But in retrospect, both of them “got things done,” despicable things though they were, something of which the new Hitler, (at least according to Fox News) President Obama, can’t match.  Bush, who had been a conspicuous and disastrous failure his whole life, was able to accomplish the right’s most fevered wet dreams: massive tax cuts for the wealthy, elimination of significant chunks of the Bill of Rights, massive giveaways to Big Pharma, permanent war, the abject fealty of the media, and have two tainted, squeaker elections treated as historic mandates for all of it.  Obama’s only “victories” so far have been in strong-arming his giant majority into, well, acting like a minority, and cementing Bush’s radical and destructive policies as inescapable reality.  Change we can believe in, indeed.

Back in the days of Bush, for which I continue to feel unaccountably nostalgic, I could blame a corrupt, bought-and-paid-for Right, and still feel hope that their defeat was coming, and our ship of state could right itself.  Not so much these days.  Not one meaningful Bush policy has been reversed, and many have even been extended, and the Democratic victories of 2006 and 2008 have laid bare the brokenness of the American political system that first reared its head under Clinton.  It is no longer possible to have an even nominally “Liberal” government in the US; the Media and the corporations decided against that long ago.  What we get is either the faux-earnestness and morality of the Democrats, or the open belligerence and proud STFU of the Republicans; we weren’t at the meeting where the actual policies were decided.

The infuriating part of all this is that in the new game, nothing is too far right for the conventional wisdom to embrace, and Democrats face a withering and unanimous barrage of horror for any idea to the left of, well, Hitler himself, and the vestigial remains of the American “left” get slammed even when they show up on, say, Daily Kos.  What liberals, including myself,  but unfortunately NOT including our President and a good chunk of or “representatives” in congress, failed to realize that the game was already over, probably even before Sept. 11, but that little something certainly sealed the deal, and the goal posts that had been moved so startlingly far under Bush have become embedded into the new rules of the game.

Failure, in today’s Washington, is the new success, and Obama is the embodiment of that.  Good thing we lost the Olympics, and nobody’s suggested that Obama try to influence train schedules.  Those now ubiquitous and suddenly unsurprising Hitler comparisons would again be unflattering.