Saying goodbye to the longest eight years.
I’m relieved finally to realize, at a deeper level, that it hasn’t been just me. I don’t write this as a ruthless partisan because I’m not. I don’t write this speaking for the Center for Justice, because in this space I don’t. I write this, in all candor, as one struggling American who wishes every other American, regardless of party or creed, well.
That having been said, it’s been several years since I could watch George W. Bush deliver a speech, or do a press conference. It’s just been too painful. I have felt the way that Linda Greenhouse (the renowned New York Times Supreme Court journalist) got in trouble for admitting to feel, a few years back, when she publicly espoused her own agony and sense of generational loss about what has become of the nation during the time of George W. Bush.
It’s not just the philosophical and policy disagreements, such as they’ve been. Rather it is the over-illuminated emptiness of Bush coupled with the arrogance and cynicism in Karl Rove’s vision of how the power of the Bush presidency would be used to solidify a permanent majority for one party. I agree with Pat Buchanan that Bush, lost in a fog by his own weaknesses and shortcomings, is a tragic figure. The real face of power for the past eight years has been Rove’s and, perhaps to an equal extent, Dick Cheney’s. These two fellows, and others like Donald Rumsfeld and David Addington, truly knew what they were doing, even when they did it poorly.
As Ms. Greenhouse and I would measure it, the loss and diminution of America has been formidable. The hope 
and élan of humankind, as my generation grew to expect it, was built upon an America that is a beacon of human rights and justice and that we, the people, are infused with a collective spiritual depth that inspires art, wisdom, and sacrifice.
That hope was imprisoned by the Bush Administration. Maybe now it’s about to see the light of day again but, boy, has it been a rough time to kindle or nurture a flame.
I decided I would try to put that aside this evening, because it would be his last address as President, so I turned on MSNBC. A clock in the bottom right corner was counting down to Bush’s farewell address.
There will be endless arguments for years to come about the Bush legacy. But to me it was noteworthy to hear Roger Simon, of the right of center on-line publication The Politico, opine that Bush was the worst president in modern history. Simon also expressed the view, perhaps sarcastically, that it was a strength of the American people that we had survived Bush’s terms in office.
But you would never know, from Bush’s speech, that anything much had gone wrong during the last eight years.
“There can be legitimate debate about the decisions,” the still-President said. “But there can be little debate about the results.”
“I’ve always acted with the best interests of our country in mind.”
He smiled with winks and squints throughout his 18 minute address, even when he tried to explain his presidency as the mission of the good in a “good and evil” world.
I have felt the way that Linda Greenhouse, the renowned Supreme Court journalist, got in trouble for admitting to feel, a few years back, when she publicly espoused her own agony and sense of generational loss about what has become of the nation during the time of George W. Bush.
Like I said, it’s not just me. After the speech, Bush’s former press secretary, Scott McClellan was still shaking his head: “The President won’t even acknowledge a single mistake of significance. And that’s a problem.”
Bush’s last speech reminded me mostly of Richard Nixon’s speech nearly 35 years ago (after Nixon’s taping system captured him up to his elbows in a criminal conspiracy) trying to play the victim, and then having the gall to offer advice to his few remaining followers about how to handle adversity. As if the adversity of Watergate was somebody else’s fault.
At least with Nixon there were flourishes of what looked to be perspiration, and real emotion, as if he really wanted to connect with reality, or at least that he recognized the cognitive dissonance in trying to push reality down with a plunger.
Not so with George W. His last address was carefully scripted, right down to the body armor of real American heroes on hand to be recognized in the adoring but small audience, and the beaming First Lady leading the applause in a striking red dress.
Chris Matthews said after the speech that Bush’s vision of his successful presidency featured “a score card only he could design” and that the emptiness of George W. Bush is that he lived out the caricature of “a rich kid driving his father’s car.”
When I lament, among friends, that we elected him twice, someone almost always reminds me that this isn’t really true, given that Gore won the popular vote in 2000 and it took the extra-judicial gymnastics of Bush v. Gore to put Bush in the White House.
True. But I never imagined it could be that close. Not that Al Gore didn’t have weaknesses and baggage from the Clinton years. But Bush, to me, just seemed profoundly ill-prepared, a man whose resumé was so empty that he would have a hard time winning election to most city councils.
I was wrong.
At least with Nixon there were flourishes of what looked to be perspiration, and real emotion, as if he really wanted to connect with reality, or at least that he recognized the cognitive dissonance in trying to push reality down with a plunger.
The one thing I hope we remember about the Bush years is how close Rove came to realizing his goal of crushing opposition with the image of Bush in that flightsuit, landing on the aircraft carrier in “Mission Accomplished” golden light. There was a time, after 9/11/01, when Bush’s popularity was so high that dissent was corporately pushed not just to the sideline, but over the bench.
MSNBC is actually a good example. Today it has a line up of personalities who nightly devour the corruption and ineptitude of the Bush Administration. But when Bush was at his high point, Phil Donahue lost his show on the same network, because Donahue refused to wear the flag lapel pin and wave the bloody shirt, and to shut up about what the Bush regime was doing to the Constitution and to the truth itself. Perhaps more than anything else, it took a hurricane, Katrina, to confront us with the harsh reality of what the Bush Administration was really all about.
Because of the wall of secrecy Bush and Cheney erected during their tenure, we’re going to learn a lot more about the Bush Administration in the months and years ahead as that wall comes down. Suffice to say, we all have a citizen’s duty not to look away from the newspaper, or the screen, and to understand that it was done with our money, and that of our children, and in all of our names.
–Tim Connor
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