Bush gave a pathetic farewell address Thursday night that epitomized much of what was wrong and ruinous over the last eight years.

He began with an oblique biblical reference, saying the start of this century has been a “time set apart,” as though his Administration was part of God’s plan.

Then, after some obligatory thanks (including to Cheney, of course), Bush scurried back to September 11, saying that after the attacks, “Every morning, I received a briefing on the threats to our nation. I vowed to do everything in my power to keep us safe.”

But his boast served only as a reminder that he was asleep on that job on August 6, 2001, when he was warned in his presidential daily briefing that “Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S.”

Seconds after he got that warning, he told his CIA briefer, “OK, you covered your ass. You can go now.” The next day, down at the ranch, Bush went golfing and joked with reporters about his lousy game.

Thursday night he pretended as though he became commander in chief on September 11. Actually, he failed miserably in that role in the weeks leading up to that fateful day.

In his speech, he again (and I should hope for the final time) blurred 9/11 with Iraq, saying, “We have taken the fight to the terrorists,” and then immediately referenced Afghanistan and Iraq, as though Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.

He also bragged about the “new tools” he gave the intelligence agencies to “monitor the terrorists’ movements”—conveniently leaving aside the fact that those tools also let the government monitor the movements and the speech of totally innocent Americans.

In his crude Manichaean way, he talked again about the struggle between “good and evil,” placing America on the eternal good side. “Around the world, America is promoting human liberty, human rights, and human dignity,” he said.

Really?

What about Abu Ghraib? Or Guantanamo? Or Bagram Air Force Base? Or the “black sites” where the CIA tortures and disappears people?

And in a final bow to his far right base, he saluted the “wise new members” of the Supreme Court: Justice Sam Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Fortunately, Barack Obama may have the chance to put some genuinely wise — and compassionate — new members on the court to balance off those two bloodless Tories.

Toward the end of his speech, Bush foolishly quoted Thomas Jefferson saying, “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” Taken out of context, that line looks like the most anti-intellectual statement Jefferson ever wrote, and that’s why it appealed to Bush. It almost anticipates Henry Ford saying, “History is more or less bunk.”

The Jefferson quotation, by the way, is from a letter he wrote in 1816 to John Adams. In context, it is far less anti-intellectual than on first blush.

The context is actually an anti-clerical one.

“I know nothing of the History of the Jesuits you mention, in four volumes. Is it a good one? I dislike, with you, their restoration, because it marks a retrograde step from light towards darkness. We shall have our follies without doubt. Some one or more of them will always be afloat, but ours will be the follies of enthusiasm, not of bigotry, not of Jesuitism. Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm, of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the returns of ignorance and barbarism.”

Interestingly, though, Jefferson then goes on to make almost a manifest destiny claim of his own, and he even derides—ala Donald Rumsfeld—“Old Europe.” To wit:

“Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under the monkish trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What a colossus shall we be, when the southern continent comes up to our mark! What a stand will it secure as a ralliance for the reason and freedom of the globe! I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. So good night. I will dream on, always fancying that Mrs. Adams and yourself are by my side marking the progress and the obliquities of ages and countries.”

Anyway, by inserting himself in the same paragraph as Thomas Jefferson, Bush managed to shrink himself to Lilliputian dimensions.

And then it was time to say adieu.

He gulped his way mawkishly to the finish line, a very small man in a very large job who managed to have learned very little on it.