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No, Actually 

In retirement, as in his latter years in office, George W. Bush remains among our most dispised Presidents.  And of our current living legends, Bush is number one, surpassing the hated Jimmy Carter in least liked-ness.

Presidential reputations are of course confections of whimsy and make believe, so hope lives, but the continued loathing of his big brother can only deepen the despair of Jeb “Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda” Bush.

Diamond Lame 

The Washington Post’s awful Op-Ed page has long been an embarrassing collection of right wing hacks “correcting” the Post’s non-existent liberal bias, leavened with torture enthusiasts both right and “centrist.”

Now we have fresh evidence where the rot begins.

All choked up over Queen Elizabeth’s looming Diamond Jubilee, Op-Ed Page Editor Autumn Brewington has come out with a wistful plea against democracy, yearning for the “above party” magic only royals can provide.

“What if, instead of debating whether partisans will put the country’s interests ahead of their own or find reasons to move beyond the gridlock in which they have mired Congress, Washington surmounted the political system and put someone above it? Someone who, like a living Statue of Liberty, symbolizes the nation and represents not one ideology but the American people.“

Just how Britain surmounts unsightly  “partisan gridlock” is unexplained,  but this yearning for conflict-free governance is endemic in thoughtful Washington. Utopian “realism” free from any actual analysis of either issues or the structure of American government, the transcendence Brewington pines for usually means bemoaning how stalemate blocks us from “getting things done,” i.e., doing in Social Security.

White House Whodunit: Where’s Winston? 

A favorite pastime among Bush revisionists and obsessive Obama haters has been the endlessly recalled departure of  the Churchill bust Bush displayed in the Oval Office in a transparent plea to be compared with the former great.

Imperial Workroom 

Barack Obama came to town and Winnie went, to the shocked disbelief of imperial nostalgists everywhere. Glenn Beck brought Churchill back for stirring addresses emanating from his make believe White House.    The Washington Post faithfully transcribed House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s alternative Churchill history, in which the Tories somehow were not in power as Hitler prepared his move.

Now, in a shocking development, George W. Bush himself has literally hidden Churchill!  Bush’s new White House portrait [not to be confused with his Portrait Gallery portrait] has been unveiled, and the former President is shown blocking America’s view of the craggy visage we  crave.

Saved for public viewing is the image over Bush’s right shoulder, the cowboy painting he has gone to extraordinary lengths to mislabel and misrepresent in order to dress up his lame “A Charge To Keep” theme.

Dick Gets Off A Good One  

Nixon post-presidential kitten with a whip Monica Crowley  is cracking wise, favoring America with her lighter side.  Crowley normally spews forth  venomous chatter for the thoughtful conservatives of Fox News, but apparently views her Twitter feed as a fount of humor.

Crowley’s comic career began with Richard Nixon’s political death, as he used his New Jersey exile to emit an endless series of ponderous tomes.

Book Learning   

While decent people looked away, hoping Nixon would slink into the shadows from which he came, Crowley saw opportunity. She wormed her way into the great man’s shrunken entourage, assisting on several of his awful books. Some saw her comic potential early.

That, the involuntary kindness of strangers,  “striking” blond hair, and she was on her way.

Crowley’s latest cutups concern Rush Limbaugh muse Sandra Fluke.  Fluke’s engagement has gotten some notice, and Crowley did not disappoint:

 Some apparently failed to see Mo-Cro’s sly wit, requiring her to lament the Professional Left’s tone deafness: 

Castles In Dispair   

The Times’ “Home” section usually sticks to house porn of the bold and the beautiful.  The trouble comes when they wander into check-able facts.

The paper’s housing survey of America’s junior executives, the governors, revealed the shocking truth that many of them do not care for the Victorian glam of their official residences.  I can’t speak to other cases, but almost everything in The Times’ two paragraphs on the Reagan’s Sacramento mansion debacle is wrong.

The article says

“Jerry Brown, who was criticized for not moving into state digs during his first stint as governor of California in the 1970s, turned out to be ahead of his time. When he returned to the post decades later, the mansion was gone — sold off to save money. (Mr. Brown now rents a 1,450-square-foot apartment in Sacramento.)”

As more “newsy” New York Times sections have reported in the past, the Reagans started this cavalcade shortly after taking office, refusing to live in the 19th Century splendor of California’s Governor’s Mansion and hurling California governors into decades of homelessness rootlessness.

Brown’s successor lived in another rental gifted by thoughtful moguls, as did his successors.  When Arnold Shwarzenegger came to town the owner of the Reaganesque mansion made a failed push to sell it to the state, recalled in this intermittently working slide tour.

And now Jerry’s back, in a “loft” again granted by providential millionaires.