A Short History of the Bush Administration

Today George W. Bush's presidential library was opened, and there has been a predictable attempt by his allies to whitewash his record and forget what a colossal, unmitigated disaster he was as president.  I will not sit idly by and let this Orwellian storm of obfuscation and bullshit rage on without putting up a fight.  What follows is something I wrote on my old blog shortly after Bush left office, and ought to remind us of all the things that Bush and his minions would like to have us forget.

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On Tuesday George W. Bush finally left the White House, going away to Texas on his helicopter after getting a stern rebuke from President Obama in his inauguration speech and a real Bronx cheer from the assembled masses. Almost better than him leaving was the fact that he had to sit there while his successor lambasted the Bush administration's policies in front of adoring millions that ate up his every word.

So what of the Bush administration? The man himself has been fond of saying that "history will judge" his actions. Historically speaking, only the most reckless and lawless leaders ever say such a thing, usually to justify actions acknowledged to be beyond the pale in the present. Now that his administration is in the past, let's start judging now. I think his administration falls into five distinct periods, each with their own outrages associated with them.

Part I: Before 9/11
Bush came into the White House under a cloud of suspicion after getting the presidency awarded to him by the Supreme Court after losing the popular vote. In the 19 months between his inauguration and the terror attacks, he did little to instill confidence in the American people. Instead of acknowledging the meager nature of his mandate, Bush immediately set about pushing a hard-Right agenda. After having inherited a massive budget surplus, he squandered it via tax cuts that went mostly to the wealthy. (That money might have been handy later to pay for his wars and rebuilding New Orleans.) The public wasn't actually clamoring for tax cuts at that time, and by the summer of 2001 his popularity had fallen. Apart form fiscal irresponsibility, his Attorney General, the Puritanical John Ashcroft, expended valuable resources fighting head shops and naked breasts on statues rather than on the terrorists who a memo had told our president were "determined to strike in the US." Although he tried hard to distance himself from the man in every way, on September 10, 2001 Bush looked like he would be just like his pappy in at least one respect: he would be a one-termer.

Part II: 9/11 to November 2002
The terror attacks saved Bush's political life, despite his less than gallant immediate response to them. The public understandably rallied around its leaders in the aftermath of 9/11, and Bush exploited the situation masterfully. The American public was scared shitless, and Bush soon learned how to manipulate a public too high strung and paranoid to dig beneath the facade. It also must be said that Bush's common touch with the workers at Ground Zero actually made him look like a competent leader. (I was never fooled, but I will admit that he exuded genuine empathy and spirit at a tough time.) Underneath the surface, an almost unreported war on civil liberties began, with thousands of foreigners detained without just cause. Then, right before the election, the war drums on Iraq began to beat, allowing Republicans to catch the Dems flatfooted and portray them as dangerously unfit to prosecute what was already being called "The Global War on Terror." That narrative led to the most execrable political ad since Willie Horton, the "Osama" ad targetting Vietnam vet and Democratic Senator Max Cleland. All of this distracted the public from the fact that Bush failed to hunt down bin Laden, despite his overblown rhetoric.

Part III: November 2002 to Katrina
This period was the reign of the "war president," a time of collective national insanity and the most damaging of Bush's term in office. The Congressional elections upheld Bush's mandate, and as the push for war in Iraq got more intense, the mainstream press got even more compliant. Things got so crazy that those who publically dissented, like the Dixie Chicks, got broken on the wheel. (In retrospect, because of their respective opposition and support for the war, this is also the moment where Barack Obama started his rise to the presidency, and where Hilary Clinton lost it. Whoever said virtue never gets rewarded over opportunism?) Every cable news station without exception had an American flag flying in the corner of the screen after the Iraq invasion, and just about every single news outlet failed to ask tough questions on WMD. In fact, the supposedly liberal New York Times' Judith Miller became one of the biggest purveyors of propaganda. In the face of this onslaught his political opposition ran scared, even though it was obvious to yours truly and many others at the time that an invasion of Iraq would create more problems than it would solve, even if Saddam had WMD, which was sketchy in the first place.

While the American military did a splendid job defeating the Iraqi army, it was apparent from the start that the architects of the war had no clue what they were doing in the long term. (Those who did, like Eric Shinseki, got kicked to the curb for daring to challenge Rumsfeld's crew.) The massive looting did incalulable damage, and he response that "freedom is untidy" showed blithe uninterest in the face of a total lack of authority on the streets of Baghdad. That's not "freedom," that's anarchy, which was just as or even more harmful than the tyranny it replaced. In the short term, however, Bush staged the piece de resistance of his administration, the moment that future students of history will snicker at with gusto: his landing on the aircraft carrier in front of the "Mission Accomplished" banner. Ironically, while he was never higher in prestige in real time than at that moment, in the nation's historical memory, he will never be lower.

The reality of the war soon erased his moment of triumph. Iraq devolved into a deadly guerilla war that killed and wounded more and more Americans. The UN, which the US expected to handle the civilian postwar situation, had to leave after a horrific terror bombing. Bombings soon became a depressing daily occurrence, and the WMD did not materialize. Saddam was captured, but his trial soon became messy and a showcase of the new Iraqi government's disfunction. To top things off, in 2004 the photos of Abu Ghraib hit the international scene like a bolt of lightning. In the last election and even today Shrub's dwindling band of dead enders like to point to the Surge and the Anbar Awakening, but these fixes came only after years of pigheaded denial of reality and wrongfooted incompetence that cost thousands of lives and soiled our nation's reputation. Many of our soldiers died because they were not given the proper protection, and yet when questioned why this was the case by one of these very soldiers who was putting his life on the line, Rummy told him "you go to war with the army you have."

Yet, despite the deterioration in Iraq, Bush managed to win re-election. John Kerry's ineffectual performance had something to do with this, as well as the fact that casualties in Iraq really shot up after the Samarrah attacks in early 2005, well after the election. Bush certainly reminded all and sundry that he was a "war president," winning moderate voters afraid of switching leaders at a crucial juncture. While picking off some of these voters, Karl Rove nakedly appealed to the lowest instincts of the religious right by making gay marriage the second-biggest issue of the campaign. Not only had Bush led America into a bloody needless war, his surrogates spread scurrilous lies about John Kerry's military record and shamelessly exploited homophobic bigotry. Bush somehow managed to make himself seem above it all, though he benefitted from the smears and hatred deployed in his name. (Let's also not forget that the GOP did a passable job of making their 2004 convention look diverse despite the party delegates being a practical whitewash, and that the moderation of immigration rhetoric by Bush also gained Latino voters.)

The media again came to the rescue, in the form of Dan Rather's maladroit investigation of Bush's own less sterling military record. We seem to have let this moment go down the memory hole, but Rather had the chance to expose what everyone and their pet goat knows to be true: Bush had been placed in the Texas Air National Guard due to his father's connections, and while in the Guard had not properly fulfilled his duties. The contrast between the chicken-hawk "war president" and his decorated opponent could not have been more stark. However, Rather did his job sloppily, and instead he, not the president, was disgraced. This didn't change the fact that the charges agaisnt Bush were basically correct, but the whole episode made him out to be a victim and protected what should have been an Achilles heel. At that point, his electoral victory was a sad inevitability.

Part IV: Katrina to Rumsfeld's Firing
Bush had already started to slip early in his second term, misinterpreting his close win against an inept challenger as the acquisition of "political capital." Because of this he heedlessly pushed Social Security privatization, something that no American outside of the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute actually wants to see. The whole Terry Schiavo drama (another forgotten moment) also made his heavy ties to the Bible thumping crowd look dangerous. At this point Bush was headed back to his political situation in the summer of 2001: an amiable buffoon whom the public did not revile, yet certainly did not support with any enthusiasm.

Then came Katrina. His ineffectual response while a great American city drowned and thousands of American citizens were left to fend for themselves in horrific circumstances disgusted just about anyone with an ounce of humanity in their hearts. The revelations about "Brownie" made it clear to a great many people how badly the president ran the government. This even may have even begun a wider discrediting of the Reaganite anti-government neo-liberalist philosophy espoused by the Bush administration.

In the face of such a failure, Bush upped the ante by attempting to have Harriet Miers, his personal attorney, made into a Supreme Court justice. The Left and the middle attacked him for his crass cronyism, and the Right recoiled at Miers' lack of credentials on abortion. At this crucial juncture many of his natural allies began to realize that Bush was political kryptonite, and started distancing themselves as fast as they could before the 2006 election. Part of that distancing and lack of party discipline meant a hard tack to the Right on immigration by Congressional Republicans. This, by the way, eliminated one of the few bright spots in Bush's tenure: an honest attempt at a sensible immigration policy. (On top of all of this, the Libby scandal made public a culture of arrogance and law breaking, and the Jack Abramoff trial unearthed oodles of Republican corruption.)

The public didn't take the bait, and the GOP got slammed in the 2006 election, despite uninspiring leadership from Reid, Pelosi, and company. After that election Bush made his first real bow to the public anger at his administration, he forced Donald Rumsfeld to resign.

Part V: The 2006 Election to Obamageddon
From that point onward Bush settled into a long, torturous two-year lame duck era, perhaps the longest in presidential history. The revelations of wrongdoing kept coming fast and furious, too many for me to relate here. (The worst is probably the firing of US attorneys on ideological grounds.) Oh yeah, the vice-president also shot a guy in the face and seemed pretty unapologetic about it. This happened around the time that his chief of staff, "Scooter" Libby, finally got taken down (at least before Bush's pardon), and cemented Cheney's status as the most reviled and distrusted politician in America. The economy went into recession, a fact that Bush tried to deny right up until the financial meltdown caused in part by his lax regulatory policies.

Conclusion
I guess this wasn't such a short history. Sorry for that, but there was just so much malfeasance to cover that it couldn't adequately be done briefly. The final verdict of this historian is that George W. Bush stands as one of, if not the most disastrous presidents in our nation's history. (Only Buchanan, Nixon, and Harding are really close, and they didn't stay in for two full terms.) He has flouted the rule of law, violated human rights, started endless wars, consistently mangled the English language, exploited bigotry for political gain, rewarded ideological zeal over competence in his administration, ignored global warming, waged a jihad on science, fiddled while our economy burned, tilted the tax code in favor of the wealthy, and embarassed and tainted America in the eyes of the world. Good-bye, good riddance, and do us all a favor and just go away.

Hanging Up My Academic Spikes

I wrote awhile back about the similarities between careers in academia and professional baseball, and I keep finding more and more parallels.  This was especially on my mind last weekend, when two old grad school friends who teach at a small college in eastern Pennsylvania came for a visit.  It was mostly for fun, but also for business.

One of my friends didn't walk for his doctoral graduation, and now that he is contractually obligated to attend his current institution's ceremonies, needed the requisite robe, hood, and tam.  He's a tall man like me, and I hate to see someone shell out the kind of dough I had to on such frivolities, so I was glad to give him my doctoral duds on permanent loan.  Like most assistant professors, he's not paid enough to drop some serious money on a medieval costume.

I must say, I felt an odd twinge inside me as I handed over the robe and my friend put it in his car.  As I walked back to my apartment after saying good-bye to my chums, it hit me.  I had, to borrow a phrase from baseball, hung up my spikes.  It's the term we use when a player has definitively retired, with no hope or desire to get back into the game, or with the knowledge that age and decline have made it impossible to keep going.  After almost two years after physically leaving the university, I had symbolically and psychically cut my ties with the academic profession.

It's telling that the twinge I felt on Saturday has not lasted.  I used to be much more bitter, angry, and sad when contemplating my departure from academia, considering that I gave up financial solvency and my youth to pursue the impossible scholarly dream.  I thought of how I postponed necessary dental work (which could have very well lead to life-threatening abscesses), lived in three states in the space of five years, and lived 1500 miles away from the love of my life for the bulk of three years.

Nowadays, I just feel fortunate.  I work at a job I love with fantastic students who actually care about learning.  My employer appreciates my hard work, and gave me more positive reinforcement in my first two months on the job than I received in my five years as a professor.  Best of all, I am living where I want to live, not in some benighted backwoods East Texas burg.  Instead of driving five minutes through strip mall hell to my job, I take a train into the Big Apple, and luxuriate in getting to experience the nation's great cultural nerve center on a daily basis.  I am no longer a scholar, but I am much happier than I was on the tenure-track, so much so that I no longer think I am missing out on anything.

It pains me that so many of my friends in the profession are struggling.  Those with tenure or near it at podunk schools with low pay and high workloads are the lucky ones, since they at least have steady gigs.  Today I found out that two of my friends who are doing visiting jobs this year are scrambling to find jobs for next August, despite their status as (literally) award-winning teachers and authors of fascinating and relevant scholarship.  Many folks out there want to pretend that academia is a "meritocracy," but it's hard to conceptualize any meritocracy where people who are fantastic at their jobs must labor in penury without security or recognition.  It's a completely broken system, but it survives because of the allure of the scholarly dream.  Once I escaped the profession's cult-like clutches,  however, its utter ridiculousness and exploitative nature became even clearer to me.

I am much happier and fulfilled not trying to live that dream anymore, and living a life I never dreamed of, but am very satisfied with.  I know that job opportunities for former academics are not easy to come by, but I implore my brethren in the academic world to consider getting out and hanging up their robes while they still can.  As the old saying goes about other forms of dangerous, self-destructive behavior, the life you save may be your own.

Track of the Week: Boston, "Hitch a Ride"

I have many rules of thumb, one of them being that bands named after geographic places are really lame.  Don't believe me?  Well witness this: Europe, Asia, Chicago, and Kansas.  For the longest time I would have included Boston on that list.  Brad Delp's vocals were ridiculously high, the lyrics paint by numbers, and the records produced within an inch of their lives.  The band was basically undone by the studio perfectionism of guitar savant Tom Scholz, who took eight years between 1978 and 1986 to complete their third record.  This is not the kind of spontaneous, joyful noise rock and roll was intended to be, but an engineering project.  It's only fitting that their album covers featured spaceships, rather than human beings.

That all might be true, but there are some moments of real beauty to be found in Boston's sound.  Back when I lived in Michigan, I had a half-hour car commute where I usually listened to the local classic rock station.  It was during that time that Brad Delp died, and the station played a lot of Boston songs in tribute, including many I'd never heard before in my years of listening to classic rock radio.  One that really put its hooks into me was "Hitch a Ride," from the debut album.  It starts with a beautiful, ringing acoustic guitar line, and while it builds up to an electric opera, it does so with less of the over the top bombast that marks songs like "More Than a Feeling."  It takes its time getting there, luxuriating in the mellow, sun-drenched sound of 70s studio rock.  The solo at the end, backed by an armada of mutli-tracked guitars, is pretty mind-blowing, but it gets its power from the fact that it's not unleashed until the last moment.  It's a lesson in the use of crescendo and dynamics that most hard rock bands in the 70s seemed to have missed.

An Elegy for a Friend

Note:  My friend David died rather suddenly and completely unexpectedly last December.  I still feel aftershocks from that event, and I experienced a pretty rough one this week when his widow posted an old picture of him to Facebook.  I am beginning to think that the pain of losing a close friend never really goes away.  I am beginning to understand why my mother has always acted as if the death of her best friend in high school had happened yesterday.  In any case, I wrote the following to be read at Dave's memorial service in Milwaukee.  I attended the service in Omaha for his family, and my comments there were more impromptu.  In fact, my eulogy ended at the point where I started bawling and could no longer continue.  Four months later, I still feel his absence.

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Of all the people I have ever known in my life, David was perhaps the most unique.  I have never met another person like him before or since, and always admired the courage of his individuality.  He was an unforgettable person.  My parents barely knew him, but even they immediately recalled stories of him after they learned of his passing.  However, unlike a lot of highly intelligent people who pride their individuality, David never seemed to harbor a single malicious feeling in his soul.

We met as 18 year old college freshmen, and we although we shared some cultural interests, we spent a lot of our time back then turning each other on to new things.  Without David I never would have known about films like the The Warriors or learned to have appreciated heavy metal, especially the Ronnie James Dio iteration of Black Sabbath.  Although I had read some of Nietzsche’s philosophy before we met, it is through David that I really began to understand it.  Our intellectual conversations are perhaps the deepest I have ever had, and I feel guilty to this day that I was only able to complete about fifty pages of Heidegger’s Being and Time, a book he purchased for me and never stopped talking about.

We both moved to Chicago at the same time, attending two different universities, me on the South Side and him on the North.  We had a lot of adventures together that year, and roomed together the next in an apartment in Rogers Park.  That year, which I spent working and Dave completing his master’s degree, was one of the most fulfilling of my life, in large part because I was living with David.  We traded thoughts, music, and films together, and often ended our days sitting on the back porch of our apartment, engaged in conversation.  We philosophized in dive bars, read together in coffee shops, and sustained ourselves on the greasy food of the local diners.  Of course, we also clashed over cleaning the apartment, where David in his characteristically witty fashion labeled me an Apollonian Bert and himself a Dionysian Ernie.  I have long looked fondly back on those days, and am still coping with the fact that I no longer have my compatriot to share those memories with. 

The biggest event of that year was surely David and Michelle meeting for the first time, which I can claim to have facilitated.  After conversing over the then newfangled invention of the internet, the two saw each other in the flesh after I drove Dave out to Iowa in my car.  I had another friend with me, and when we left Dave in Cedar Falls to his own devices, he had such a look of silent anxiety in his eyes.  The man was normally as unflappable as they come, so I must say I was a little worried.  When I showed up the next day to pick him up, his face looked quite different, and I knew that I had just done a little bit to make something really great come to life.  We took other road trips out to Cedar Falls, and composed our own dueling mix-tapes for the occasion.  I loved seeing David so obviously happy, and he and Michelle’s relationship gave me some hope for my own romantic future, which looked pretty bleak at the time. 

It was sad to say good-bye to Dave and Chicago, but we were lucky enough to see each other many times again, be it in Omaha, Milwaukee, Champaign, or even Berlin.  I cherished those visits, and when I moved from the Midwest to Texas and then New Jersey, I felt the absence of our time together, however infrequent it had been before. 

Even if I never got close to finishing Being and Time, I knew from our discussions that Martin Heidegger urged that one should live a “resolute” existence, to really mean what one does.  David certainly lived up to that ideal, which I know he set for himself.  To cite just one example, he did not just accept the exploitation of academic laborers like adjunct professors and graduate students, he actively fought against it.    He was more true to himself than I could ever hope to be, and it rips my heart out to think that such a wonderful person and true friend is no longer with us.  I can only say that I was supremely lucky to have known this great man as long as I did

Cranky Bear Holds Congress in Contempt

Note: My friend and associate Cranky Bear has been sending me plenty of missives by carrier pigeon over the last few months, but I have been trying to make this site less profane, and more professional.  However, in the aftermath of Congress' vote yesterday, his is the abrasive voice that needs to be heard.

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Cranky Bear here, sipping bourbon and about ready to blow my stack.  Good old Cranky has been pretty desensitized to the braying idiocy of humanity and its tendency to be its own worst enemy.  However, there are times when even I am surprised at the base stupidity of our elected dipshits.

In case you didn't know, ninety percent of Americans support universal background checks for the purchase of guns.  They find keeping deadly weapons out of the hands of psychopaths, domestic abusers, and convicted felons to be such a common sense proposition that most people think we already have such safeguards in place.  Only if that were so.

I honestly can't think of any issue where 90% of the country agrees.  Hell, there are probably 15% who are so irascible that they don't think baby kittens are cute, or hold that the Star Wars prequels were superior to the originals.  Normally when the public lines up so definitively behind an issue our Congresscritters get so overanxious to please their constituents that the queue to the grandstand goes around the block.  For instance, just witness how public hysteria in the aftermath of 9/11 led to the horrifyingly sweeping PATRIOT Act.

Congress hasn't been too slow to act when it wants to, despite our assumption that it's incapable of action.  For instance, Congress managed to pass a massive giveaway to the evil motherfuckers at the Monsanto corporation in the dead of night as if by magic.  Corporations are people, after all, and furthermore, to quote Orwell's Animal Farm, "some animals are more equal than others."

If Monsanto needs legal protection for its nefarious deeds, fine, but if twenty innocent first-graders are torn to shreds by bullets fired from a weapon meant for the battlefield by a psychopath so loopy that his actions came as little surprise to those who knew him, that's just their tough fucking luck.  Next time pack some heat, assholes.

Those who voted against background checks might object to that characterization of their stand, but as far as I can tell, they are motivated by one of three factors: 1. Licking the ass of the gun lobby in return for blood money 2. An insane interpretation of the second amendment that makes it easier to buy an assault weapon than to register to vote 3. Absolutely craven fucking cowardice when it comes to standing up to the rabid gun nuts.  Their votes are based on either corruption, stupidity, or fear, which are never good reasons to do anything.

I am not so naive to think that our country is really a democracy, but I think that yesterday's events ought to have finally torn the mask off for anyone who had any doubts.  The overwhelming will of the people for a common sense reform of a system that leaves tens of thousands a year dead from gun violence was no match for a powerful demagogic lobby representing a small faction of shit fer brains whack jobs that's got wads of dollars bills it can peel off.  At least we won'y have to argue anymore whether our system is a catastrophe or not, just on whether it is merely fucked up, or Lindsey Lohan fucked up.

Well Congress, I do have to give you some credit.  Your approval ratings are just south of those for root canals and urinary tract infections.  It seemed it would take a miracle to get them to go any lower, but you actually figured out a way to do it, namely to ignore the vast majority of the people you supposedly represent, so you could prevent any solution to the bloody violence that claims new lives everyday.  Congratulation-fucking-relations assholes, I thought it couldn't be done.    

In Defense of Hawk Harrelson

[Note: It's been a heavy past couple of days, with bombings in Boston and Baghdad, and some aggravations at work.  (Nothing big, just aggravating.)  In that spirit, I thought I'd talk about baseball, my mindless indulgence for six months out of the year.]

There is perhaps no sport where the announcer matters more than baseball.  Let's face it, baseball does not translate well to television, since the screen cannot capture all that's going on around the field.  It's a slower paced game, one that's great to see in person on a long summer afternoon, but perhaps not the most exciting in an air-conditioned living room.  The announcer is crucial, because she or he gives the game life for the audience at home that can't hear the low hum of ballpark noise or smell the beer and hot dogs.

The best announcers are engaged in a kind of conversation with their audience.  They can be either erudite narrators of the game (like Vin Scully) or entertaining characters (like Harry Caray), but regardless of style, the great announcers are like an old companion you look forward to spending a few hours with.

Conversely, the worst announcers are like the bad houseguest who won't leave, or your Tea Party uncle.  You just want them to shut up and go away, but for reasons of family or friendship ties, you have to grit your teeth and bear it.  A lot of baseball fans seem to have these feelings about Ken "Hawk" Harrelson, the longtime play-by-play man for the Chicago White Sox, which also happens to be my team.

The fans I talk to can't stand his blatant homerism, exemplified by his terms "good guys" for the Sox, and "bad guys" for whoever they're playing.  They find his "you can put it on the board, yes!" signature home run call to be excessively annoying.  Even worse, they blanch at his many catchphrases and their never-ending repetition: "can of corn," "duck snort," "grab some bench" etc.  Overall, they think he's a boring announcer with multiple irritating tendencies.  Most telling, if you google him, the first website you'll find is dedicated to getting him fired.

Despite this seeming consensus regarding Harrelson's incompetence, I've spent years defending the man, and not because I am a Harrelson-sized homer.  Certainly, you could never mistake him for one of the greats, but I do think that Hawk has a nice, easy delivery, reflecting his Southern roots.  That same background is shared by greater play-callers of the past like Russ Hodges, Red Barber, and Mel Allen, who may have softened their twang, but kept the laconic country cadence so suited to baseball.  When I have a game on in the background, that's exactly what I need.  Hawk may be a homer, but hey, I'm a Sox fan, so what's not to like?

Best of all, I think one of his supposed weaknesses, his economy of words, is a strength.  There are stretches where he will leave a lot of dead air, but I'd rather an announcer not say anything than just blather on incessantly (see: Joe Buck and Tim McCarver).  With the great Steve Stone as his color man, that just leaves more room for a real scholar of the game to do his thing.

Now that I have a subscription to mlb.tv, I have heard announcers from all over the major leagues.  Many of them are good, many are just okay.  However, even the good ones have little individual character, as if they all graduated from the same baseball announcer finishing school.  Sure Hawk might be a blatant homer and prone to repeating himself, but at least he has his own individual character, unlike most sports announcers in our corporate, homogenized times.  Hawk is distinctive and different enough to annoy people, and that alone is a reason to defend the guy.

Track of the Week: Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, "Peaceful Valley"

I've always felt that Ryan Adams was one of the most underrated and under-appreciated musical artists of our time.  I chalk much of this up to his famously erratic personality, as well as his tremendously fertile output, which included three albums (one of them a double) during 2005.  Before potential new listeners had a chance to absorb his new output, Adams hit them with something new, and often very different.  At times the quantity did not always add up to quality (29 was probably a bridge too far), but altogether he managed to write a stunning array of great songs in the oughties.  (After  long hiatus, his most recent record, Ashes and Fire, is a mellow treat.)  Although Adams started out in the alt-country world with the seminal Whiskeytown, albums like Love is Hell strayed far from the roots music road.

I think he managed to expertly balance his country roots, openly professed love of Morrissey and the Smiths, and punk rock feel on his 2005 double album with the Cardinals, Cold Roses.  It rocks, twangs, and aches in equal measure.  However, I think he came closest to perfection on a track on the following record, the honky-tonk drenched Jacksonville City Nights.  That song is "Peaceful Valley," a longing for heaven as a release from a cruel and frustrating world.  As song about the afterlife, it's about ten times as profound as all of the vacuous "praise" music put together.  There's a real edge to this song, wondering if heaven means giving up on the good things in life (like wine, cigarettes and coffee).  Beyond that, it turns hope for the afterlife into a kind of dark death wish to be rid of this wretched earthly existence.  Few songwriters out there can tackle material like this and make the listener believe it.