Reasons To Be Glad Dubya Is President

Believe it or not, they exist (hat tip to Miss Cellania)

- Iraq. The deteriorating situation in Iraq is the inevitable outcome of a poorly conceived, incompetently executed and predictably doomed flight of foreign policy fancy...Imagine how a President Kerry, inheriting Bush’s disaster, would have been paralyzed with the Hobson’s choice left by his predecessor. To be a “tough Democrat,” he might have disastrously committed more troops. Any withdrawal would be tarred by the right as treason and cause even more damage to the party on that old bugaboo, defense.

- Bushonomics. He’s the Accountability President; let him bask in all the blame. Better that than we get burned picking up the pieces.

- Scandals. Another silver lining in the dark clouds over Washington is that it might be a swiftly breaking storm. It’s taken less than five years for the Republican Idea to reveal itself as a grotesque falsehood. Now we’ve got great seats as a whole host of first-term crimes hatch into second-term scandals. The Plame Game, Jack Abramoff’s web of Republican intrigue, Bill Frist’s financial indiscretions, domestic spying, the cronyism exposed by Brownie’s heck of a job during Katrina — these were ineptitudes and overreaches of Nixonian dimension that, for the sake of the country, need vigorous public exposure.

- Schadenfreude. It might be bad form to gloat, but watching Bush fail is at least civic-minded gloating.