What Can He Possibly Have To Say For Himself?

With less than a week to go before George W. Bush gives his final State of the Union Address, what can he say to justify his many failures to the American people?

The economy is heading into what, at the very least, is the most serious recession in modern times. We are awash in a sea of bad debt. The Stock Market is falling. Unemployment is rising. The Real Estate Market is in free fall. His answer is to lower interest rates and lie about the resulting inflation of our monetary system. When he took over the Presidency, the government was running surpluses, the national debt was actually shrinking. His administration has run up more debt than was incurred in the entire previous history of the republic.

The state of our society verges on tyranny. Bush has suspended the right to be charged, confront your accuser and be tried by a jury. The US now maintains secret prisons in foreign countries. Agents of our government can torture detainees and hold them indefinitely with impunity. Anyone's communications, of any sort, may be monitored, without a warrant, at any time. He invalidates the law of the land by simply adding a note to the legislation as it is passed, stating he is not bound by it.

He has led us into a unilateral war of aggression against Iraq. It has drained us of trillions of dollars and maimed and killed a generation of our young. It has earned us nothing but the enduring enmity of the Islamic World and the disdain of most of the rest. Our foreign policy is a shambles. Our military is irreparably damaged, with no money to rebuild it.

He has forged deep divisions in our society along racial, religious and class lines. These are kinds of injuries which heal slowly and scar deeply. There is no rational reason to promote this kind of discord except to encourage the kind of fear, hatred and distrust necessary to hold his evil coalition together a little longer.

This is a man with no love or even sympathy for the American people. When he leaves office, he will walk away, into a life of wealth and privilege the like of which most of us can't even imagine. He will have so little contact with the common man that he will never see or understand the damage he has done.