Devilstower's http://devilstower.dailykos.com/ regarding David Halberstam's last missive to America regading the dauphine of the Bush family currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue is so dead on one almost feels there is nothing to add. But there is. Even Vanity Fair's http://www.vanityfair.com/... he sites doesn't answer the one question that seems to go unasked regarding the child prince's "legacy:" what does the carrier strutting pretender REALLY want as far as his legacy goes?
To answer this burning question let David McCullough's work instruct us. In the last chapter of his book Truman entitled 'Back Home' McCullough covers the hundreds of tributes paid to Truman on his death in 1974. Reading McCullough's recounting of how much tribute was paid to this old cold war warrior from cynics, critics and jaded, world weary WH reporters one can instantly see what the chest thumper who proclaim's "I am the decider" really wants.
The problem for him is he isn't even in the same universe as the other members of this elite club of 42. Even U.S. Grant, Herbert Hoover and Warren G. Harding look like renaissance men in comparison. As he has redefined the parameters for how one becomes "the worst President in U.S. history" his status in THAT little club is very exclusive and a lonely one.
In McCullough's last chapter one can find the late Mary McGory's paen to Truman and truly feel what as lost:
"He was not a hero or a magician or a chess player, or an obsession. He was a certifiable member of the human race, direct fallible, and unexpectedly wise when it counted. He did not require to be loved. He didn not expect to be followed blindly. Congressional opposition never struck him as subversive, nor did he regard his critics as traitors. He never whined. [...] He didn not use the office as a club or a shield, or a hiding place. He worked at it...He said he lived by the Bible and history. So armed, he proved that the ordinary AMerican is capable of gradeur. And that a PResident can be a human being..."
That's the kind of tribute Bush thrist's for. But what he would die for is this telling and last word on Truman from the late Eric Severied forty years after he left office:
"I am not sure he was right about the atomic bomb, or even Korea. But remembering him reminds people what a man in that office ought to be like. It's character, just character. He stands like a rock in memory now."
This is what Bush wants. And he'll never, ever get it. The fact is there is no comparison. There is only Truman's legacy and Bush's puny existence as a place holder in a picture frame that say's "43rd President of the United States." No matter how much ink is spilled reproducing that line underneath his photograph, there isn't enough in the universe to make him an actual President. He is a false positive in a real world waiting for him to leave and get back to what we are really about.