Thanks for the memories

Thank you, Joe Conason. I had nearly exorcised a very bad memory. Close to a zen-like state of grace, I was. But, to paraphrase Michael Corleone, every time I get out, somebody "pulls me back in." That's you, Joe.

So now that the nightmare is back inside my head, "I'm gonna tell you the damnedest story you ever heard," as Sen. Ray Clark (Edmond O'Brien) put it so colorfully in the Cold War thriller Seven Days in May.

Once upon a time, some twelve years ago, Conason writes, "a Texas Republican strode into the presidential arena as an immediate contender. He seemed to be a man of middling intellect at best, yet well equipped with conservative ideology, religious piety, powerful ambition and corporate money, not to mention a certain kind of swagger." Inexplicably, he mostly got a free pass from the press. Instead, the unrelenting scrutiny and mockery was reserved for his opponent, Al Gore. (He "invented the Internet," he wore "earth tones," the Kiss -- remember?) It was the worst media performance ever. And yet this same "Texan" got another pass during the next election despite Abu Ghraib and a war spiraling out of control. Again, the scrutiny and mockery rained down on his opponent: John Kerry (a swifted-boated, flip-flopping, "Frenchified phony" -- remember?) You'd think the (so-called liberal) press has a standing, mafia-style contract out on all Democratic presidential candidates. "By the time America learned the truth about George W. Bush, around the beginning of his second term, he had done more damage to this country than any president in the last hundred years," Conason sadly observed.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the ballot box. They reelected Bush anyway. And the world gasped. So did I. That it all actually happened is still hard to fathom. It still gives me the shakes. Only the Phoenix-like emergence of Obama prevented me from swearing off politics permanently. (The plan was to spend my intellectual capital solely on history. Anything politic would get the cover-both-ears-la-la-la-la-la-la-la treatment.) With Rick Perry in mind, Conason wonders: Has America and the media learned anything from "the Bush debacle?" As far as the voters are concerned, I'll go out on a very creaky limb and say, maybe. Concerning the media, you're joking, right? These are the folks who spent months covering birth certificates, Donald Trump's lunatic ravings and Palin's National Lampoon bus tour. (Have you seen the photo of her toe-nails yet? I kid you not.) So, Joe, for breaking my blissful state of denial about the Bush Epoch, here's a little something Corleonesque to bear in mind: "I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. ..."