Miss me yet? Yeah, heh heh. You miss me.

“I wish they weren’t called the Bush tax cuts,” the former president said as he kicked off the Bush Institute Conference on Taxes and Economic Growth in New York City. “If they’re called some other body’s tax cuts, they’re probably less likely to be raised.” He added: “If you raise taxes, you’re taking money out of the pockets of consumers.”

George W. Bush talks about his legacy So there you have it. Bush finally expresses some remorse for something, but it turns out it's not over his stupid tax cuts wrecking the budget, ballooning the deficit, and generally prepping America for its uncomfortable handbasket ride to the netherworld. No, it's because the Bush family name sucks so bad (for some unknown reason that he cannot possibly fathom) that things associated with it are less popular than they really ought to be.

You young 'uns might not remember it, since all of this nation's past political history was lost in a freak accident sometime during 2008 (all that remains is some vague recollection of Ronald Reagan saying things, that one time), but I remember during the 2000 campaign when Al Gore was campaigning on the notion that maybe we ought to practice a little fiscal responsibility (he was derided for it, because years ago all of Washington punditry decided that just getting really, really effing drunk for a few decades and phoning shit in would get them just as far as giving a flying damn), and George W. Bush prattled on about how we shouldn't be paying down the deficit because that was "yer" money, not the "gubbermint's" money, and ideas like investing in the nation's infrastructure, or the nation's people, or even, yes, just paying down the deficit was ridiculous drivel not to be taken seriously. He was going to be the CEO president, you see, and run America like a business.

As it turned out, that meant downsizing the crap out of us, funneling the profits to the executive class, and rewritin' some laws to make being rich and crooked a bit more legal, which is pretty much exactly what you'd expect of a "CEO president"—so you can't say he didn't warn us. Oh, and back then we all had onions tied to our belts, which was the style at the time.

Where was I? Ah, right. Reminiscing about the before-times with America's Worst President. Well, he's got an Institute now, which seems damn appropriate, but he's using it to talk about Taxes and Economic Growth, which strikes me as only a little more insane than expecting a taxidermied lemur teach you how to do algebra. I have a lovely conspiracy theory about this, which is that Mitt Romney is secretly pressuring George W. Bush to give more public speeches just so Mitt can look better by comparison (hey, Republicans, at least I'm not this guy, amiright? Now vote for me, dammit!), but the margins of this post are too small to contain it.

