“The fault, dear Brutus …”

What she said.

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

— Wm Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, I.ii

Now, that said … yes, there were those from the very beginning who despised Bush, who intensely disliked his avowed policies and plans — and many who, from Day 1, were calling for his impeachment.

If the public as a whole (and the “useless media,” as BD calls them) have some responsibility for letting Bush & Co. get away with it for so long (and they — we — do), so, too, do his direst political opponents, who ratcheted the rhetoric to 11 from the very beginning, and thus did their cause no good

It is perhaps self-serving of me, but much of the worst of the Bush Administration stems not from the various accusations thrown from the very beginning, but in actions taken since then.  Honestly speaking, I still don’t think going to war with Iraq was necessarily wrong (let alone impeachable), but the way we went about it — the execution and the aftermath — does border on criminal.  Similarly, I could stand behind the idea of having to take actions to increase security within the US post-911, but the way that it’s been done — bumbling in public, flouting the law in private — has led to as much danger in some ways as “the terrorists” themselves pose.

That said, it’s taken a long time for the public as a whole — and myself, perhaps, as part of it — to step up to more than mere grumbling.  The handwriting was already on the wall in 2004, and Bush still managed to get reelected (alleged improprieties aside) … and here I’ll spread the blame to the political opposition as well.  If Satan himself rose for a sulfurous pit and ran for president on the GOP ticket promising to eat the souls of all children and consign them into eternal torment, the Democrats would still manage to put up someone against him that would give the voting public pause.  For myself, for all I really disliked all that Bush was doing by 2004, I still was so turned off by Kerry that I only decided on my vote at the last minute.

In the end, it will be ironic — and a bit scary — that what brought Bush down (in the polls, and in history, if not through some sort of impeachment process) was not the various malfeasance of he and his Administration, but the fact that they just were so unsuccessful at what they set out to do.  Iraq has turned into a fiasco, the War on Terror seems more noteworthy for wiretaps and long waits at the airport than for any particular victories won, and few of the political or social initiatives he ran on (twice) to pursue have come to pass. 

I just hope that January 2009 will not be too late for us to start repairing the damage done.