of President Bush, he's a likable guy in love with his country with some history and experience to share."

Unfortunately for Lopez, President Bush has already decided that he will cash in, and not give back, when his days in the Oval Office are done. In a series of interviews which appeared in Robert Draper's 2007 book Dead Certain, Bush confirmed that the banality - and venality - that defined his presidency will characterize his post-presidency as well:

First, Mr. Bush said, "I'll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol' coffers." With assets that have been estimated as high as nearly $21 million, Mr. Bush added, "I don't know what my dad gets - it's more than 50-75" thousand dollars a speech, and "Clinton's making a lot of money."

Then he said, "We'll have a nice place in Dallas," where he will be running what he called "a fantastic Freedom Institute" promoting democracy around the world. But he added, "I can just envision getting in the car, getting bored, going down to the ranch."

Some former presidents grow in status - and the people's esteem - only after they leave the White House. Jimmy Carter's failed term was redeemed in part by his charitable works and efforts for world peace. Bill Clinton's foundation and campaigns to battle AIDS, disease and natural disasters have made him perhaps the last globally respected American president. Even Richard Nixon's partial resurrection earned him elder statesman status.

But not President Bush. Already a small man, he will only decrease in stature as leaves the stage in Washington to "replenish the ol' coffers" and, apparently, just hang out. As Dubya put it last year, "Sixty-two is really young and yet I'll be through with my presidency."

When that time comes, Kathryn Jean Lopez has concluded, George W. Bush should bring the lessons of his failed presidency to school children. (Who knows - waterboarding kids for talking in class might even be legal in Texas.) But assuming she's not joking, in one sense she's surely right about his role in educating future generations.

If nothing else, he would serve as a horrible example.

Eulogies often tell us more about the living than the deceased. With his glowing words Friday about the late Jesse Helms, George W. Bush offered a case in point. Lauding the legendary North Carolina segregationist just as he did Helms' fellow traveler Strom Thurmond only five years earlier, Bush boosted his Republican allies even in death. But as a quick comparison to his meager 2002 statement about Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone shows, President Bush is the master of the partisan eulogy.

To be sure, no one should expect - much less want - the President to excoriate the racist homophobe Helms on the day of his death. But in proclaiming of the 86 year-old Helms that "it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July," Bush erased the legacy of a man history will associate more with the Stars and Bars than the Stars and Stripes. The man who campaigned on the race-baiting "hands ad" in 1990 now, Bush prays, "finds comfort in the arms of the loving God he strove to serve."

Bush described his former Republican colleague in hagiographic terms:

"Throughout his long public career, Senator Jesse Helms was a tireless advocate for the people of North Carolina, a stalwart defender of limited government and free enterprise, a fearless defender of a culture of life, and an unwavering champion of those struggling for liberty. Under his leadership, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a powerful force for freedom. And today, from Central America to Central Europe and beyond, people remember: in the dark days when the forces of tyranny seemed on the rise, Jesse Helms took their side.

Jesse Helms was a kind, decent, and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called 'the Miracle of America.' So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July. He was once asked if he had any ambitions beyond the United States Senate. He replied: 'The only thing I am running for is the Kingdom of Heaven.' Today, Jesse Helms has finished the race, and we pray he finds comfort in the arms of the loving God he strove to serve throughout his life."

Jesse Helms may have been an "unwavering champion of those struggling for liberty" abroad, just not those south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Five years ago, President Bush provided the Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond with a similarly glowing epitaph. Thurmond, of course, famously declared during his 1948 run for President that "there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the n****r race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches." (As it turned out, that was no barrier to Thurmond secretly fathering an illegitimate black child.) But while