by Cody Kilgore
I have kind of a love/hate relationship with G.W. Bush. Sorry: the proper and due respect requires that I call him former president G.W. Bush. He deserves that; he did go through all the machinations of winning that office twice—despite my votes—and his having held that position dictates at least that much respect. But (getting back to the relationship mentioned), I hated his administration and love that it is over.
To correctly portray my feelings on FPGWB (I have to abbreviate, sorry), I have to go back to when he was first thrust into the spotlight as a potential candidate. I have long been what many call a liberal, even though I think of myself as a moderate liberal, and was such when he emerged as the new darling of the Republican party. At first he seemed intriguing, almost like a breath of fresh air leaking out of the conservative closet. He seemed likable, and I had a healthy respect for his father, who I viewed as sort of a kinder, gentler antithesis to Reagan. By proxy, FPGWB got my reserved judgment.
However, as we approached the election, a different version of FPGWB came into focus. I imagine it was inevitable; politics and campaigns just can’t seem to be accomplished without extremes these days. But the FPGWB I was seeing didn’t agree with me, and so I threw my support (read as “voted for") into the other camp. Needless to say, I was disenchanted with the way that whole thing worked out, and like every election where I am not on the winning side, I tried to find some sort of peace and resolve that helped me accept the results.
At first, what I told myself was that he was really fulfilling a role for the party as a likable figurehead, a down-home boy face for (warning: opinionated adjectives here) the uptight, somewhat mean-spirited Republican party machine. I looked at his running mate and thought I was seeing a team assemble around him that was comprised of intelligent and sensible people. I had a favorable (believe it or not) view of Cheney at the time, still impressed with his previous service in previous administrations. Silly me.
But, as his presidency wore on (and on, and on…) the gaffes just became too much, and it became too easy to laugh. I lost a lot of respect for him, because it seemed more to me like he had been duped into his role. I didn’t see a man who recognized he was not sharp enough for the decisions and surrounded himself with bright minds; I saw a man manipulated by a machine that needed his electable popularity to set their designs in motion.
Then the relationship between me and FPGWB turned even worse, as I not only began to see him as a front man, but also began to see him as someone actually believing in and participating in the crap that was being spewed into the air all around him. Where before I saw him as simple, home-spun, and able to connect with people, I now saw him as condescending, willing to cost young men and women their lives, and able to make decisions that seemed to lack any empathy. I almost felt as if he turned angry and inward, and in that anger could only hear the poisonous whispers of close advisors, whose advice was less about what I saw as right and more about what might be right for politics and special interests. I could almost picture FPGWB sitting in the oval office, Rove and Cheney at his side, barbarians outside the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania, and FPGWB issuing the directive of “Let them eat cake!”
And, for a long while, that was my opinion of the man. I thought he disconnected, from me, from everyone else, and even the world at large. It was as if he isolated. Even worse: he took the country there with him.
One of the worst things I think his presidency did for us, as world citizens, was to fully demonstrate that renowned American ego, where we believe we know all that is right for the world and that everyone is lucky to have us on the planet. We’re notorious for it, and not just in our politics. As we move around the globe and visit other cultures, we have a tendency to expect others to accommodate and come to us, even understand our language, instead of us learning a little of theirs and acting as gracious guests.
During that time, we bullied our way around the world, making policies and decisions that served our interests (more aptly said, our special interests) with seemingly little care about other cultures, or countries, or people, or lives, or liberties, or rights, and opinions. “This is what we are doing, and what everyone else thinks be damned,” was what I began to see as the administration’s mentality, and it became easier and easier to buy into that as I saw FPGWB shrink smaller and smaller in that oval office, and Cheney and Rove loom larger and larger.
It was a shame. We lost face in the global community. I remember FPGWB had just won his second election not long before I visited some friends in Italy, and I got a glimpse into what I already suspected was the opinion at large in Europe. Everywhere I went, people were very willing to express the sentiment that amounted to something like “A second time? What the hell were you all thinking, anyway?!” I was embarrassed for us.
It wasn’t until Obama was elected that I think we regained a little faith from most of the global community. After that election, I didn’t have to go through that exercise of coming to terms with the results. As an American, I felt a little redeemed with the world.
That warm and fuzzy feeling must have carried over into my thoughts about FPGWB, because nowadays I seem to dislike him less, and see him more as that simple man again. He seems to have retreated to his place in Texas, and he pokes his head out from the door of the ranch house very little. I wonder if he is there at the ranch, sometimes sipping a cold margarita with his wife Laura on the back porch under the Texas stars, and wondering what the hell it was he’d gotten himself involved in for eight years.
That’s the picture I have of him these days. I like it better than that one I have of him in a suit.
