Reflections On Bush
Posted at 1:20 pm on Thursday, July 2, 2009, in Bush Administration, and tagged bush, gore, nine-eleven, obama.
I miss George W. Bush. To be completely honest, I have a lot less to write/blog about since he’s left…
Oh, I love Obama’s idea on [fill in the blank]. It is such a terrific idea. He is the greatest president ever. I am so proud to be an American right now.
It just doesn’t have that zing. It doesn’t fill the seats, but it never really has. It simply doesn’t light a fire under me. (I hinted towards the demise of the liberal blogosphere a year-and-half ago, when a democrat winning was becoming more and more likely, exactly because of Bush’s record and disapproval.1)
Every person who was alive (voting age, knowledgeable) during the Bush administration will never forget it. I am sure that that could be said of any administration (except possibly Ford’s), but the Bush administration was my first. I was not old enough to vote for Clinton. My first vote in a presidential election was for Al Gore when I was twenty.2
Future children will come home from schools (in ten, twenty years) and ask their parents — “Why was Bush so hated? What did he do wrong?” — and everyone will answer the question differently.
This is how I would respond to the question, at least today, sincerely…
Never would I have imagined that the president would take such a horrible event — the tragedy of nine-eleven — and use it not only for personal political gain, but as an explicit smear tactic against any and all opponents or dissidents, on any and all issues or policies. Bush took a golden opportunity to bring a nation together, and he willingly and blatantly tore it apart. His administration exhibited the most divisive form of government, and the most invidious form of politics.
Notes- This phenomenon may only apply to me however. ↩
- This was not the first election in which I had ever voted. The first election that I would have been able to vote in was the mid-term general of 1998. I had come down with mononucleosis in the fall semester of my freshman year. The symptoms started on Halloween. I had stayed home that evening, and spent the entire month of November going in and out of the health center. I wouldn’t have been able to vote even if I was registered, which I wasn’t. It is still something I regret. I have never not voted, primary or special, since. ↩
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