A year ago today, I stocked up on red wine and cheetos (tm) and settled in to watch the election coverage. Along with an old friend, I watched the results come in, cheered only by the news from Ohio. Joe's wet feet and frustration gave me hope on an otherwise dark day.
365 days later, where are we as a nation?
I don't know.
We're no better off as a nation and in many ways we're much worse. (Never trust an adult man who prefers the name Scooter.) Whatever the low polls might suggest, many of my neighbors still admire and venerate GWB.
He's no James Buchanan, but neither is he Abraham Lincoln.
I can't help feeling that there's something I'm missing, some vital piece that would help me to understand current events and the tone of the nation. Perhaps I'm just too accustomed to my long dead and buried historial subjects. Perhaps. It might also be that there's simply nothing to understand.
I hope not.
7 comments:
I know nothing about Buchanan, but I don't see how he could be a worse leader than our current President.
That's what's missing, Lemm. Leadership.
Let me know if you come up with that missing piece. I could see what people saw in Reagan and in GHWBush. But beyond a simple "let's kick ass" mentality, I do not see anything appealing about this President. I just don't get it.
Let's see...why I despise GWBush:
-lack of leadership is a good start, tomyspoon.
-an inate ability to violate Edgar R. Murrow's famous quote "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it." Bush has that 'if you are not for us you are against us' mentality...dangerous any time from any leader.
-an ability to lie, both himself and his kabal of advisors, lying in order to accomplish some goal or to 'be right'. Where are those WMD's George? Several members of his administration are accused or indicted of lying, most others lie and don't get caught.
-an ability to blindly follow his advisors, no matter how shrewd, crooked or immoral the advice. Cheney scares me most of all, the guy exudes evil, in my opinion. Bush surrounds himself with inept cronies as advisors and cabinet members. The latest is BRown of FEMA, there are so many more who just don't know what they are doing, they just have a blind loyalty to Bush.
-an ability to twist the english language and bastardize the language like no previous president. The guy just seems to sound stupid every time he speaks.
--Champion of the rich, big business, and unwilling to stick up for the littel guy on any piece of legislation proposed.
-wraps himself in the flag...uses the cloaks of religion and morality when they serve his own interests.
-that pesky Patriot Act. Under this guy, we have lost more personal rights than at any time in recent memory.
And so much more.
I have never read of any president who not only appears to be such a fool to much of the world, but who seems so disingenuous to me.
Lemming...you have just gotten me started.....
Good start of a list, John.
My neighbors worship him too. They have W stickers on their cars, Bush/Cheney signs in their garage/yellow ribbons on their cars. We don't have these things at my house. Even though I want to do this, I don't have one thing on my car that could be considered subversive, but I still think my neighbors know.
The only good thing about Bush is that he clearly has a strategy....goood or not, he has a strategy. This is more than can be said for a lot of our leaders. My only hope is that maybe its not as horrible as it seems. Perhaps he there is a long term redeemability (I know thats not a word) to his plans. Of course, I still don't see anything that can be construed as a plan to keep us from bankrupting oursleves. Yeah social security!
jpr:
Like his strategy in Iraq???
First goal: find WMD's that are a 'threat to the US'...never there, never found.
Second goal: well, we are in Iraq already, so let's switch our goal to 'find Saddam and capture him'. Well, at least we acomplished that goal, never mind that there are other bigger threats in the world to the US.
Third goal (still presently pursuing): Rid Iraq of terrorists and make the country a shining democracy in an area of the world with no history or desire for democracy, mostly due to their extreme mixing of church and state / law. This goal is proving costly and nearly impossible to accomplish.
Bush's strategies are never well thought out long term, they are not PROACTIVE stragegies but rather are REACTIVE strategies, that is not leading, it is following.
Oh, and what about that exit plan from Iraq????
All I can say is...
What do you expect from a President who is a former alcoholic, former cokehead, who drove into the ground every business he ever ran and who has received nothing that was not the result of nepotism?
This proves that it actually is important to look into a person's past. A lifetime of bad choices does not a good president make.
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