Dear George Bush:

Once upon a time, a great many people assured me that it wouldn't be as bad as all that if you were elected president, because in spite of your inexperience you still surrounded yourself with people who knew what they were doing. And you know, I've been watching for five years, and I'm pretty convinced that those people were wrong.

Not that the people you surround yourself with aren't smart. Some of them are freakishly smart. It's just that the jobs they do aren't the jobs I think they ought to be doing. Their focus does not appear to be a conservative government, nor a liberal government; it's as if they're not doing government jobs at all. Most of the time, it seems like these people are working very hard at doing things that are making the corporations very happy and making life harder for everyone else.

Yes, corporations are important. But frankly, I think they're important in different ways than you seem to think they are. What's good for a corporation isn't necessarily good for the public. A corporation doesn't like to clean up its mess and doesn't mind befouling the environment, but that tends to be bad for the public. A corporation makes more money for its stockholders and executives when it pays its employees less, but that tends to be bad for the public. A corporation makes more money when it doesn't have to deal with pesky unions, but that leaves the employees with nobody batting for them as a group-- and that tends to be bad for the public.

Your policies all seem to be centered around making things easier for corporations, as if they're trustworthy and will keep doing the right things without being forced to do it. I'm as big an optimist as anyone else, but I have to say that I don't see this happening. Corporations are made to make money; they do not have the public good in mind, not domestic tranquility nor the common defence nor the general welfare of the community. The mission statement of the United States, as provided in the preamble to our fantastic Constitution, is in direct opposition to the mission statement of corporations. Whoever provided the money for your commercials and airfare and new suits during the elections, the fact of the matter is that you took an oath to go to bat for the people. If you didn't want to do that, if you just wanted to be in power so you could do favors for your buddies, then shame on you. If that's what you're doing, then you lied to a lot of good people who thought you would go to bat for their ideals while you were in this job.

I don't mind having government positions occupied by good, talented, smart people who are good at their jobs even if they happen to disagree with me, half so much as I mind having halfway-good, mediocrely-talented, sort of smart people in these jobs who not only disagree with me but don't even know how to do the job they're in. Stop using government jobs to pay off your cronies, for pete's sake. Government jobs are not a form of payment, they're offices created for the service of the people and we deserve to have the most talented people available in those slots, of whatever political stripe.

This latest Supreme Court nomination just baffles me. Roberts at least is a smart cookie; no matter what one thinks of his views, there's no arguing with his intelligence or talent for legal wrangling or knowledge of constitutional law. This one, though-- what the hell? What are you doing? John Bolton, Michael Brown, all these other guys who should never in a million years be in the jobs you gave them-- this is not good. Those, though, we have a chance to change out when we get a new (and hopefully less incompetent) president. The Supreme Court is something else again; that's long-lasting stuff there. Don't fuck around with that. I like smart people who disagree with me more than incompetent boobs who shouldn't be in the job. Please, for God's sake, get something right.

Thanks,

-Meg