My recent screed on George W. Bush will be my last. At this point (well before this point, really) we have crossed the line of diminishing returns in talking about W. He was never that personally interesting; he was only interesting as a phenomenon, to wit, how could an advanced country, the world leader in so many ways, find itself in the position of having Bush as its President? Herein lie the disturbing riddle and the question fraught with significance.
As a parting shot, I would only say that in some ways Bush was the Opposite President, in the same way that Opposite George once served as the theme of a Seinfeld episode. Bush's particular gift was to achieve disaster when the aleatory processes of flipping a coin or using a Magic 8-Ball would have assured him of at least a 50% better overall result. For example, presented with the famous PDB of August, 2001, if Bush had asked his Magic 8-Ball, is this a serious threat?, and the Swami within had answered, "As I see it, yes," Bush would have demanded a follow-up to FBI reports that probably would have thwarted the 9-11 plot. Or, after various experts had expressed opinions on the presence of WMD in Iraq, a shake of the Ball might have floated up, "My sources say no." Was the Mission Accomplished in May, 2003? "Outlook not so good."
Et cetera. On his way to the worst approval ratings in American history, Bush defied probability theory by achieving bad results which are almost statistically impossible.
We will no longer have this kind of diversion. If America continues to flounder, to go broke, to obstruct the greatly-needed changes in our energy regime and approach to environmental crises (chief of which is climate change), then we will not be able to simply blame the leadership. Our failure will reflect something far more sinister about American society, something hinted at by its election of Bush in the first place, of course, but will confirm how deep the problems run. Did we become too greedy, too under-educated, too distracted by shiny baubles, too distorted by ideas of American Exceptionalism to see straight anymore? The election of O militates against such sweeping generalizations, as Obama himself points out. Americans actually did rise up, in astonishing numbers, to meet the fierce urgency of Now.
Obama is everything that Bush was not: sane, organized, reasonable, informed, hard-working, forward-thinking, non-delusional, ego-realistic, inclusive, collegial, intellectually competent and confident -- in his own way, O is the Opposite W. Objective science will again be accepted as the basis for public policy involving science. The U.S. Constitution will again be used as the legal framework for American government. Once the United States becomes acquainted again with Objective Reality, instead of forced to make decisions on the basis of apparitions appearing only to Bush, then we can take steps appropriate to dealing with that reality.
I think Barack Obama will have to take a considerable amount of time to come to terms with what's he dealing with, but at least progress is now possible. Anyway, there is not much upside in looking back. I do feel for the kids who, for the sake of an arithmetically simple example, are now 16 years old and have spent half their lives under the bumbling, corrupt leadership of Bush. Their public consciousness, in other words, was formed on the basis of what they saw and heard from Bush and his cronies. In my own youth, Eisenhower and Kennedy were the Presidents during similar passages, sane, emotionally complete men who obviously cared about the country and did not use the position as a place to work out the tiresome Oedipal dramas of their own inner demons. I will assure our youth that you will now see what the country is like when someone who worked hard to become President and is a decent human being takes control.
I'm trying to remember what it was like myself.
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