He's completely delusional to epic proportions. He'll be muttering, "I have alaways depended on the kindness of strangers" as secret service leads him to his plane after the inauguration.

well, maybe it is a good thing all this happened on bush's watch. it gives us one place to focus all the blame.

Hey, he's the "sh*t happens" president.

Reminds me of kids and young adults who think they know everything, and can't see past the current instant. Incurious.

This would be damned funny if the disaster we are looking at wasn't so serious.

m-e-g-a-l-o-m-a-n-i-a

OMG, Bush reminicsing on his GREAT LEADERship skills and opportunities to show us those skills: so many words come to mind, sociopath, psychopath, aristocrat, genetics, arrogance, blind stupidity... but the most succinct and colloqiual word is this, idiot.

George " Jacques Clouseau" Bush.

That's just f*ck*ng pathetic. I hope he lives a long, long time.

". . . apparently doesn't his mind."

You're missing a word there.

We should be grateful that George W Bush has stayed the course on so many important issues.

And we should also be grateful that John McCain will bring the change we need in Washington.

The Decider has apparently now become The Side Dish to a Good Group of People.

"He said that if it was going to happen at all......".

So here is the President of the United States of America, Captain Codpiece himself, basically saying he has no control over anything that happens to this country?

What a disgrace he is to the office he holds.

"The notion that he bears responsibility for his failures apparently hasn't [entered] his mind."

Mind? What mind?

Hey, if you can't bullshit yourself, you can't bullshit anybody else.

Finally, a regulatory failure in the well established pattern of regulatory failure - FERC, OSHA, FDA, USDA, and now SEC - under his watch gets his attention and he still doesn't get it.

Hey, AL, Bush promised change, bringing integrity back to DC....it didnt happen and I would wager it would not happen under McCain either.

Government has grown under 'small government' Bush, debt has grown more than any other president in history under 'conservative' Bush.

McCain would be more of the same, if not worse, than his mentor.

Bush is too far gone to face the truth about himself. He will never come to realize that he is the opposite of the man he thinks he is.

The only good news is that he is now irrelevant.

George W. Bush = President Urkel

Did I do that?

You know it is possible for a hopeless incompetent to survive such adversity. All it takes is luck and outstanding subordinants. George has had neither. His policy team was extraordinarily poor. Imagine naming Karl Rove your domestic policy adviser. Donald Rumsfeld? Give me a break. And who can forget Brownie. Dick Cheney is the worst of all.

It would seem he did well picking Rumsfeld's replacement, but the jury is still out on Paulson.

Perhaps worst of all is his reliance on the "thinking" of people working for the Heritage Foundation. The definition of expecting ideology to trump reality. Somehow reality always wins in the end.

It's easy to suggest that someone is crazy, and 'crazy' itself is a pretty broad term. George Bush, however, shows serious signs of mental illness, and I think his tendency toward same was probably in place before he took office. He seems eager to be able to position himself as a hero, almost to the point where he's creating the disasters so he can be seen as saving the day. The only problem is, he's not saving the day. Every one of his self-determined fiascos was unnecessary and incompetently addressed. Every one.

The man is a failure even when he knowingly causes problems so he can solve them. Amazing.

narcissistic personality disorder with sociopathic tendencies.

And when W leaves office, he will be rewarded for his incompetency with a golden parachute.

I don't hope he lives a long time.

He's never had to bear any responsibility for things going badly before. Why should he start now?

Walking out on his Champagne Unit Vietnam service? Quietly covered up by political operatives.

Harken? Arbusto? Bailed out by Daddy's Saudi and Texas friends.

Alcohol and drug abuse? Forgiven by Jesus.

When has he EVER had to face the negative consequences of his actions?

Every time he opens his pouty little mouth to talk about "responsibility," it just makes me sick.

Perhaps if he'd chosen a cabinet or White House staff who actually had some kind of competency, and not just a fanatical devotion to unborn babies and Jeebus, he might have had a shot of weathering the storm.

He seems eager to be able to position himself as a hero, almost to the point where he's creating the disasters so he can be seen as saving the day. The only problem is, he's not saving the day.

George W. Bush, 2001 - 2009: The Munchausen's by Proxy Presidency

Yeah, we all remember reports of Lincoln saying the same thing on his way to the theater. Ya know, if the union had to break asunder, it's really great it happened under him and his team.

Seriously, what a load of horseshit. After ignoring the warnings of 9/11 (which hey, anybody could do) his response to 9/11 was to NOT capture the guy who did it. And then to embroil us in an unrelated war that drained our resources and strengthened our enemies in the region.

Katrina? We all know how well that went.

And the economic collapse? President "it's patriotic to go shopping" after 9/11 had been puffing that bubble full of helium for the better part of a decade, all the while letting crooked Wall Street hotshots do as they pleased since before Enron.

Utter nonsense. I really can't think of any other President who would have gone ZERO FOR THREE. Probably James Buchanan.

He seems eager to be able to position himself as a hero, almost to the point where he's creating the disasters so he can be seen as saving the day. The only problem is, he's not saving the day.

George W. Bush, 2001 - 2009: The Munchausen's by Proxy Presidency

It's a fairly standard excuse that conservatives make for their own failures: If we hadn't been on the job, the situation would have been even worse. Like the War on Drugs. Those that still defend it, if you point out that the whole thing has been a complete failure, their response is that if we hadn't had a War on Drugs then every single person in the US would be a crack addict by now. Or Vietnam. If we hadn't taken a stand, the Commies would be ruling the world now.

Although Bush must have a pretty vivid imagination if he thinks things would be even worse if he hadn't been in charge for the past 8 years.

It just wouldn't be America the Beauwtiful without a "W".

Wow. Sort of stunning. From what I've read about Bush's upbringing, I see little evidence that any adult figure in his life ever truly called him to task on any of his actions. It's no wonder he has zero sense of himself as the instigator of any of the things he directly has caused.

All of which would normally be interesting human behavior if it was happening to, say, a coworker. The fact that it seriously affects my retirement, the environment and my daughter's future (and her kids) makes me feel constantly crazy.

Wow, again.

I immediately thought of the arsonist who calls the fire department. What would we do, without someone alert to sound the alarm?

Any psychologists here? I would like to know what sort(s) of pathology Bush suffers from. I generally don't like to extrapolate politics from personality, but Bush is impossible to ignore in this regard. This man is deeply disturbed and his illness has affected us all. What is he? A delusional narcissist? What? Somebody give me a pop-psychology diagnosis.

Clearly he sees himself as a bystander, a figurehead, in reality the ceremonial tyrant surrounded by a fawning claque, but under no circumstances the responsible party even though he is the self-described "Decider".

Yes, narcissistic personality disorder, with delusions of competence, a sense of aristocratic entitlement, and perpetual immunity from the murderous consequences of his own ill-considered actions or inaction.

None of this bout him is new. He has demonstrated sociopathic reckless and irresponsible behavior his entire life. Will history bail him out this time, as opposed to his father's friends? 9/11, Katrina, and the economic meltdown are his legacy, and I doubt historians, even those sympathetic to Republicans, will see his disastrous presidency as ill-fated due to circumstances beyond his control.

Yet he will get, in his 'retirement', five and six-figure speaking fees for having nothing to say, and saying it badly. I too hope he lives a long time, but only if he does so in complete isolation. Solitary confinement sounds good to me. May we never see his face again, or hear him utter another garbled sound.

I found the next graf (one Steve didn't quote) strangely poignant:

“He said that whoever was going to take over in January was going to have a huge crisis on their hands the day they come into office,” Ms. Van Steenberg added. “He thought by this happening now, that perhaps everyone could see signs of improvement before the next president comes into office.”

Shrub is a sociopath. He has been for a long time. His mother was the first one to know.

I can't believe his wife is still with him. That's a real mystery. What woman in their right mind would actually marry a monster like him?

Because, never doubt it, he is a monster. He's never taken actual responsibility for a single thing in his entire life. His family cleaned up his shit first, then his family's rich friends...and now the GOP and it's minions in the government will continue to clean up his messes...and Obama will have to finish a job that may well sink his presidency.

Shrub has been a perfect disaster for this country, and a death sentence for untold thousands in his wars.

The only way a sociopath can survive the guilt of this kind of thing is when they have none.

I think all of us just expected our System to protect us from people like this. Clearly the system failed, subverted by people who BENEFIT from a sociopath in office.

Question is, will we let the idiot 50% do this to us again? Not in my lifetime, I hope.

The only thing more pathetic than the fool are the lemmings who follow him. Think about that Al, oops you have never demonstrated that you think!

-Mr. Bush will spend Saturday as the host of an extraordinary emergency meeting of international finance ministers at the White House.- From the Times story.

When I read that, all I could think is "And he'll what? Serve the water?"

Isn't that awful.

Are we sure he actually HAS been President? I always thought that Heinrich Cheney or Herrmann Wolfowitz or one of those other fascistas was just pulling his strings.
Can we, JUST ONCE, move up Inauguration Day to, say, November 10th?

Legacy.

Seems not too long ago he was trumpeting the fact that history, his legacy would be kind to him.

The death of American Capitalism has (possibly) happened during his term. The concept of America being that shining light of liberty and human decency has taken a major beating.

Pre-emptive war that has become perpetuawar on his watch is now draining our economy into the depths of ______ that few of us ever thought possible.

Yup, I'm kinda glad he's at the helm while the Sh*t's hitting the turbine.

Well remember the kind of meandering fog that was the first 6 months? He probably thought/hoped it would be like that instead. Instead his government incompetence largely created by his own appointments resulted in 9/11 and the chance for the Republican party to destroy the Democrats for ever and that just couldn't be passed up.

He's a dry drunk, which is an active drunk without alcohol. He's spent his entire adult life convincing himself that whatever bad stuff happens around him, it's never his fault.

Well, yes, about half of Americans decided that the best president would be someone whose daddy couldn't get him into a Texas law school when he, himself, was the vice president of the United States.

It's funny how we all have to pass a driver's test to drive a car, but it never occurs to us that perhaps there should be some competency tests administered to people who aspire to run governments....

I'm not sure it's classic mental illness Junior suffers from... he's an absolutely classic example of the wealthy spoiled brat who's lived his entire life in a state of comfortable privilege. I grew up in a fairly wealthy community (wasn't myself, though), and punks like George W. Bush were a common feature. Condescending, proudly ignorant, aggressively bullying, and arrogant in the extreme, these clowns knew all too well that Mummy and Daddy would rush to cover up their sins regardless of their nature — bad things were never their fault.

It's not the case that Bush sees himself as an innocent, non-involved bystander; he's simply following a life-long habit of running away from responsibility. If things had gone well on the economy, he'd be front and center, basking in the glory of "his" god-like management of the economy.