Rarely has a man made more of a fool of himself, than has Lou Dobbs with most of his recent post on his webpage on CNN.com. Rarely does one catch such a glimpse of self-importance, arrogance and assumptions of omniscience. It is so bad that Dobbs imagines himself enough of a soothsayer, enough of a scryer,* that he knows what Bush's legacy will be even before Bush leaves office... if, according to Dobbs, the country is still even here when Bush steps down. Talk about wild-eyed, hyperbole. With people like Dobbs and Olberman, it is no wonder that no one believes what the MSM says. Their "act" is so outrageous, there is no way to take them seriously.
"Beware the lame duck," Dobbs ominously warns with his headline in this piece, most of which is just a silly screed, where he worries that the country won't last another 15 months.
"Frankly, I spend more time worrying about whether or not the United States can survive the remaining 15 months of his ebbing presidency."
Oh, brother.
And in his arrogance, Dobbs assumes he somehow knows what Bush's legacy will be with "historians" of the future.
"There is little mystery about what future historians will consider to be the legacy of the 43rd president of the United States. Those historians are certain to describe the first presidential administration of the 21st century with terms such as dissipation and perversion."
No self-respecting historian would claim to know any such thing. Truman, for instance, was widely considered an utter failure as he was leaving office. Reagan was thought by many to have been a doddering fool who did little while in the White House. In both cases those president's legacies were greatly enhanced by the passage of time and the ability to more properly assess their work in office that passage of time afforded. And these two executives are not the only ones whose legacy changed as historians found more evidence of their efforts and of the results from them. So, anyone who claims he already knows Bush's legacy is a either an idiot, or a liar.
Dobbs next launches into what he claims "conservatives" refuse to accept about Bush.
"Although many conservatives refuse to accept the reality, George W. Bush is a one-world neo-liberal who drove budget and trade deficits to record heights while embracing faith-based economic policies that perversely require only blind allegiance to free markets and free trade, without regard for consequence."
Very few conservatives ever thought of Bush as one of them. He was known as a big government Republican since day one. So, Dobbs is way off base imagining that conservatives "refuse to accept the reality" that Bush is no conservative. In fact, it's hard to even find a conservative that ever claimed Bush was conservative. Many, in fact, think him a liberal in spending and his tenure in office has proved them correct.
Then Dobbs launches into a litany of supposed calamities caused by president Bush but the most ridiculous comment was this one:
"This president pursues a war without demanding of his generals either success or victory and accepts the sacrifice of our brave young men and women in uniform while asking nothing of our people or the nation at a time of war."
This whole sentence is simply meaningless babble. Bush has replaced several generals who were not performing up to his desires (just like Lincoln did, by the way), so the claim that he expects nothing from them is absurd on its face. Bush may have had mistaken policies but to claim he has never expected anything from his generals just makes no sense. Further, what "sacrifice" is Dobbs expecting from the "people or the nation," anyway? Is he expecting some quaint WWII effort? Is he expecting scrap drives and ration stamps? Perhaps Dobbs hasn't noticed the fact that such efforts are not needed now in the same way they were in WWII? We are not in a depression, we are not fighting the millions of men we faced from Germany, Italy and Japan, and we are not gearing up from no military to a world ranging force like we had to in the 1940s. Also, we have an all volunteer army without a draft. How could we expect MORE sacrifice from the people (with compulsory government programs like we had in WWII) than we do from the people who would fight the war, an age class
not compelled through a draft to serve in the military?
Dobbs laments, "Sadly, this president has diminished a great nation and may diminish it further."
What tosh. If you want to see a diminished nation, then check out the USA in the waning hours of the Clinton presidency. Al Qaeda ranged with no impediment from Clinton freely planning 9/11 while the president and his family roamed through the White House stealing furniture and silverware, their staffs childishly wandered about vandalizing government offices in Washington, and felons by the droves paid the Clintons off for last second pardons. And that's not to even mention the many years of one "gate" scandal after another previous to those last days.
But, my guess is that despite all the criminality of the wasted Clinton years, Dobbs felt quite good about that time. I'd also bet Dobbs was arrogant enough to have fully assessed how "great" Clinton was by that period of time, as well. No doubt Dobbs felt just a'OK about the administration that helped our enemies across the world set up the dangerous conditions that Bush found himself in on 9/11.
Now, to end his piece, Dobbs goes after the LOST treaty. And here he finally makes some sense. The LOST treaty should remain lost in the hole that Ronald Reagan tossed it into before he left office in the 1980s. Dobbs' criticism against this disastrous treaty is spot on, so he does redeem himself from utter insanity just in the nick of time even as he cannot avoid childish hyperbole to describe it.
All in all, Dobbs comes off far more as a ranting nut than he does a serious commentator with this latest rambling example of BDS. Dobbs seems to imagine himself some sort of historian but should he imagine a true "historian" would chose the sort of frothing rhetoric Dobbs chose, he is sadly mistaken. Unfortunately for our times and discourse, Dobbs is just yet another example of why people like him cannot be taken seriously.
*A "scryer" is someone who reads a crystal ball to see the future.
Warner Todd Huston——
Bio and Archives
Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as Breitbart.com, among many, many others. He has also written for several history magazines, has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.
He is also the owner and operator of Publius’ Forum.
