By Bruce B. Brugmann
And so George W. Bush, after two wars, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the Israeli mess, and a deepening recession, after trashing the New Deal, the middle class, the poor, the environment, education, and the constitution for eight years, summed up his presidency at his final press conference.
“We had fun,” he said.
The rest of us inside and outside the U.S. didn’t have much fun during the Bush years. Bush ended up with a 22 per cent approval rating. Obama comes in with an 80 per cent approval rating.
Calvin Trillin, deadine poet, made the point eloquently in an epitaph for Bush in the Jan. 26 edition of The Nation. It was titled “The Way People Feel About the End of the Bush Administration And the Future of George W. Bush.”
Trillin buried Bush in two lines:
“So when he leaves we won’t be keeping track of him.
We’re just relieved as hell to see the back of him.”
Bush ended up with a 22 per cent approval rating. Obama comes in with an 80 per cent approval rating. The way people feel about Obama and the beginning of the Obama administration is one of the most dramatic and exciting things to happen in the history of the United States of America. The dreams of our founding fathers, and the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr., are being realized in Washington, D.C., in a massive, historic three day Inauguration celebration and flashed round the country and the world.
Let us savor the moment. And then let us get to work and keep the pressure on to see that Obama and his administration continue working to realize the dreams. The process will never end.