Downfall, American Style

April 2006, a nation awaits the downfall of the Junior Bush regime. . . . .

It's coming. The Bush presidency is crumbling, and short of an oil hall putsch, we will be rid of them by early 2009 regardless of Scooter, Abramoff and the rest of this den of thieves.

This is the way of American presidents. Since 1900, two have been assassinated, two more died in office "naturally," and all the two timers suffered major crises in their second terms.

If we start with Eisenhower, he had to deal with Sputnik and the Gary Powers U2 spy incident. His tricky little VP, Richard Milhous Nixon, lost to JFK in the tight and nasty 1960 election. JFK was assassinated not even three years into his tumultuous first term. LBJ withdrew in 1968 thanks to the Tet Offensive and general Vietnam fiasco. Nixon made his infamous comeback, only to have to resign in the wake of Watergate. Ford pardoned him and promptly lost to Jimmy Carter, who because of a bizarre combination of personal honesty, national "malaise," and the Iranian hostage crisis, lost in 1980 to Ronald Reagan, who found himself losing his mind and grip on power thanks in part to the Iran-Contra scandal (remember the great idea of sending cakes, Bibles and missiles to the crafty Iranians? While sending missiles and other equipment to Saddam Hussein, and Stinger missiles to the Afghan guerillas, who included among their number Osama Bin-Laden?) Senior Bush, of course, had been immersed in all the same messes, as well, and had been a CIA friend and supporter of Manuel Noriega. As President, he ordered the invasion of Panama and toppled Noriega, dropping the unfortunately pockmarked man into a Florida prison cell for the rest of his life. Some friend. Next, he organized the grand invasion of Kuwait, hurling Hussein's Iraqis back and inflicting heavy casualties. But then he managed to bungle an alarmingly high approval rating via his inept handling of the economy and aloofness from the common people, leaving the door open for Bill Clinton, who of course got himself into heaps of trouble over his various skanky girlfriends and general dissembling. He managed to survive, but in early 2001 the Republicans swept back into power with their boy Junior, one of the most stupid and wreckless men to ever hold office (moral: never trust a recovering alcoholic with power.) Finally, thanks to the Iraq disaster and intertwining corruption scandals, this wicked and imbecilic group of plundering buffoons are losing their grip,too. Of course, they get to crawl from the wreckage -- leaving the rest of us poor slobs to deal with their toxic garbage dump for God knows how long -- maybe until the world collapses in shock from the collective ravages of humankind.

The main point being, people have been tricked and fooled forever, but leaders are leaders, and they all go away eventually. Small comfort, but it's good to remember.

Two intense and excellent film treatments of this topic are Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1977) and Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall (2004). Anyone who sees these and has a pulse has to see the folly of trusting megalomaniacs. These movies depict downfalls in epic German style, of course. Americans, if not any less violent than Germans, are mercifully less disciplined and less organized, and so the inevitable downfall of our leaders does not automatically bring the downfall of the entire nation. Too, we have a simpleminded but workable Constitutional system in place to ensure a relatively smooth transition of power -- or at least we do until now. Thanks to 9/11 and the Patriot Act and the war with radical Islam, not to mention the disasters wrought by global warming, all bets are off from here on out.

Auf Weidersehen . . . . .