Man, that presidentin' gig was hard, but it's almost finished for George W. Bush, and he's as happy to be leaving it as America is to see him go. It's an even wash. Except that Bush and his goons walk away stinking rich on war swag and a hundred other nightmare scams while everyone else is scared shitless for their future. After a recent closed-door fundraiser in St. Louis recently, former Missouri Senator John C. Danforth said Bush "seemed relieved" to be leaving office. "It was very unusual, I thought. I think it was a man who was relaxed and funny and looked as though he was about to shed this burden of the presidency. In a way, his speech seemed kind of like a valedictory. I took it as though, ‘I’ve done the best I can, I think I made the right decisions and now it’s almost over.’ ”
“He seems burdened, and he seems confident,” said David Guernsey, the owner of Guernsey Office Products, who hosted [a meeting between Bush and small business owners in VA]. “He seems sort of like a guy who’s saying, ‘Boy, I’m kind of winding this thing down and now this happens, so the next four months are going to be anything but quiet.’ But he seemed very confident that what Bernanke and Paulson and that crowd have put together is the fix.”
Yeah. They're doin' a heck of a job. [NYT via ThinkProgress]