Eight Years of Bush
I suppose I should have waited another three weeks to write this post, when the Bush presidency officially ends. But I couldn't wait. Like a child peeking at his Christmas presents, sometimes one can't resist doing things a little bit early.
The Bush presidency is the first for which I have been politically aware throughout its duration. I remember nearly all of the Clinton years, and some of Daddy Bush, but the Bush era is the first that occurred entirely after I became an adult. When he entered office in January 2001, I was a second-year university student in San Diego, California, still majoring in Literature and studying Italian as a foreign language. As Bush's second term ends, I begin my fifth year living in China. A lot has happened in the interim.
I often divide the Bush presidency into little sectors defined of how I thought of him at the time. From his inauguration until September 11, 2001, I found him goofy and irritating but largely harmless. Then, after the national shock of 9/11 and the broadly popular Afghanistan War, I approved of the president, whose staunchness was needed in those days.
I soured on him after the Axis of Evil speech, delivered in January 2002, and from there my distate for Bush evolved into visceral disgust. The whole Iraq War buildup felt like a farce to me, as otherwise intelligent people threw their weight behind the war mostly just to cover their asses in case it succeeded. People now say that they were "duped", but there was sufficient cause and evidence to oppose the war then, as millions of people (including one Barack Obama) did. I never shook the sense that Bush approached the war with excitement rather than reservation, as if the casualties that would surely come would be mere footnotes to the glorious invasion. He was a "war president", after all, one called upon by the imagined father in the sky to impose his vision on a distant land.
This disgust for Bush carried me through the subsequent presidential election, in which the smug, benighted Texan was re-elected without undue difficulty. His supporters in the blogosphere, hiding behind the safety of their computer screens, flippantly called for additional Middle Eastern campaigns, like sex-starved college freshmen playing a game of Risk. Syria is next. Then Iran! And while we're at it, let's take out Saudi Arabia and a few of those pissant gulf states, too! But no- it isn't about oil! We're doing them all a favor! We have to destroy their countries in order to save them! It's just like 'nam, brother!
Then, around 2005, the Bush edifice began to crumble. First, his efforts to privatize social security went belly-up and woke up the doddering Democrats. Then, the vision of black Americans floating dead in a pool of stagnant water for days in New Orleans shook the concept that he was in any way competent to deal with disasters. Around this time, the Bush swagger was gone, and his popularity sank so low even submarines couldn't find it. My disgust with the man turned to a weird sense of pity, like watching a quarterback throwing interception after interception.
This pity, misplaced as it is, evolved into indifference once again over the past two years. Once the 2008 presidential campaign kicked off in earnest, Bush more or less ceased to matter. The nation was already looking ahead, and what Bush thought of Putin's antics or the environment or abortion meant practically nothing. To me, the defining moment of Bush's winter in office was the image of him goofing off in Beijing at the Olympics, staring at the tight rear ends of the women's beach volleyball team and looking every bit as dignified as a Chinese cadre staggering home from a night at the karaoke bar.
And so, we've come full circle- back to stage one, irrelevance. In a matter of weeks Bush will shuffle back to his Texas ranch, blissfully content in the belief that he will be vindicated by the forces of fate. But this, I think, will be unlikely, and his legacy will likely be the long lines of people at American airports, removing their shoes and belts at security checkpoints while our swarthier compatriots get pulled out for having the misfortune of looking vaguely like a "terrist".
Good riddance.
