I was thinking about this recently:

Let's say I got in a time machine and went back to 1999. The economy is booming, the government has a surplus, and people take for granted that things are rosy and getting rosier. 1999 me supports Ralph Nader for president and accepts his notion that Bush and Gore are essentially the same person. Who you vote for doesn't really matter.

Let's say 2008 me was going to tell 1999 me about the nine years that were to follow. For the first time in over a hundred years, the person who wins the popular vote does not win the electoral vote, an electoral vote that is further won amid widespread accusations of voter fraud, and a recount that was stopped prematurely by a politically biased supreme court.

Then in 2001, less than a year after Bush takes office, terrorists fly airplanes into both the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Bush launches a "War on Terror," sending troops into Afghanistan, and then lies to the American public in order to invade Iraq, a country that has nothing to do with the attacks. We occupy Iraq and give rise to a morass of insurgency which we will still be neck deep in in 2008. The mastermind of the 2001 attack, a cartoonish Muslim fanatic, is still at large and releasing threatening videos, and his organization continues to commit terrorist acts all over the world, including bombings in London and Madrid.

Bush opens a detention center off Cuba where where prisoners can be held and tortured without due process or recourse to the tenants of the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Convention or habeas corpus. Prisoners are also held in secret prisons around the world that the government will not admit exists. A scandal emerges around torture and abuse of prisoners at a US-run prison in Iraq.

Meanwhile the deficit skyrockets to unheard of levels, and Bush implements disastrous policies in education and health care. Yet somehow, he wins again in 2004, banging the war-president drum, and again there are widespread accusations of voter fraud.

A hurricane hits New Orleans, and complete incompetence on the part of federal organizations, whose heads were appointed by Bush, leads to both the city flooding and to rescue efforts being catastrophic failures. The whole city is virtually wiped off the map.

Iraq wears on as Afghanistan starts falling apart. America loses all credibility on the world stage. Then, progressively greater economic deregulation and tax cuts pushed through by Bush and the Republican majority in Congress creates a housing bubble with extremely excessive speculation, which then leads to an unprecedented burst. The stock market plunges like never before, banks close left and right and even start being nationalized and suddenly people are talking about a second Great Depression.

Would 1999 me believe 2008 me? Would 1999 you have?

How did George W. Bush single-handedly turn the world into a bad science fiction novel?

Did I mention vote Obama?