A reader writes:
I'm totally convinced that Bush was some sort of Greek tragic hero: a man who made it all the way to the White House to prove to his father that he was worth something. Maybe he figured that he could just not rock the boat for four years and everything would turn out okay … and then 9/11 happened. He was totally out of his depth after that, checked out, and handed control of the country off to a collection of thugs and lunatics and pathetic incompetents: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, Yoo, Addington, "Brownie".
If he had only been the commissioner of Major League Baseball, maybe this country wouldn't be in such horrific shape after eight years of his administration, regardless of his personal decency or character flaws that every person has. That's why he's such a tragic figure in the original sense of the term.
Another writes:
You went way too soft on GWB.
His dangerously shallow and expedient espousal of “freedom” – a shallowness made manifest, for instance, by his inability/refusal to understand that such a noble concept can have no truck with torture – and, more particularly, his belief that said “freedom” is easily introduced and maintained in foreign lands, no matter how different their histories are from our own, are exactly what put us in the deep, deep hole we are only now beginning to climb out of. (Fukuyama’s recently published The Origins of Political Order does an excellent job of showing how utterly unworkable Bush’s “freedom agenda” truly was from the get-go.)
As someone who voted for the man twice, much to my everlasting shame, I have to say his aw-shucks, let’s-you-and-me-have-a-non-alcoholic-beer-after-we-go-dirt-biking amiability only makes what he did that much scarier – because I fell for it! Why are you doing the same now, after all the country’s been through on his account?
Another:
Let me just join the doubtless long line of readers in saying: He probably looks terrific because he seems to have felt little responsibility for what happened during his tenure, therefore no aging effects caused by guilt and worry – continuing to sleep like a baby. Even if he grows a beard, please don't tell us how attractive he looks.
Another:
George Bush doesn't befuddle me. His response, while it could have been, a la Cheney, less gracious, still seems to make its crummy points in a read-between-the lines way. For one thing, isn't it customary to call the sitting president, or any living president, President So-and-So, and not just refer to him by his last name like he were the third baseman for the Rangers? It brought to mind when he would say "Democrat Party." Tenably a slip-up, it's actually rude, and intended to demean.
I also think the former president implies that Bin Laden's death is not the big deal some make it out to be. "He was held up as a leader" seems to say Bin Laden's leadership was a matter of perception more than fact. The figurehead is dead. I think the incidental details of his having lunch at a specific restaurant is meant to underline this. "Hey, life goes on. Did my lunch need to be interrupted? Probably not. But I went home anyway.
Personally I prefer Cheney's testy, begrudging, Goddamn-it-they-did-it response.
(Photo: Former U.S. President George W. Bush looks over the field on Opening Day at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington on April 1, 2011 in Arlington, Texas. By Tom Pennington/Getty Images.)
The Dish 