Clareified

It’s hard to remember how I felt about George W. Bush when he was elected. I didn’t know all that much about him except that he made fun a woman on death row, was the alcoholic ne’er do well idiot son of a former President and he had reportedly done cocaine. Oh, yeah and he graduated from Yale. Which, in my mind pretty much equalled out all the other stuff. I would give this new guy a shot. But then all the wacky executives orders which flurried out of his office in those first few weeks, gave me pause. What happened to bi-partisan schmi-partisan leadership! They tricked us! Insert fist shake. President Bush was a super conservative and he was going to govern that way. Suck that, popular vote. I used to sit around with my friends in Lee Steven’s apartment watching Presidential addresses and laughing at the “Bushspeak.” Nuculur. Heh. God, bashing Bush was just about as easy as shooting a guy in the face is for Vice President Cheney. And then one Tuesday in early September 2001 everything changed. (Ha ha, how I’ve come to loathe that phrase! Change! Everything! Day 1! Did Eliot Spitzer really go down for hookers? Really? And my Governor is blind? And black? Really?) George Bush, who had theretofore avoided New York State like the bluebonic plague, was standing on a burning heap of what used to be the center of the financial world, talking through a megaphone. Of course, for those of us being honest about it, no one gave a rat’s arse what President Bush had to say…where was Rudy!? We take our orders from Rudy now, Sir. “Put your mask on, ya moron!” But Bush soon reasserted himself into relevancy…we attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. He created the biggest new federal government agency since FDR…heey, is the Bush/Paulson bailout the single largest government welfare program since FDR too? (George W. Bush: the Republican FDR?) He opened up Gitmo and closed the door to the Black congressional caucus. Faith based was hot, Science was not. I didn’t agree with the President on *anything,* even his supposedly touchie feelie Ted Kennedy co sponsored No Child Left behind seemed uniquely designed to leave as many children behind as possible. But there are two things that I am grateful to Ole number 43 for. The Homeland. No, I don’t think the idea of this juggernaut department or its infinite surveillance powers were a good idea, but I love the term. I love this country, but too often we’re expected to trade the unpopular “nationalism” for a wishy washy “global citizen” viewpoint where we’re all about Darfur and Gaza and nation building. Blah blah blah. When Cuba starts paying Federal taxes, I might give a crap about their needs. President Bush went a long ways to bringing the Homeland to the forefront of our conversation. We may be children or grandchildren of immigrants, or immigrants ourselves, but now we are all Americans.
Second, I loved watching the President as a father. As you all know, I am no fan of President Clinton, but of all his nonsense, the most damning aspect about his legacy was that he seemed unrepentant about the shame and pain he must have been causing to his teenage daughter. How could a man with his own baby girl, have the record that Clinton had with women? Disgusting. President Bush, on the other hand, seemed to cherish his role as father and husband in a way that has brought a dignity to the White House and American *men* in general, that I hope President-Elect Obama can, at the very least, meet, if not exceed. A good American and a great father, not too shabby for eight years work.
Thank you, Sir and God bless you and your family.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 1:56 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.