Sun Setting on Bush’s Empire

International Viewpoint, September 2007

David Finkel

With the George W. Bush presidency limping into its final sixteen months and a line of rats led by torture boy Alberto Gonzales and dirty trickmeister Karl Rove jumping ship, several questions come to mind. Even if definitive answers aren’t possible, the questions provide a kind of window into the state of the regime and the larger crisis it has helped to create.

Is this administration, as some serious historians suggest, the very worst in U.S. history?
Following its failure and debacle in Iraq, will this gangster regime take the ultimate plunge the world into the ultimate catastrophe of a war with Iran?
Will the Democrats who narrowly control Congress do anything to force Bush out of Iraq?
Will the sudden turmoil in financial markets triggered by the sleazy “subprime mortage” collapse translate into political crisis for an administration on the brink? The question of the Bush regime’s place in history should be divided into two parts. Certainly in its levels of corruption, mendacity, destruction of the Bill of Rights and of people’s freedom from government abuse, this administration has combined the criminality of the Nixon (Watergate) and Reagan (Iran-Contra) presidencies and, as we say on this side of the pond, “taken them to a new level.” Just take the Supreme Court – please!

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