swirling

I found myself a bit giddy reading Joe Klein’s column in the October 9th issue of Time magazine. Here is what he wrote:

What an awful year for the President and the country. There was the failure of Social Security reform, a good idea that was misplaced as the Administration’s top priority. There was the shameless political grandstanding in the Terri Schiavo case. There was Katrina. There is the stench of corruption rising from the Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff scandals and the appointment of so many hacks and cronies to positions of power. There is the possibility that Karl Rove and other top Administration officials will soon be indicted in the Valerie Plame leak case. There was, and is, the failure to deal head-on with the Iraq war and make the necessary adjustments—more troops, more pressure on the corrupt and Iranophilic government of Ibrahim al-Jaafari—that might secure a better outcome. The higher gasoline prices portend a very expensive home-heating winter. About the only thing that went well for Bush was the nomination of the indisputably excellent John Roberts to the Supreme Court.

I even shared the article with my boyfriend, I was so excited to see this list in print. Then I felt a little guilty. As Joe Klein said, it has been an awful year for the country. Why should I feel happy when I read about natural disasters and corruption and war (what is it good for? absolutely nothin’! say it again!)? But this only plagued me for a moment. I wasn’t happy that terrible things are happening to people around the world, but instead, I was pleased to see that people are finally starting to notice, acknowledge and hopefully soon, get disgusted with our current president and the cloud of deceit he and his administration (a.k.a. cronies) have so skillfully wielded for too many years.

I wish Klein’s article stopped right there, because he goes on to say how the president can earn back the approval ratings Bush is clamoring to get back. Basically, he said that the president should actually try to solve problems, rather than continuing on his current path of trying to talk himself out of them, and that he can do this by calling in people who always have been and are the experts on the topics at hand and give them the power to make the changes that need to be made, instead of the people whose backs need scratching. I can’t imagine Bush reading any other type of articles other than pat-ourselves-on-the-back in-house gibberish, but there is a chance that he may have a copy of Time by his toilet, and I can think of nothing worse than him actually reading this column and realizing that this type of tactic (of actually working) might actually work. He may then actually do something for the country, something positive, something that raises his ratings, something that leaves a good taste in the mouth of America.

And then, I would be sad, not because things are better for people in America and around the world, but because even though it worked, it would just be another cloud of deceit, a winning tactic for a sick administration.