Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi very nicely sums up "The collapse of the Bush administration"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

NOTE: This is an excerpt from a much larger piece in the current issue (online also), "My Campaign Memories." Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

:patriot:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23947840/my_campaign_memories/2

THE MUTANT FREAK
Merrimack, NH — October 2007
I'm in a little church where Mitt Romney is plowing through his umpteenth town hall with the enthusiasm of an Amway salesman. You know there's a problem, political-dynamics-wise, when the candidate enjoys the crowd attention more than the crowd enjoys listening to him. Romney on the trail blabbers like a boy who's just rushed home to tell his mommy about every last boring freaking thing that happened at school. Finally, to the relief of the audience, the moderator leans into a microphone and says, "Governor Romney, this will be the last question."

To this point in the campaign, all the Republican candidates have come off like Vegas stand-up routines. The collapse of the Bush administration left the Republican Party utterly bankrupt of ideological advantage. The Bush era made it impossible to sell the party as fiscally conservative ($10 trillion deficit), militarily superior ($12 billion a month fighting a handful of Arabs in sandals to a bloody draw), or even as the party of "moral values" (a raft of Republicans caught offering to suck off strangers in restrooms or texting little boys on the Internet). So the 2008 presidential candidate lineup was a collection of second-rate buffoons — Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Tom Tancredo, Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson, John McCain — who spent most of the primary season running against Mexicans and the state of Iran. I heard one GOP operative describe them as "a bunch of Nuremberg defendants."

Romney was, in his way, the worst of the bunch. His plan, apparently, was to run out the clock — to hold his breath and rely on his superior Mormon moral conditioning while he waited for all the other mutants in the race to die of their genetic vulnerabilities. Not a bad strategy. What undermined him was that if you weren't already a Romney supporter, it took about five seconds in his toothy, celluloid presence before you started feeling a profound urge to wizard-kick him in the face. You could see that phenomenon everywhere, even in the eyes of the other Republican candidates.

So now, in the church in Merrimack, Romney is finally wrapping up. As usual, he's jacked up like a skate tweak, and as a member of the audience poses the last question, he flinches histrionically at the sound of the microphone and starts mock-scanning the ceiling of the chapel for the source of the voice. "Whoa!" he says. "That sounds like someone up there." Is Romney, who generally makes a point of avoiding religion and sticking to his business credentials, about to go all Christian on us?

"It's like, you know — 'Attention, Kmart shoppers!' " he finishes. The crowd stares at him in silence.

And I'm thinking to myself, "Are these guys trying to lose?" How is it possible that the Republicans can't find even one candidate who isn't the goofiest motherfucker in the room every place he goes? Is this some kind of trap? More to the point, how can the Democrats possibly blow it this time? But then you remember — they're the Democrats.

[MichiganVote]

1. Another jackass. Place is crowded with them.

[bread_and_roses]

6. Taibbi? Just curious - why? All I know about him is that he's a very good writer

- I don't have to agree with his every word to really enjoy reading him. But he sure has a gift - imho - for capturing essence in a very few words.

[MichiganVote]

8. Romney, not Tabbi.

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

2. That was a good read, make sure to read the first page, DUers, and note the date.

[trof]

3. Just read his "The Great Derangement:

A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire"

Get it.

[Hamlette]

4. the best is the last two paragraphs, coming from a guy who was not kind to Obama on Maher.

This is called being better than your supporters, and it's a new thing in modern American politics. Year after year, even the president of our country has been consistently too small and too cheap to stand up and face his problems like a grown-up, forever passing the buck to this or that group of Americans. If it wasn't Reagan crying about "freeloaders" or George H.W. Bush blasting the "apologize for America" crowd, it was the Clintons whining about the "vast right-wing conspiracy."

We were all educated in this culture of blame-the-other-sap, and that's why we Americans are always whining about getting jobbed by someone: the media, Hollywood, Big Tobacco, anybody. But this year, the more the other side whined and pointed fingers, the higher Obama's star climbed. It's reassuring to see that someone in this country is finally doing some growing up. Let's hope that it says as much about us as it does about the presidency.

[hatrack]

5. The best political writer since Mencken

K&R

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. I fuckin' LOVE this guy

He's great.

"The historical seas literally parted for this Obama guy, with inconceivable idiocy and villainy littering the political shores on either side of him as he ascended to the pantheon of all-time American heroes simply by walking straight ahead and not being a dick."

Dead on balls accurate.