In 23 days, the tumultuous administration of President George W. Bush will end, and it won't come soon enough for many people.
To say Bush has been an unpopular president would be an understatement. As the Iraq War has marched on and the economy has failed, the president's popularity has sagged. Of course, Congress' approval ratings have stunk, too, but most reporting about approval ratings usually focus on just Bush.
Recently, I've heard many speculate on how kind history will be to his administration. When looking back at the Bush presidency 50 years from now, will historians be kinder to him than people are now?
Obviously, there is no way to know that. However, if we are going to deal with hypothetical questions for a moment, I've wondered how Bush’s presidency would have been different if the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, had not happened.
From my seat way out here in Tennessee, I believe Bush took those attacks very personally. On the political level, he should have taken a lot of heat because he is the president and one of the president's primary obligations is to protect the public.
But looking at this from strictly a personal angle, I believe the tragedy tore deeply into his heart. Whether a person is the president or just a regular person, there is no worse feeling than letting people down who are depending on you.
Personally, I think this explains the intense zeal the president showed in pursuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Did this cloud his judgment at times? Perhaps.
Recently, he stated that one of his biggest regrets was his handling of intelligence reports regarding Iraq.
I thought that was a compelling admission. We don't often hear that type of candor from politicians, but I guess one the blessings of being a lame-duck president is that a person can talk more frankly. A lame duck doesn’t have to worry about the next election.
It's too bad that more politicians don't feel comfortable enough to talk candidly with constituents on the issues. We are quick to criticize the honesty of politicians, but if politicians really leveled with us, we would reject them.
This is because most of us look at government as something that should serve us, and if it doesn't, we howl until we get what we want. We are not the country that President Kennedy envisioned when he implored us to ask what we can do for our country and not what our country can do for us.
Don't get me wrong; it's important to howl at politicians at times. However, the older I get, the more I am realizing that it is often the public that should be on the receiving end of the howling.
As for Bush, it will be interesting to see if he will continue to be candid as his administration closes. Though a lot of comments directed his way are negative, I do believe there is one area that he deserves credit.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, it was widely believed that more would come soon on American soil. More than seven years later, this hasn’t happened, and this surprises me.
Given the ease in which people can enter the country illegally, I thought it would be only a matter of time before that would be exploited.
If Bush gets the blame for our problems, shouldn’t he receive credit for this success? Of course, he should.
Only a person incapable of setting aside their political affiliation would think otherwise.
2 comments:
Most of the people that have been so vitriolic in their Bitter Angry Whining about Bush either weren't around when Lyndon Johnson was in office or have chosen to forget his time in the White House, during the last year of which both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assasinated, the disastrous Tet Offensive and much of the rioting and unrest - political and otherwise - took place.
Unfortunately, most Americans aren't history majors.
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