2005: What A Year

Happy New Year. And now, one more (yet another one) of those end-of-the-year articles.

Terry Schiavo. Justice Sunday. Nuclear Option. Social Security Privatization. Downing Street Memos. Cindy Sheehan. John Murtha. John Roberts. Harriet Miers. Samuel Alito. Scooter Libby. Jack Abramoff. Mean Jean Schmidt. Katrina/FEMA/Browniegate. Tookie Williams. Pope Benedict XVI. War on Christmas. Rendition.

Whew! What a year. This time last year, those household names and phrases would’ve been meaningless. And don’t forget some of 2005’s most (in)famous quotes. Katrinagate was a gold mine:

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” “Brownie you’re doing a heckuva job.” “So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.”

Lesser known but maybe the most infamous: Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., telling lobbyists “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”

Besides FEMAgate, 2005 was full of those open-mouth-insert-foot moments:

“You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.”

“This is not somebody in a persistent vegetative state.”

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God. You just rejected him from your city.”

“I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.”

This time last year, George W. Bush was basking in his re-election “mandate” and bragging about all his political capital. He was all set to march right in and privatize Social Security, turn the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge into a giant oil field, and make the Patriot Act bigger and better (and written in stone).

OOPS.

Now, this time next year what will we be looking back at? Will Bush’s poll ratings continue to sink? Will Republican politicians continue avoiding him for the sake of their own careers? Will the newly-Democratic House of Representatives begin impeachment proceedings?

Or will Karl Rove bounce back from his legal troubles and come up with a whole slew of new dirty tricks? Will Rove and his Swiftboat Chickenhawks succeed in sliming all critics of the administration and reviving Bush’s popularity? Will the Hitler Youth Patriot Act expire in February ‘06, or will it be made permanent and bigger and better than ever?

Maybe Rove will invent another phony gay-marriage type issue that will get millions more Americans to vote Republican.

Or maybe that Avian Flu pandemic will actually happen and all the above questions will be moot.

If we’re living in “interesting times,” then 2006 oughtta be fascinating.

cross-posted at Bring It On!