2012 Man of the Year: George W. Bush

After an aborted recount of the votes, it’s now official: the Pundits Guild of America has chosen George W. Bush as its 2012 Man of the Year.

In announcing its choice of the nation’s 43^rd president over runners-up the Reaper Drone and the Predator Drone, the PG of A pointed out that while taking even more vacation days than he did in any year during his presidency, Mr. Bush in 2012 made amazing strides toward realizing the wildly unpopular vision of America that made him, according to many experts, the very worst president in US history.

Said one Pundits Guild member, “By lackadaisically staying out of sight and out of mind over the course of the 2012 election, George W. Bush freed up Republicans and Democrats alike to keep steering the country in the unbelievably dumb economic direction he’s associated with dumbly launching us into.

“The super rich are doing better than ever and getting away with murder while they’re at it. Everybody else is falling further behind by the minute. We’re still pouring billions into counterproductive war. The banks have failed upwards to new heights of invulnerability to failure.

“If not for Republicans, Bush’s Democratic successor would have had the country well on its way to reaching the once seemingly unreachable Bush dream of unraveling Social Security and Medicare, or at least helping the super rich make a killing off of the social safety net.

“Economically speaking, it’s just pretty unbelievable how in 2012 the political center just kept breaking new ground in the rightward direction Bush pushed it in. At a time like this we’re all fixated on deficits for crying out loud. I think there might even be some danger of the center flying off the right end of the spectrum.”

“For me,” said another pundit, “what best exemplifies the lumpen roll Bush was on in 2012 is that W. didn’t have to lift a finger as the country’s political leaders were giving America’s blessings to all his most deplorable, one-time deeply appalling attitudes and practices.

“In 2012 Bush saw a selectively forward-looking President Obama keep heaping more and more retroactive legitimacy on him and his so devastating eponymous doctrine and all his fellow unindicted war criminals by extending Bush’s one-time egregiously illegal secret warrantless spying program; by signing yet another National Defense Authorization Act, this one with a clause that further enshrines Guantanamo; by carrying on Bush’s perpetual preemptive Global War on Terror and his war on transparency and on any and all checks on his power to disregard the rule of international and US law.

“In 2012 Mr. Bush and Karl Rove’s signature disregard for democratic and legal and constitutional principles with regard to elections became a bona fide trademark of the Republican party, as did their conviction that Republican convictions trump any and all democratic mechanisms for sorting out how the country should proceed in any sphere, as did their bottomless disdain for anything remotely resembling an inconvenient truth.”

Said another pundit, “Here’s a two-time president who never truly won an election for president, and now he’s won Man of the Year somehow without truly beating his rivals despite their splitting the drone-lover vote. In 2012 George W. Bush really showed he’s still got it.”

Said Wendy Upton from the Center for Media and Public Affairs, “The pundits might actually be right on this one. I hope to goodness nobody loses a guild card over it.”