Lucky Duckies

George W. Bush says it sure is lucky we have him around to cope with all the disasters that keep unfolding on his watch:

George W. Bush began his presidency with the worst terrorist attack on American soil and he is ending it with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. In between, he confronted a hurricane that nearly wiped New Orleans off the map as his administration showed ineptitude in its response.

Now, as he spends his last months in office trying to avert a global economic collapse, Mr. Bush has been telling people privately that it’s a good thing he’s in charge.

“He said that if it was going to happen at all, he was glad it was happening under his presidency, because he had a good group of people in D.C. working for him,” Dru Van Steenberg, one of several small-business owners who met with Mr. Bush in San Antonio earlier this week. The president expressed the same sentiment, others said, during a similar private session in Chantilly, Va., the next day.

Steve Benen remarks that “The notion that he bears responsibility for his failures apparently doesn’t enter his mind.”

In most democracies, of course, it would be very unlikely for such a failed leader as Bush to find himself in this position. One Bush’s popularity slumped irrevocably below the horizon line, the GOP would have dumped him in favor of some more plausible political leader (perhaps someone like John McCain, a Republican not tainted by the Bush brand…) and there would have been a new election so that the country could face whatever problems might come down the pike next under the leadership of someone who had the confidence of the voters and some kind of mandate to govern.