As further evidence that you really do get what you pay for: Behold, George W. Bush.

This is a president the electorate picked up in the flea market of American politics. He came with no warranty, no product manual and only a questionable performance record. Still, the public bought him based on what the sellers said he could do.

Or, better put, it’s like getting a pet at the dog pound. Every now and then, you end up with a real winner who will bring unparalleled joy and service to the household. Many times, you end up with something barely tenable, rather on the lazy side or sickly. Sometimes, like this time, you find yourself stuck with trouble-on-the-paw -- the type that chews up your shoes, soils the furniture, barks throughout the night and terrorizes the neighbor’s kids.

With apologies to the pound, Bush may be okay as a drinking buddy or a golf partner or even as the father of the bride. But as a president, he is a junkyard dog. 

He has chewed up the U.S. Constitution, ignoring the separation of powers as if the Oval Office were the Throne Room and his constituents were his lowly subjects. 

He has soiled the country’s reputation, leaving arrogance, aggression, caprice, collusion, intimidation and deceit as stains on its cushions.

He barks constantly about freedom and democracy and American righteousness and presidential prerogative, causing all of us to rightfully lose sleep.

And he terrorizes the global neighborhood with more chewing, more soiling and more barking. Not even protests, demonstrations, wailing, criticisms, damning him in the opinion polls and his own party’s pleadings will quiet him -- all proving that you can take the dog out of the junkyard, but ... you know the rest.

Consequently, it was shocking but not surprising that, last week, Bush showed what an ill-mannered, improper fop he is once again as he stood before the Israeli parliament -- the Knesset -- and berated the foreign policy of other leaders. Anyone who follows politics knew him to be speaking of either Barack Obama, who has said he would talk with enemies of the state in an effort to end hostilities, or former President Jimmy Carter, who recently met with Hamas, which has sworn the destruction of Israel -- or both.

Whomever he had in mind, Bush yielded to his mean streak and portrayed the unnamed “some” as “appeasers,” likening them to European leaders who caved to Hitler in the late 1930s, mistakenly believing they were currying favor with the Nazi father.

Now, there’s a longstanding tradition and a gentleman’s agreement among U.S. politicians that they don’t criticize one another from foreign soil and that, when a president is abroad, the mouths back home stay zipped. It’s a version of I-can-beat-up-on-my-brother-but-no-outsider-can.

Bush, behaving badly, put an end to that ages-old tradition on that day in Jerusalem. And, in so doing, he urged Israelis and anyone listening to cast unnecessary and unwarranted suspicion upon the intentions of a man who might become his successor.

In other words, he’s so nasty and classless that, not only does he have no qualms about leaving a cesspool of a war to the next president and a wreck of international relations, but he apparently also wants to make it as hard as possible for the next guy to fix the mess he’s made.

I’ve always believed that a large part of Bush’s bullying, strutting trash talk and his willingness to fight tough with other folks’ fists was due to his need not to avenge his father’s endangerment at the hands of Saddam Hussein, but to get back at his daddy who always saw him as the loved, but ne’er-do-well son. There was Jeb, the pride and joy, the obedient one, the show dog; and there was George, the dilettante, prodigal mutt who broke every opportunity daddy bought or bargained for him.

“I’ll learn ‘im,” George must have said when he first took control of his stolen presidency.  I imagine that Daddy and Mama thought maybe their boy was going to make something of himself after all.

Can’t you just imagine Daddy hanging his head in shame again? No wonder he jumps out of airplanes.