Legacy boy

Robert Draper has taken on the unenviable though presumably lucrative task of writing a book about George Bush and the "legacy" that Bush postulates will be his. Except for some blood money royalty payments, this will certainly be a grim and fruitless charge, one that can only result in aspersions directed against the complicit author. Nonetheless, there appear to be no end of saps and dullards who aspire to hagiography. But this is made easier for Draper considering that, ironically enough, Bush Sr. was a pall bearer at the funeral of Draper's grandfather, Leon Jaworski, special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal. Yes, they really are just like the mafia.

We've been hearing about Bush's imagined divinity for sometime now, as he ignores his broadening lack of contemporaneous popularity in favour of some future historical praise that he is sure will see the wisdom and virtue of his currently poorly understood vision for a better world. Bush denies that he thinks about this, though, by telling us,

I don’t have that much time to think beyond my presidency.

Oddly, this echoes most critics, who regularly point out that Bush clearly doesn't have much time to think within his presidency, consumed as he is by the near continuous effort expended in his rush to break Reagan's vacation record. Bush does assure us, however, that in his retirement he will be running a "fantastic Freedom Institute," otherwise to be known as the FFI of Dallas. One imagines this as a sister organisation of the AEI, known publicly as the American Enterprise Institute but thought to be colloquially known by denizens as the "awesome Enterprise Institute."

But it didn't take too long before Bush spilled the beans about Iraq by indicating, not only his own unwavering intentions to stay in Iraq as long as possible, but to ensure that any incoming president will be happy to do so as well.

“I’m playing for October-November.” That is when he hopes the Iraq troop increase will finally show enough results to help him achieve the central goal of his remaining time in office: “To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence,” and, he said later, “stay longer.”

Given what we've been hearing from Democrats lately, it looks like Bush has succeeded in attaining this "position."