DON'T LET THE SCREEN DOOR HIT YA!!!

A catastrophic, unending war, Guantanamo, torture, Abu Ghraib, kangaroo courts, water-boarding, black sites, extraordinary rendition, Haliburton, no-bid contracts, cronyism, recess appointments, warrantless wiretapping, fired U.S. attorneys, Plamegate, Katrina (still left undone), doubling national debt, denying global warming exists, (now He wants to sign the Kyoto agreement!), Nuclear threats from other nations, WHEW.. let me take a breath. OK, it all boils to the title, "Worst President Ever!"

George W. Bush is likely to go down in history as one of the few presidents who failed on every conceivable front. Future chroniclers will no doubt uncover malfeasance beyond what we can even now imagine, but as it stands, it's hard to think of a single admirable, or merely adequate, thing this administration has done. (Okay, one: Bush could be called many names, but "bigot" is not one of them. His Cabinet looked a lot more like America than any Democrat's ever has; without Powell and Rice, the Obama candidacy might not have been possible.) Even aside from the war, detention, and torture, there are innumerable ways in which Bush has left us worse off and less safe.

This time, the damage seems deeper, in part—and this may be George W. Bush's most pernicious legacy—because of the cynicism the W years have engendered. Large percentages of us now have no trouble believing that our ballots don't count, and that Washington is so completely in the pocket of corporate interests that no amount of mobilization can change its foregone conclusions. Can such a nation pull together to craft a new vision—one that would right the injustices, both legal and economic, of the past eight years? Do we even want to, or would we be satisfied to stop being embarrassed about our president?

There is, of course, one thing we'll miss about George W. Bush: The endless material—and, let's admit it, the creative way with the facts. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all "create our own reality" sometime!