W.S. Merwin: The Perfect Poet Laureate...

....for the Obama administration. In other words, a Bush-hating anti-American American. Via First Thoughts, we get a glimpse of some of his writings on George W. Bush:

It would not have been possible for me ever to trust someone who acquired office by the shameful means Mr. Bush and his abettors resorted to in the last presidential election. His nonentity was rapidly becoming more apparent than ever when the catastrophe of September 11, 2001, provided him and his handlers with a role for him, that of “wartime leader,” which they, and he in turn, were quick to exploit. This role was used at once to silence all criticism of the man and his words as unpatriotic, and to provide the auspices for a sustained assault upon civil liberties, environmental protections and general welfare.

The perpetuation of this role of “wartime leader” is the primary reason—more important even than the greed for oilfields and the wish to blot out his father’s failure—for the present determination to visit war upon Iraq, kill and maim countless people, and antagonize much of the world of which Mr. Bush had not heard until recently.

Sounds like something a college freshman would write to please a leftist Poli-Sci professor. Actually, it sounds like something that could come out of Barack Obama's mouth at his next speech.

And it sounds as if the president has selected the perfect poet laureate to fit his vision (described here as arising from his deeply held anti-imperialist, pacifist, and environmentalist beliefs) of what the United States of America was, in the years Before Obama....

The rest of us can only hang our heads in shame, and count down the days until November of 2012...