Waiting for the Mask to Be Pulled Off

I've been waiting weeks now for President Bush to pull his mask off and reveal he's really Lyndon Johnson. With some of the biggest spending programs since LBJ and his rampant cronyism, especially with the choice of Harriet Miers to replace Sandra "Swings Left" O'Connor, I expected Scooby and Shaggy to yank off his mask any day and hear how he would've gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddlin' kids.

Perhaps he'll do some of LBJ's other classy moves like hold a beagle up by the ears or show us his hernia scar. Or maybe he'll just pack the courts with more of his cronies like Miers. The general consensus on the right seems to be that this is a huge mistake. She's a donor to several Democrats and could end up being to the left of Souter. Not promising.

My memory keeps going back to a story of LBJ waving good bye to some visiting dignitary, then as they drove off, whipping out old blue and taking a leak on a nearby Secret Service man's leg. When the Secret Service agent objected, LBJ was purported to have said "Son, that's a President's perogative".

Bush seems to believe it's also his perogative to appoint his doting friends (like Julie Myers) to high positions. Once again, a President forgets his campaign promises or just flat-out ignores them to do whatever he feels like. This is the joy of a second-term president. We saw this with Clinton's 11th hour pardons of paying customers like Mark Rich (actually I think it was his wife who paid Bubba, but that's another story) and political payoffs (like pardoning those Puerto Rican terrorists to help his wife in NY, you go Bill!). And now we get to see it in the Bush administration. I guess it goes to show the more administrations stay in power the more administrations stay the same. Whether they start left or right, they always end up screwing the American people.

Is there any wonder I ran as a third party candidate? Rather Libertarian and right than Republican and feeling crapped upon by your party elders. Politics as usual is the politics of disappointment, and Miers is a disappointment. With so many good choices for judges, Bush picks in the historical tradition of his fellow Texan, LBJ, a nobody lawyer who does his taxes. Great, yay for America.

Maybe one day, maybe, we might actually get a President who cares about appointing strict constructionists, and maybe one day we'll get a Speaker of the House who believes in controlling spending, limiting government, and not looking sleazy. Maybe one day, but not today.