Dubya Haz a Sad

As the world eagerly awaits publication of George W. Bush's memoirs, one of the biggest questions on many people's minds is what event he considers to be the absolute low point of his presidency. Was it the 9/11 attacks? Was it the discovery that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after launching an unprovoked, terribly misguided, still unfinished war against that country? Was it his failure to kill or capture Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora when he had the chance? Was it the release of the Abu Ghraib photographs showing US soldiers engaged in unspeakable acts of torture? Was it witnessing the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression occur on his watch? Was it the federal government's woefully inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina? If you guessed the last item on that list, you're getting warm. But it wasn't the government's failure in the Gulf disaster that bummed W out the most, rather it was Kanye West's reaction to the government's reaction.

Former President George W. Bush says that Kanye West's insinuation that he is a racist, made in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, still stings today — and that the episode was the "all-time low" point of his presidency.

Bush's long-delayed reaction to West's ad-libbed comment that "George Bush doesn’t care about black people," made during a live TV benefit show for hurricane survivors, is from an interview the former president taped with Matt Lauer of NBC.

Here's Matt Lauer reading from W's book:

‘I faced a lot of criticism as president. I didn’t like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all-time low.’

W replies:

“Yeah. I still feel that way as you read those words. I felt ‘em when I heard ‘em, felt ‘em when I wrote ‘em, and I felt ‘em when I’m listening to ‘em."

Say what you will about W, but the man knows how to keep things in perspective.

[NPR]