In a little over four days, Oliver Stone’s W biopic hits theaters.
I’ve got mixed feelings about going to see it — which is to say, do I really want to spend two more hours of my life thinking about George W. Bush then I would have to otherwise?
I don’t believe that Dubya is evil. I’ve never joined in the far-left “Bush = Hitler!” crowd. I think he’s done a shit job, and I think he’s been mostly worthless as a President. I found a post I wrote on a bulletin board I’ve been posting on for nearly a decade, titled, oddly enough, “Kudos to Bush.” It, admittedly, wasn’t a very long post (just after September 11th, and Bush’s big speech) and it didn’t take long for Bush to squander the good will of left-leaning voters like myself.
At this point, with the Republican ticket just about surely to have an embarrassing smackdown at the polls in 23 days — hope you registered to vote! — largely on the failures of the Bush Administration over the last eight years, a film on this topic just sort of feels like jumping up and down on the grave of a guy you’ve hated since kindergarten. Yeah, he’s out of the picture, but what’s there to celebrate? An economy going down the toilet? An unnecessary occupation of Iraq? Torture?
It’s hard for me to see a possible future where history does not regard Mr. Bush as one of the worst presidents in history. For my money, however, Andrew Johnson wins that statue. This actually reminds me of one of the lines from the extended trailer (above): when asked how he thinks history will remember him, Josh Brolin replies, “In history, we’ll all be dead.” And of course he’s right: dead people generally don’t give a shit what some history books says about them. On the other hand, living people will still be reading those history books, and if there’s one thing clear, here it is: two hundred years down the line, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush will be the Filmores and the Garfields and the what’s-his-name-who-died-of-a-cold-thirty-days-in, but George W. Bush’ll be one of those people remember: he’ll be remembered like Abraham Lincoln and FDR, but hardly for the same reasons — Bush’ll be the President recognized for how he changed America’s course, and not in a good way.
I don’t think there’s anything to celebrate about the disintegration of the Republican Party under Dubya: fiscal responsibility? Individual rights? The Constitution? Their leadership shows disregard for all, but I have my hopes. I hope that the Republican Party, now mired thick with Christianist stickies, either dissolves into nothing, or remakes itself as a Goldwaterish libertarian party: right on the economy, left on social issues. I’m a registered independent — well, assuming everything went okay with registering, more on that later — but the current GOP has nothing for me. Fiscal responsibility? They just nationalized Wall Street! Individual freedom? They’re anti-gay-marriage! How do you get any more anti-freedom than telling people who you can or cannot marry? Don’t even get me started on spying. Or the unPatriot Act.
Maybe Bush’s legacy is the destruction of the GOP, so that it can be reborn from the ashes. I’m hoping that when, and if, that occurs, we get the kind of Republican Party that speaks to left-leaning folks (as moderate as I and others may be), and doesn’t scare the ever lovin’ bejesus out of us.
As for W, well, that’s what I’ve got Netflix for.
(What’s that song on the trailer, anyways?)
