Can't Wait

A few quick words before the carpet cleaner arrives and, hopefully, the painters and the contractor, who has yet to complete some electrical work...

I can't wait. The country can't wait. I note from my trusty Bush counter, in the right sidebar of The Buddha Diaries, that the current occupant of the White House has another fifty-five days, eleven hours and, as of this moment, twenty-nine minutes to wreak his havoc and lay his IED's to sabotage the next administration. Gail Collins was right, in the New York Times the other day, when she suggested that the greatest gift Bush could make to the country that he claims to love would be to resign, right now--well, after, not before his vice-president does the same--and leave the way clear for his successor. Obama, it seems, could not take office before his due time, but at least Nancy Pelosi would be left as nominal president to carry out his programs until January. (First woman President, as Collins also points out!)

We really can't afford to wait. The economy needs urgent action, not a further two months of reactive patching-up by the lame-duck Bush administration, defending the old, failed ideas as though they had not already been proven as bankrupt as the growing list of American financial institutions whose short-term interests they served, at the expense of the vast majority of Americans. We need a vision and a policy, and a team that's capable of realizing them.

Almost as bad as the big picture are the myriad small offenses--the continuing, spiteful, cynical sabotage of decades of environmental protection by administrative rulings that will take months or years to reverse. In full knowledge of the will expressed by the voters just two weeks ago--and of the fact that his successor will work hard to reverse his decisions--this Bush is devoting his final weeks in office to making dangerous and pointless mischief at the expense of the people whom he swore to serve.

There's something wrong with a system that can be so easily abused, that leaves so many of us frustrated by our impotence to prevent the actions of cynical and mendacious leaders. We boast to the world about our freedom and our democracy, yet we are forced to stand by and wring our hands when those leaders make a public mockery of our will. It's disgraceful.