OK, Bush is the worst White House resident in US history. OK, his neo-con backers are a bunch of rabid, slobbering, war-mongering buffoons. But the sad fact is that Bush is just a symptom of what is wrong with the USA today. Hopefully his dismissal in 2004 - if not his impeachment beforehand - will encourage a healing national process of self re-discovery for what used to be the greatest democracy in the world.
Without widespread public support, Bush would never have been able to steal the last election. Ok, he dressed up as a wolf in "caring conservative" sheep's clothing, but the truth is that nearly half the voting public backed him, and the 51% who didn't bother to vote are just as much a part of the problem. They probably still don't care what he is doing to their country and the world, as long as their baseball team is winning or their favourite star has a new album/movie coming out.
Without widespread public support, Bush and Co. would be in jail by now. In this case it's not just the US public, but particularly the US politicians in the Senate and the House, who must bear the blame. They gave Bush unprecedented powers after 9/11. They gave him the power to declare an unprecedented unilateral war on Saddam. They passed his trillion dollar deficits and $87 billion war chests, they passed his anti-environmental bills. They let people like Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft run rampant.
The Economist magazine this week has a good look at how and why the USA is out of step with the rest of the world, particularly Europe. The following image puts it all in a nutshell:
