That’ll Do Mr. Bush, That’ll Do
Today, Barack Obama becomes President of the United States and George Bush becomes one of the former Presidents. Everyone is looking at Mr. Obama to lead the world to better times. The country is going through hard times economically. We need someone who has a vision for getting us out of the credit crisis mess we find ourselves in. We need someone who can give us the sense of confidence that good times are ahead and closer than what we may think. We need someone of leadership with just as much courage and wherewithal to get the country out of war, as our leadership had bravado and keenness to get us into war. We need political leadership that suffers from no fear of making compromise in order to save a personal, as well as a collectively national, ego.
Many of Mr. Bush’s proponents are fond of saying that he kept us safe for seven years. Maybe, but I know he didn’t keep three thousand of us safe that fateful day in September a little more than seven years ago. And then that failure was compounded with the failure to keep another four thousand of our citizens who joined the service safe from losing their lives in war. And that failure is further compounded when we think that tens of thousands of us have been physically and/or psychologically injured through our voluntary war on terror. And every time I venture to the airport or try to cross the border home from a weekend trip in Canada, I am reminded how precarious our sense of safety has become over the years. I have much more fear from my fellow citizens charged with keeping me safe than from any would be terrorist. Indeed, terror takes many forms.
I suffer from the terror of a government that has truly run amok. I never thought that we the people have to fear our government. That is a scary thought. And the idea of wrapping all the new laws that have given our government the authority to trash our inalienable rights into a misnomer called the Patriot Act is really a concept of Orwellian magnitude. The idea of telling countries around the world that you are either with us or against us sounds as if our foreign policy it was modeled off of schoolyard bully principles. There is no in between. There is no gray area. There is no difference of opinion. America’s way or the highway. You have a limited amount of time to decide said the decider. I, like so many million Americans, decided as well. Regardless for the reason, the collective decision was made to take the country in a new direction sans political rancor.
It’s interesting because Mr. Bush made the perfect combination of disastrous conditions that favored the black candidate. The economy, the war, the credit crisis, national security, Halliburton, the Katrina aftermath, Dick Cheney, the Justice Department, the EPA, FEMA, the outing of spies, Abu Ghraib, and etcetera. The list of disappointments brought on by this administration is truly a long one. And through the political dust that has been kicked up by this chaotic mess, Mr. Obama emerged as the one most fit to lead the country out. And what was truly remarkable is that right after Arizona Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee for the oval office, made his choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and actually used her as a mechanism to raise his dismal poll numbers, the magic of Mr. Bush came to Mr. Obama’s rescue and produced a precipitous crisis in the stock markets exposing Mr. McCain as a politician without a plan blowing in any political wind that filled his political sails while Mr. Obama remained calm with a focused agenda. I believe this, more so than Ms. Palin’s inability to express a coherent thought during one of her rare interviews or her folksy mannerisms better left in a Branson, Missouri country music festival, is the more important contributing factor to Mr. Obama’s success.
In so many different ways, Mr. Bush planted the various seeds that made for Mr. Obama’s historic ascension possible. That’s the one accomplishment that has benefitted the country that Mr. Bush and his cohorts made. The condition of the country is so problematic that many of us were able to finally look past the fact that the best candidate was of obvious African descent. I remember seeing videos of people saying something to the affect that this country is so screwed that they were ready to vote for the insert whatever racial epithet you can imagine for black people. It is true that some people would rather commit suicide than vote for a black man. I remember watching the videos of people going to the McCain/Palin rally saying they would never vote for Barack Hussein Obama, saying each syllable of the man’s name with exaggerated emphasis as if it was its own slur for black people. But that’s okay because enough people had the horse sense to put their prejudices aside so they can vote for the best way to end their rain of pain.
Only Mr. Bush could make a President Obama possible. Is that alone worth the all of the tragedy and hardship of the past eight years? I seriously doubt it. In order for us to get our first black President the country had to go through a serious wringer of failure of epic proportions. In no way, shape, or form do I think it was worth it. But it could have been far worse. Had Mr. Bush actually taken it a little easier on us, if we weren’t in such dire straits, the past eight years of adversity would not have seemed so bad and we could be preparing for another four years of the same failed policies and practices under someone like Mr. McCain or, even worse, the mavericky Ms. Palin. Thank you Mr. Bush for doing your job as abysmally as you did. You made President Obama our reality. No one else could have done it any better. That’ll do Mr. Bush. That’ll do.
