Back during the campaign, then-Senator Joe Biden guaranteed that Obama would soon face an "international crisis, a generated crisis," one designed to "test [his] mettle." After North Korea, prophetic proof came again in the form of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, freshly returned as president with damning evidence of election fraud.
But I wonder: is Obama's true test coming from Iran, or actually from Republican opposition at home? Sometimes I'm really not sure. ----- Driving home from work tonight, I tuned into The Mark Levin Show to find the fiery, preeminent star of conservative talk radio downright abusing an Obama-aligned caller. At the incensed apex, he demanded that the overwhelmed caller read his book, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, then call back.
Yet one does not have to read the book to know Levin's response to Iran. His agenda is self-evident in the title, remote but clear.
To the Republicans and some Obama supporters alike, that the American president does not forcefully repudiate Iran is beneath contempt. At stake, of course, are the values and principles all Americans cherish. We elect a man not just to run the country, but to represent us as a people.
Nothing else matters. To hardline GOP hawks, Iran is an existential threat to America, nevermind nukes.
If life was a FPS video game, Obama's choice would be easy: reprimand Iran, denounce the legitimacy of the Khamenei regime, grandstand tall for the world to admire, and march down the glorious path to civilizational war (as expertly narrated by Spengler in 2006).
Unless, of course, the video game is a Sid Meier masterpiece, whereby the game is a portrait of life, not fantasy.
The Republicans badly want Americans to miss the Bush Doctrine, and for Sarah Palin to memorize it well by 2012. By appealing to raw American values, the GOP hits Obama where it hurts the most politically, namely for making an informed choice.
In fact, caution is the only choice Obama could have made. Had he responded to the Iranian election with unbridled indignation, an eventual US invasion is all but assured. After all, if you do not talk to an enemy with words, you talk with bullets.
Had Obama taken McCain's advice, erased are all diplomatic progress overtures in the Middle East to this point, possibly for good. Then we would be back at square one: bomb-bomb-bomb Iran. No McCain, you were not joking.
Yet, all joking aside, it may very well be that bombing Iran will come as the final act, the beginning of the end. But it is also apparent that if you think that, it is very likely you really will end up bombing Iran.
Is there no other way? Bombing Iran would spell the beginning of the end of our so-innocent Middle East enterprises.
The region would be set ablaze, awash in bloody rain beyond all fictitious fancy. Already I hear the first rumblings. Be assured that Iranian proxies Hamas of Gaza and Hezbollah of Lebanon, vis-à-vis the US Army in mighty Israel, are already licking their swords, struggling vainly at the noose leash.
I am not opposed to fighting, since war is how peace is made. Yet I, and many others, should be careful what we wish for.
Do not forget the 2006 humiliation the Israel military puppy suffered against Hezbollah in Lebanon, or, more poignantly, the ongoing Iraq quagmire initiated by the American pit bull. Nevermind the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan the failed state, affectionately known as the Af-Pak war theater recently unveiled by Impresario Obama.
It is painfully apparent that, at present, Iran is not a fight we can win without another Nagasaki. Yet if Iran does develop nuclear warheads, let them beware.
This sobering reality has shaken me enough for a second take on my world view. If we must fight, then we fight. But, given present circumstances, what we should NOT do is guarantee a fight a la Bush Doctrine.
Things are bad enough already.
To think: here is Iran, landlocked by Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and a fleet of indomitable American maritime fortresses. All the while, John McCain makes funny about bombs (he should joke about President Oh-bomb-ma).
If I were Iran, I would build me a nuke, you betcha. Why else do you think the US is so convinced Iran is weaponizing plutonium?
I am not an Iran apologist, but a grudging voice of reason. There are realities one must consider before succumbing to professed ideology. This is, of course, my definition of a postpartisan act, as channeled by Obama. If I must sacrifice my precious American values for contingent wisdom every now and then, then let it be so.
Apparently, wisdom is no longer a virtue for the GOP crazies, not in matters of foreign policy. If we have to prove this factoid with blood ONCE AGAIN to the American people, I'm moving back to Hong Kong.
We have already leveled two Middle East countries; how many more before hardline conservatives learn a lesson? How many more before ALL Americans know folly when they see it?
If no one else, Obama has learned from the Bush Doctrine. Yet, the average American, who will never be as smart or engaged as our president, can glean as much from the writing on the wall.
Namely, when one model of reality is proven false, it's time to try something else. Insanity, as Einstein sagely suggested, "is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Please, someone pass this timeless bit of wisdom on to the neoconservatives, who have long had their chance on Capitol Hill.
My hope is that enough voters know better. Obama's timid response to Iran is, of course, part and parcel of his vague campaign promise of "postpartisan change." Clearly, Obama supporters who now regret their vote did not think through the matter of Iran. More than that, these people—who cannot stand up to the Mark Levin's and John McCain's of the world—should be careful what they wish for.
"Peace through superior firepower," they say? Yes, but not in a war wherein nukes are involved and the odds are stacked against our favor, please.
In a way, Iran gave a test to the American people, not Obama. Unwittingly, the Republican party has become Iran's surrogate mouthpiece.
The Republicans know Obama's is an informed choice, which is precisely why they can attack it. After all, the average voter does not have the time of day to be informed. Between the "smart" and the "right" thing to do, there is a 50/50 chance the GOP will hit blackjack, and they know it.
Apparently the GOP wants to roll Obama in the same Middle Eastern mud that they are still choking on.
How I wish that 17 year-old caller on the Mark Levin show could have read this post first, and how I long to be in that caller's place, forcing Levin to reveal his true face (see picture of Bush at top) to the talk radio masses.
Listen, forget all that. Moving forward, our choice is simple: do we bomb, or don't we bomb Iran? If you cannot make this decision, just shut up and listen to Obama, OKAY?????
Miss California made a fatal gaffe at the venerable Miss USA pageant, or did she? Basically she stood up and gave her honest opinion on gay marriage, saying she was brought up to believe that marriage "should be between a man and a woman." Respectable an opinion as that is, her response became red meat for partisans on both sides of the issue.
See for yourself.
The general public's response to this is as you would expect, namely praised by some as ideologically pure and derided by others as ignorant bigotry. These are, of course, dead end talking points, so I feel motivated to offer an alternative angle on this touchy gaffe.
There may be no wrong answer to the question of gay marriage, but I believe there is in fact a right answer. --- The way I see it, Miss California should have said 'I don't believe gay marriage is right, but that doesn't mean gay marriage is wrong.' Such an answer would have been at once politically correct and in line with her stated morals.
Had she said that, I bet she would have gotten every single one of those judges' votes for her encompassing vision; she would have gotten mine. Instead, she basically said 'I believe straight marriage is right, which means gay marriage is wrong but oh, it's ok if you do it; it's a free country."
In my view, there is nothing wrong with her principles per se, but that is simply the wrong answer.
Analysis
Other than the fact that I am an admirer of painfully hot women, I am not interested in these pretty contests. What does interest me about this particular gaffe is that it showcases the woefully black-and-white vision of the world many Americans are comfortable with.
The notion that either you're right or you're wrong--you're with us or against us--simply repulses me. Life is never as simple as a rulebook. When a partisan blasts the viewpoint of an opposing partisan, usually he is just as guilty of myopic vision as his counterpart. This is a classic case of existential hypocrisy that I hope to explore here at a later date.
Consider the case of Miss California. Had she given the answer I suggested above, she would have in fact demonstrated a POST-partisan understanding of gay marriage. By suggesting that gay marriage is not right but not wrong either, she could have genuinely vindicated gay marriage without sacrificing her own moral integrity and sense of honesty.
If you listen closely, that is basically what she was trying to say. In her full statement, she began by stating that "it's great that Americans are able to choose one or the other . . . [that] we live in a land [where] we can choose same or opposite sex marriage." However she failed miserably at reconciling this open-minded statement with her subsequent and proud declaration of heterosexual supremacy.
(I recently read this great quote by G.K. Chesterton: "when the modern man see two truths that seem to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them." Apparently this afflicts modern women as well.)
Fortunately I am here to connect the dots for dear Miss California. By having cheered the freedom to choose, she basically suggested that there possibly exists an overriding ethos of responsibility and pragmatism which trumps the rigidity of ideological belief, namely her own.
(Yet I am not convinced she really knew she was actually suggesting this, which doesn't exactly surprise me considering how modern and hot she is 0_0)
This is, as I have asserted elsewhere, my definition of a true post-partisan stance. The post-partisan may take partisan positions, but he also recognizes that there may be greater truths to which he must submit.
In other words, you can support gay marriage without being a supporter of gay marriage.
Americans, however, are generally not bred to think this way. We are raised to cherish the sanctity of individual opinion. That is all fine and good, but unfortunately life is not as simple as a rulebook, and as such certain social issues intrinsically lie beyond the purview of partisan opinion. Such it may be for gay marriage, that is if you believe gay people are precisely that: people.
In a democratic society, the tenet of self-governance demands that we look beyond rigid partisan beliefs with the understanding that not one party has the right answers. The fact that Americans are generally satisfied with knee-jerk partisan outbursts tells me that perhaps self-governance is getting to be a burden too heavy to bear (see my post on AIG).
Incidentally, I happen to agree with Miss California in that gay marriages are not right. However I also recognize that just because I think it is not right, that does not make it wrong. This effectively puts me in the pro-gay marriage camp, although I am not pro-gay marriage per se.
This is what a healthy democracy should be all about. I fancy Obama might agree that I have been a good post-partisan on this issue. Taxing my RYO tobacco habit, however, would be an entirely different story..
Thursday night, Obama sits in with Jay Leno. Some see this as good, some bad, and most say risky at the least. These are all legit opinions except that they are all irrelevant. I argue that Obama's choice was a matter of necessity, if he is intent on proving his commitment to the promise of "changing" Washington.
Obama's appearance, unprecedented for a sitting president, gives him an unprecedented chance to vet his unprecedented promise: achieve a post-partisan Washington, somehow, by relegating partisan ideology to the back-burner in politics. Some promise, isn't it! ----- In reality, he faces a poisonously partisan Congress wherein neither parties are willing to yield their party lines. While not surprising, this impasse effectively voids Obama's promise of change. As Washington looks today, post-partisan politics will not appear any time soon, much less bipartisan agreement on anything of import.
But Obama still has his trump card: popularity. He must use it or fail his promise.
At this point, the only way Obama can move Washington toward a post-partisan future is by appealing directly to the people. If he cannot do this effectively, Congress will forever remain as we know it today: divided by ideology, and speaking of things as they ought to be rather than as they really are.
All this while reality burns.
In fact, Obama really does not have a choice but to go straight to the people. Democracy requires that Congress speaks the language of its electorate and none other. Even as president, Obama can talk post-partisan all he wants but it does not mean Congress will speak his language. The only way to "change" Congress, therefore, is to "change" the people.
After all, how can we expect our leaders to transcend partisanship when their own electorate cannot? Lots of Americans are fed up with our government, but they want to look for the cause of their malcontent in all but the most obvious place, which is the mirror.
Obama understands this, but he cannot say it. This is why he decided to take the unorthodox step of appearing with a talk show host. If appearing on Jay Leno lessens the stature of the presidency, it is because Obama thought it necessary to attain his goal. Necessity and pragmatism are, of course, the definition of a post-partisan act.
Tomorrow night on Jay Leno, Obama must defend himself by making a post-partisan case for why his agenda leans so heavily on classically liberal ends. He must convince Americans that there is a practical need for doing so, not because he is a liberal nut trying to remake the country in his own partisan image. And he must do this without a teleprompter, which is why I suspect he chose this venue.
Because spending is a liberal thing, Obama must face the people and convince us that spending is also a thing of necessity in today's anemic economy. Making this kind of argument directly to the people is what it takes to bring post-partisan politics to Congress.
The political situation in Congress today is more than mere partisan gamesmanship, but getting perilously close to political brinkmanship. Obama cannot be the man who "changes" Congress because he does not elect its members. Rather, it is the American people who sets the tone in Congress, an institution designed to speak the language of its electorate (too often does it work the other way around). Tomorrow night, if Obama can convince enough Americans that he is pursuing an imminently post-partisan agenda, not just a liberal one, it would be a small step toward a post-partisan Washington.
Jay Leno is a risky but necessary step, given the political climate today. This move is very courageous on Obama's part and has earned my respect. For my part, I will be watching very closely not at what he proposes, but in how he proposes it.
Most mainstream commentators have so far confused Obama's hypnotic suggestion of post-partisan politics with some kind of imminently polite, new-age bipartisan politics. They did so because, like all politicians, Obama praised bipartisanship by making the standard cookie-cutter pledges to "reach across the aisle" as president.
It is with great skill that he did so with a straight face because nothing else about his rhetoric had anything to do with praising bipartisanship. ----- On the contrary, Obama often uses words like "petty," "posturing," and "irresponsible" when describing Washington politics. His conceit centers around the notion that bipartisan legislation has become mired in ideological gamesmanship serving the electability of politicians, rather than be in the service of some higher cause. At worst, cynics argue that bipartisan deals equate to transactional politics whereby opposing lawmakers scratch each other's backs (read: re-electability) without regarding the bigger picture. In other words, even in bipartisan unity, Congress seems more concerned with appeasing the ideological leaning of their constituents instead of solving problems.
Obama attributes the root of this evil to eternal ideological warfare in Washington. To a professed post-partisan politician, unmitigated bipartisanship is tantamount to irresponsible lawmaking.
As I previously observed, railing against bipartisanship like this is a bit controversial to publicly say outright, so Obama did it by throwing trashy yet elegant rhetoric at the "status quo" in Washington. He speaks of going from "ideological and small thinking [to] our better angels," putting aside "stale ideology and petty partisanship, and embrace what works," and even suggesting a type of leadership where "facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology."
Perhaps most telling of all: "[ex-]President Bush continues to not let facts get in the way of his ideology" or, as he utters in another breath, "wishful thinking and outdated ideology."
Now, I do not ask the reader to swallow all this dreamy and probably hypocritical stuff, but merely to observe how often the word "ideology" shows up in his rhetoric regarding Washington. These sound bites serve as irrefutable evidence of Obama's disingenuous praise for BI-partisanship and his unstated preference for something less shackled to ideology, namely POST-partisan politics. Yet just about every mainstream political pundit or politician continue to wrongly equate post-partisanship with bipartisanship, which makes no sense to me whatsoever; it is Obama's power of unspoken words at work, as I observed in my previous installment.
What Obama should have said outright is this: 'we should supplant the role of partisan ideology in politics with some kind of higher calling, that there exists an overriding ethos of responsibility and pragmatism which trumps the rigidity of ideological belief.'
This is Obama's unspoken post-partisan vision as I can see: a pragmatic approach to politics that separates solutions from their parent ideology. In a post-partisan world, ideological warfare and bipartisanship has its place but in the final analysis, ideology should not be the deciding factor.
For example, if tax cuts work, then let's cut taxes and if spending works better, then let's spend instead but if both works to some degree, let's find a balance and do both; but do not praise or deride a solution for its ideological purity. The central tenet is that a post-partisan solution must be evaluated for its efficacy and relevance to needs at hand, not if it is necessarily right or wrong.
You've heard this concept before, albeit in vague rhetoric, something like 'there is no Red or Blue America, just the US of America.' This particular Obamaism implies that responsible governance should NOT be the following:
Ideologically-pure like Mao Zedong's radicalism (read: Blue America) or George W Bush's childish 'good versus evil' stories from the Middle East (read: Red America)
Nor ideologically-bound like bipartisan warfare in Washington (read: Blue or Red America)
Rather, responsible governance should be ideologically-free like Barack Obama's post-partisan pragmatism (read: the US of America), maybe.
This is dreamy stuff, all theoretical and a necessarily imperfect framework. The only thing I hope to accomplish with this post is prove that Obama's unspoken post-partisan decree is NOT a call for bipartisan politics. The mainstream media and politicians claim otherwise (12345), but nothing can be further from the truth. Rather it is a call for a politics of pragmatism over ideological consideration, or a "change" from Bush's naked and inflexible ideological precepts. Unless, of course, if Obama really is an empty suit, in which case I have grossly overestimated him. Only time can tell, and in the meantime I reserve my judgment on the merits of post-partisanship.
So far in these posts, I still have not left the realm of rhetoric and wishful thinking; the larger question of reality and implementation remains. Namely, who makes the non-ideological judgment call on which solutions are efficacious or relevant? Even more vexing, how can a post-partisan ideal, as I outlined above, even be compatible with a democracy in which bipartisanship is an existential requirement? At first glance, these seem diametrically opposed but as I will argue, their coexistence may not be as "new" in American politics as one might think.
What does Obama really have up his sleeves? That is the subject of my next and final exploration (for now).
President Obama is a man who understands the power of unspoken words. Although his powerful rhetoric seems to reveal so much on the surface, he is able to deftly veil his inner ideological core from unwanted eyes probing for weaknesses to exploit. Certainly his political enemies tried and repeatedly attacked him as an "empty suit" throughout the campaign for his hair-raising oratories. It didn't work because in the hands of a master politician like Obama, the power of unspoken words preempts controversy by defusing it before it becomes inflated. More to the point, unspoken words serve as a smoke screen behind which Obama can operate against political enemies who, much to their dismay, cannot reliably attack what they cannot see clearly.
None better exemplifies this approach than the notion of "post-partisan" politics, a term given to Obama by the media to characterize the spirit of "change" he promised to bring to Washington politics. The funny thing is, post-partisanship is a term that Obama never used himself, but yet it is becoming more mainstream by the day. But precisely because Obama left the term unspoken, he was free to flex his rhetorical muscles and stake out an ambiguous yet distinctly post-partisan position without ever being challenged about what it actually means. Obama can get away with this because he can charm a crowd of millions without breaking a sweat.
So instead of telling us what post-partisanship means, Obama only told us what it should NOT mean: Washington politics as we know it today. ----- Obama did this for a very simple reason: to avoid big-time controversy. The standard thing for politicians to do is promise BI-partisanship, or the act of "reaching across the isle" and making deals with the opposition. Since this is what politicians are supposed to be doing anyway, bipartisanship is a relatively safe promise to make. But on the other hand, to promise POST-partisanship, something that implies doing something other than "reaching across the isle," is basically tantamount to turning the American political establishment on its head. This is precisely why Obama never uttered "post-partisanship."
Last time I checked, we live in a bipartisan democracy. The truth is, partisanship is an existential trait of our two-party democracy; polar opposition ensures balance in bipartisan Congressional agreements which contain ideological elements of both sides, otherwise it is not really democratic (i.e., pre-partisan). While too often does this political ideal result in watered-down or even incoherent legislation, it's a process of eternal compromise we as Americans implicitly agree to suffer. Bipartisan jockeying can get downright shameful and we may not like it, but somehow that's just how things here should work.
Were Obama to have come forth outright with the decree that we should not be bipartisan as the term post-partisan would suggest, there would be an uproar. Instead of calling him a socialist, the GOP would have branded him a dictator and that moniker might have actually worked. But because of the power of unspoken words, Obama masterfully defused a potentially damaging controversy and instead ended up compelling a lot of people to imagine "something new" without prompting them to wonder what that actually means. To fill the intellectual void, both Washington and the mainstream media stepped in to put their stamp on post-partisanship, the former being politicians hoping to gain a political edge and the latter being journalists hoping for snappy headlines. From what I can tell, neither have yet got the definition quite right (1234), save for a few that are on the right track (12).
This is exactly what Obama wanted, a smoke screen behind which he can operate against an entrenched culture of ideological warfare in Washington and, as the indomitable Rush Limbaugh would say, the "drive-by" media feeding Americans woefully biased information. Indeed, if we are to give Obama the benefit of the doubt that he is not just an "empty suit" canvassing for votes, then the power of unspoken words is the only means by which anyone can hope to "change" the incumbent political environment. For now, President Obama holds the cards and has secured a position of power where he can reveal them at a time of his choosing and no other's.
A lot of people are satisfied to just "watch and see" how Obama will conduct himself in the coming years but personally, I feel the promise of post-partisanship is too significant to let others define it for me. As such, this post is the first installment in a series that will explore in turn the contrast between post-partisan and bipartisan politics, at least in my theory; how post-partisan politics can be even compatible with a bipartisan democracy such as ours; and how we can judge the genuineness of Obama's professed post-partisan presidency when partisan gridlock in Washington is all we have in recent memory to use as reference. Stay tuned!
I don't think the subject of this post requires a preamble but if you want one, Reuters can help.
Although his presidency doesn't expire for another week, I've long been done reflecting on Bush the man as we've known him for eight memorable years. I suspect many of you have as well, if for nothing else than to turn the page sooner than fate allows. Even the media got a clue and avoided Bush stories like the plague, instead plastering on every Obama story whether it was newsworthy or not. Anyway, this should be the last week we'll have to experience a substantive Bush newsflash, even if the repercussions of his presidency will be with us a long, long time.
At least this should be the last time I have to think on Bush directly, and I'm thankful for it. My bag is foreign policy, so you can imagine just how thankful I am. --- For both good and ill, Bush's character has been remarkably consistent throughout. Like the prototypical American, he is a high risk high reward kind of guy, the sort of president who requires a whole lot of political capital up front and operates by spending it in huge chunks. That's all fine, all the great presidents probably do that. But the problem with Bush is, he doesn't seem to understand how to earn that capital without resorting to brash politicking and frankly, he doesn't understand how to spend it strategically either. He got away with that approach on domestic issues up to a point, but he never stood a chance on the world stage once our political capital reserves got burned up. That happened fairly quickly after our engineering venture in the Middle East got underway.
What struck me most of all about his mostly inept foreign policy is that he seemed to react to things that weren't quite there, or things perhaps he wanted to actually be there. More often than not, either it turned out there was no there there, or in reality there was actually something else there there. I call this the preemptive reactionary syndrome, and it seems to be a weakness that the world caught on to real fast after it became all too apparent. It's entirely plausible someone, whether friend or foe, would preemptively plant something in Bush's mind just for him to react to in order to advance their own agenda.
Even if Iran really isn't weaponizing plutonium, they already know Bush is going to act as if they are. Moreover, it's easy for them to surmise specific actions he might take, because Bush is like an open book whose rhetoric is so idealistically removed from harsh realities that it constrains his choice of actions irrevocably. Under this condition, certainly Ahmadinejad was not afraid to pit his wits against Bush, and it's arguable Iran has gained both political and geopolitical capital from that confrontation. At the presidential level, politicians are about as savvy as they come and for savvy politicians, knowing what your opposition is thinking is tantamount to stealing a commanding advantage. That's a dangerous disadvantage that I simply cannot tolerate from my president in these dangerous and changing times.
It's a deathly glaring weakness that I don't expect in Obama. Despite his imminently accessible rhetorical stylings, Obama deftly disguises the true depth of his idealistic core, something that Bush nakedly paraded throughout his presidency as if he still needed votes or something. Haven't you ever felt that although Obama seems to reveals so much in his rhetoric and writings, he still exudes a certain veiled mystery nonetheless? It's this masterful simultaneous disguising and revealing of his inner mind that earned Obama frightful labels from political enemies like the socialist moniker which, in its absurdity, he was actually able to turn around and use to his advantage. It suggests that Obama subscribes to a brand of political subtlety at least one level beyond what Bush demonstrated through his sophisticated campaign style of governance. That's what my gut tells me, and it's given me a certain hope for competent leadership I couldn't feel for a long time
Actually I kind of have a grudging respect for Bush. Quite frankly, if I were him I would have probably hung myself dead by now after having looked the goat so profoundly so many times. Instead, over the years this man has had to carry his goat baggage all around the country and world at large, forced to take himself seriously when much of the actions taken on the basis of his rhetoric has proven anathema to reality (exhibit shoes). His ability to do that is not just savvy politicking, it's the mark of a real man who would stay true to his course in spite of anything or anyone who opposes him (for better or worse). Of course I know this trait is prerequisite to high office, but the magnitude of his worst blunders is so large and sustained that I can't help but admire his handling of himself. After all, I suppose there was a reason why he was twice elected. I can't help but think if another president had Bush's character but actually wasn't Bush, he might have turned out a successful presidency.
Sadly that wasn't the case. It's easy to blame Bush for everything, but to do so would be to miss the big picture. No one man or even administration could have accomplished the spectacle of failures that Bush has. Rather, it was as if Bush and company represented a certain archetype of Americanism that is no longer effective in our country or applicable to today's changing world, and it was the culmination of this particular cultural bias that failed Bush and all of us in turn. That is my belief (Paul Krugman explores this subject in some depth).
I may be stating the obvious, and nothing affirms that more than the pasting Bush's party candidate got in the electoral college in 2008. Speaking of which, don't let people write the election off by saying it was a referendum on Bush any less than those who said it was a referendum on Obama, and even less than the people who suggest an African American could not have been elected if it weren't for Bush. They don't know what they're talking about. The election was bigger than Bush and Obama, namely the respective biases in American culture that culminate in their world views.
In any case, the whole Bush episode has reminded me of one thing that's intrinsically beautiful about our nation: through grey skies come blue and through darkness come light, the promise of democracy in so many words. Our course has the potential to be fundamentally recharted if the need be great enough, and certainly that fact has contributed mightily to the longevity of the United States. I do not speculate on our future successes, but perhaps we can credit Bush for playing his part in forcing us to reflect on our weaknesses that have probably been incubating for a long, long time.
Well anyway, farewell Bush, thanks for doing all that you could have done. Here he is in his final press conference addressing the subject of this post.
Well for now this blog has been hijacked by politics and the economy. There is just too much happening. I'd like to get into looser subjects, stuff less bound by reality. Wait, foreign policy yo..... ugh I need to write faster, better, soon.
