In Brief: President Bush Wants You to Know That He's Great:
There will be plenty of time for examining just how much destruction has been wrought by the last eight years (and not enough years in the rest of most of our lives to fix it). What's going on in Mumbai right now is pretty much Exhibit Y or Z of how blind and ignorant U.S. foreign policy has been under George W. Bush. And there's going to be many an exit interview, too. Still, in this day after Thanksgiving, the never more rightly-named "Black Friday," let's let the man speak for himself.

For the StoryCorps project of the Library of Congress, George and Laura Bush were interviewed by Bush's sister, Doro Bush Koch (which sounds like a cute Japanese lizard). Of course, one can't expect hard-hitting questions from one's own sister, and these seem particularly heavily scripted by committee. What's head-shakingly sad about the President's answers is how he refuses to recognize his failures, a lack of self-awareness that's beyond narcissism and into something we might rightly term "balls-out, fucking, barking mad." The Rude Pundit's pretty sure that's a condition listed in the DSM-IV.

Here's Bush on how he wants to be remembered as President: "I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process. I came to Washington with a set of values, and I'm leaving with the same set of values. And I darn sure wasn't going to sacrifice those values." You get that? More than anything else ("first and foremost"), he wants to be remembered for being a stubborn motherfucker. More than anything else, he wants everyone for now and all eternity to know that he refused to change his "values," circumstances, history, and cataclysms be goddamned. That's some fine legacy-makin', that is.

When Sis asks about the role "faith" plays in his "day-to-day life," Bro answers, "I've been in the Bible every day since I've been the President, and I have been affected by people's prayers a lot. I have found that faith is comforting, faith is strengthening, faith has been important." How much of Bush's presidency has been taken up with time spent "in the Bible"? How does it compare to his cycling regimen? What's more important? The prayin' or the exercisin'? Fat Christians need to know, man.

Of course, being in the Bible so much while presidentin' has given Bush a chance to learn some shit. "[P]oliticians should not be judgmental people based upon their faith. They should recognize -- as least I have recognized I am a lowly sinner seeking redemption," he said, "and therefore have been very careful about saying (accept) my faith or you're bad. In other words, if you don't accept what I believe, you're a bad person." One might be tempted to say that a lowly sinner ought to avoid "pride," which, if the Rude Pundit's rudimentary understanding of the Good Book is right, is a sin. But, you know, why bother.

Bonus: Laura says, "I worry about Afghanistan." Truer words, darlin', truer words.