The Bush Administration Jumps the Shark (1)

I have never found much in the Bush Administration's policies to admire. And, Bush 43 Redux looks like more and even more of the same. But, in Bush's headlong victory, we can watch as those things he truly represents overcome those things he claims he stands for.

So, I'm watching for Bush's Jump the Shark moment -- the moment when it becomes obvious to everyone watching that Bush is no longer about what even he claimed he was about. ("Jump the shark" refers to the episode of the 70s TV show "Happy Days", when the Fonz -- the ultimate in cool -- took the show in its unprecedented direction by travelling to California and jumping over a great white shark cage on water skiis).

My first nomination for Bush's jump the shark moment: "The Heroes Red, White and Blue Inaugural Ball", attended by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. (described here by Frank Rich) The evening's headliners Nile Rodgers and Chic sang the lyrics 'Clap your hands, hoo!' and 'Dance to the beat' to a group of soldiers missing hands and legs. It's a moment in which even the preternaturally naive can see that the Balls held to "honor" the wounded and dead from Iraq simply used them as ornaments and political props.

Now, sure, that's mere rank symbolism -- the ground-up meat and bones of soldiers home from war, set on display to convince a country that their sacrifices are honored by this Administration, openly if negligently made mockery of by a bread-and-circus-style circus.

In the meantime, the woman who brought us the quotable "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" and the man who made torture, once illegal by the Geneva Conventions, the policy of the United States now turn the machinery of Bush's foreign policy and domestic legal apparatus.

It renders Orwell's "1984" to -- borrowing from one of Gonzales' legal briefs -- the status of "quaint". The woman now responsible for the nation's security through diplomacy was as responsible as anyone in the administration for bringing us to a war which removed not a single nuclear bomb from play, or even delayed a biological terror program. The man now responsible for the nation's justice system believes more strongly in the capability of power-politics, where you can torture people, because you can. Indeed, War is Peace, and Freedom is Slavery. No duh.

But, as Bush said, the "accountability moment" has passed. In his view, he can move forward, unaccountably. I'm sure all those who voted for him find that to be something they can dance and clap about.