Bush's news conference: Indifference, not defiance

I'd like to propose a modest addition to the First Amendment. While retaining its original language regarding a prohibition against abridging the freedom of the press, it should also require every media outlet to re-air or re-print at least a portion of George W. Bush's final news conference on a weekly basis.

Maybe then we would always remember our gnashing torment at the hands of this wretchedly small, little man, and collectively agree: never again.

Virtually all the reviews and recaps yesterday vigorously employed the word "defiant" -- MSNBC said Bush was defiant, CNN said he was defiant, the Times called him defiant and the Post called him defiant and I got the general impression that what most folks saw was defiance.

But to me, political "defiance" connotes a certain pride of position; a steadfast self-assurance in knowing (or believing) that one has done the right thing and therefore let the critics be damned. What I saw in Bush, however, was a defiance altogether lacking in such nobility, which reduced it to a mere but still monstrous indifference, an insufferable dismissiveness and of course his customary arrogance.

He wouldn't quite grant, for instance, that the lingering stain of Abu Ghraib even rose to the regrettable level of a "mistake." Instead, it was but a "huge disappointment," as though the Bush junta's criminal intent behind it was a negligible contribution. And, naturally, Iraq's "not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment" as well.

"I don't know if you want to call those mistakes, but things did not go according to plan," said Bush. Ah, but that's the point, is it not? Things went precisely according to plan, although those "things" weren't merely mistakes -- they were the product of irrefutable high crimes and war crimes and crimes against domestic and international law.

At another point he largely confirmed the above. It was advice for President-elect Barack Obama, which began with an incoherent tangle about "the Constitution of the United States and putting plans in place that makes it easier to find out what the enemy is thinking, because all these debates will matter not if there's another attack on the homeland." In short, simply bypass the Constitution, Mr. Obama, which you'll soon find is a most inconvenient document.

Then you're free to show the Fourth Amendment the door as well as to torture and shanghai and maim and murder in the name of national security. After all, "Remember what it was like just after Sept. 11 around here? ... People were saying, 'How come they didn't see it? How come they did not connect the dots?' ... Then, we started putting legal policy in place to connect the dots...."

Bush's strategic placement of "legal" before "policy" only underscored what, I assume, he had hoped to de-emphasize. Stripped naked, this was his argument for autocracy, for unquestioned and ultimate authority, for a poisonous reformulation of untrammeled executive power.

I did, however, learn one thing of personal interest yesterday. It seems I'm one of the "elite," as are you, most likely, as is roughly 90 percent of the outside world. For we -- and they -- are the only ones, according to Mr. Bush, who have lacked respect for America of late. Stunning, but I don't count that as defiant: He just doesn't give a damn.

On the economic homefront? Well, sure, we're having a bit of a bumpy road at the moment, but his supply-side policies were actually jim-dandy successes, if one would only smartly dismiss their consequent calamities.

It was fascinating. Just as Bush was rambling about his splendid economic record (give or take a recession or two), the Washington Post was running an online analysis of "the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades": "The number of jobs in the nation increased by about 2 percent during Bush's tenure, the most tepid growth ... since data collection began seven decades ago. Gross domestic product ... grew at the slowest pace for a period of that length since the Truman administration. And Americans' incomes grew more slowly than in any presidency since the 1960s, other than that of Bush's father."

Yet the Post's most defining entry was this: "Throughout much of the past year, even as the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve began preparing for the worst behind closed doors, Bush and his aides trumpeted the fundamental strength of the U.S. economy.... A White House fact sheet released on Sept. 5 was titled: 'American Economy Is Resilient in the Face of Challenges.'

"Two days later, the administration announced the federal takeover of Fannie and Freddie, setting in motion the most sweeping government intervention in the economy since the Great Depression."

Smoke, mirrors, lies, fabrications, disingenuity, delusion, indifference and dismissiveness and arrogance and abundant criminality, but little defiance. George W. Bush, you see, had so little to be defiant about, because he was always entitled.