by Mike Hall, Jun 23, 2008

There are some famous buses out there. The Rosa Parks’ bus—and the seat she refused to give up to a white man in 1955 in Montgomery, Ala.—is in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. Ken Kesey’s famous psychedelic pranksters’ bus, “Further,” sits in an Oregon farm field. And who knows where the Who’s “Magic Bus” finally ended up.

Now we can add to the list of famous buses—or in this case, perhaps infamous—The Bush Legacy Bus. It’s a museum on wheels describing the George W. Bush legacy—eight years of failed and flawed conservative polices that have dragged down our nation. It’s coming to a town near you soon.

The bus is a project of Americans United for Change (AUC) and it rolled out of the garage today for its first stop—our AFL-CIO building here in Washington, D.C.—on a 150-city tour through Election Day. It returns tomorrow for the tour’s official kickoff and is open to visitors until 1:30 p.m., then it heads for a stop in Dayton, Ohio, on Wednesday.

Inside the bus, interactive, multimedia exhibits present a multitude of facts on the trail of destruction Bush is leaving behind on health care, the economy, workers’ rights, education, the environment and the war in Iraq.

Running along the floor of the bus is the eight-year Bush time line. Here’s a tiny sample.

• June 8, 2001, Bush signs his $1.35 trillion tax cut aimed at the wealthy.
• Feb. 3, 2005, Bush uses the State of the Union message to begin his push to privatize Social Security.
• Sept. 2, 2005, Bush tells Michael Brown, then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that he’s “doing a heck of a job, Brownie,” coordinating federal response to Hurricane Katrina while people were dying waiting for help.
• Jan. 29, 2008, figures show home foreclosures jump 75 percent in 2007, while Bush ignored warning signs the mortgage market was ready to implode.

The exhibit on the war in Iraq highlights Bush’s misleading and ever-shifting justifications for launching the conflict and his failed strategies in carrying out the war. The combat boots, dog tags and family pictures of Sgt. Patrick McCafferty are preserved in a glass case. His family donated the items of McCafferty, who enlisted immediately after Sept. 11 and was killed in combat in September 2004.

The bio-diesel bus’s itinerary includes both the Democratic and Republican conventions, hometowns of the senators and representatives who have been Bush’s ardent supporters and other towns and cites around the country.

The road map isn’t finalized, but it’s a good bet there will be a stop or two in Arizona, home of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, who has backed Bush 100 percent so far in 2008. Says AUC President Brad Woodhouse:

This bus is not about bashing Bush, it is about holding him and everyone in Congress, including McCain, who voted for his agenda 90 percent of the time or more, accountable for the war, the economy, the health care mess, etc.

Visit the Bush Legacy Tour website here, where you can follow the tour, sign up for updates and share your thoughts on what Bush’s legacy means to you and the nation.

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