The McLaughlin Group: The Toxic Legacy of George W. Bush & Dick Cheney

Nicole Belle, Crooks and Liars: I admit I get a slight case of schadenfreude in watching the mainstream media get forced to come around to what we in the liberal blogosphere have been saying all along: the Bush administration will be looked at as the worst ever. As we come mercifully to the final months of the Bush presidency, The McLaughlin Group asks its panel (made up of one “liberal” - Eleanor Clift and three conservatives - Monica Crowley, Mort Zuckerman and Michelle Bernard, naturally) just how toxic the legacy of Bush & Cheney will be. Try as they might to spin it to a more positive bend, none of the conservatives can truly deny McLaughlin’s list.

McLaughlin: Let me…let me go ahead with this exit question and you can fill it in with your own point now. Exit question: Is it too soon to conclude the following about the Bush/Cheney legacy? One: They destroyed the GOP Congressional majority. Two: Tanked the value of the dollar. Three: Created unprecedented red ink in the federal budget. Four: Drew us into a quagmire in Iraq. Five: Left us with a recession and inflation. Six: Then skedaddled out of town. The question is, is it too soon to conclude that the foregoing constitutes the Bush/Cheney legacy? Zuckerman.

Zuckerman: Well, I think you probably have weighted the case just slightly, John.

Actually, there’s so much more he could have added, Mort, as Eleanor Clift points out:

Clift: Well, the notion that the terrorist threat would have been worse if he had not acted the way he did does not excuse a war of choice in Iraq that was then needlessly and poorly managed. And also you left off the list ‘shredded the US Constitution’. I thought your list was pretty good [laughter] and that’s why President Bush has a 29% approval rating. He deserves it!

Big kudos to Clift as well for challenging Monica Crowley’s mindless “we’re winning in Iraq” meme. The clueless award goes not to Zuckerman for his equally mindless “at least we haven’t had another terrorist attack” either, but to Michelle Bernard, who seeks to give credit to Bush for bringing our collective attention to education and women’s rights, especially in the Middle East. Say what? I guess the fact that the conversation is about how lacking the Bush policies are in those areas doesn’t negate that we’re at least talking about them.

(Transcript)