Rather than presume that the most powerful office in the world's most powerful nation is entirely feckless, I prefer to let their actual successes reveal to us the Bush administration's truest aspirations.

So, let us not wonder what the Bush administration promised to be, or might have been, or failed to be -- let's look at what they actually did.

What they actually did, and in fact what Bush was wildly successful at, was two-fold:

(1) Rampant cronyism and access capitalism, widespread and profuse unaccountable contracting and open corruption. The largely unregulated, often untraceable, and basically irreversible transfer of trillions in money and value from the commonwealth to a handful of connected elites.

(2) Widespread systematic infections of fascism, secrecy, lawbreaking, abuses of power, and thuggishness. This administration has been an authoritarian/totalitarian wet dream.

Many people have come to the conclusion that the Bush administration is a failed presidency. I say hardly. I say that Bush has succeeded at everything he really wanted to do.

Succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

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One quible: please substantiate the claim that Reagan shrank government, even modestly.

yeah we said the same thing you did at our house. I once made the argument you did, that Bush was very successful at what he wanted to do. the rest of the family agreed. We've made that a black humor joke around here fr a couple years.

Judge them by their fruits? You mean Mark Foley and Larry "Wide Stance" Craig? LOL