…but only because she gets it right:
One of my husband’s friends–hated Bush, loved Obama and defended him vociferously for the first year, less passionately the second–told him over lunch this week that he’s done with Obama and “I never thought I’d say this but I miss Bush. We knew that he said what he meant, even if we didn’t want to hear it. We knew who he was, even if we didn’t like him. And we never had to wonder whether he liked us. He always did.”
And that is it, in a nutshell. Bush is missable, because we miss having a president whose affection for his country and its people–even the ones who hated him–was never in doubt.
We miss Bush because he never lectured us or harangued us, and when people disagreed with him, they were not immediately called names in an attempt to simply shut up debate.
This is an awful lot like a person who sick of the faults of their Husband of wife takes off with someone who promises them something different and exciting. For a time different and exciting is fun, but sooner or later the hard work of actually living together takes place and reality takes over.
George W. Bush was and is a decent and honorable man, who did what he thought was right and never went after people who absolutely despised him. Remember this?
Do you think that Obama could have shaken that kind of thing off like President Bush did? I think not.
Memeorandum thread here.
btw: The title and first line of this post is in keeping with my plan of writing posts in the style of the New York Times Editorial page in the hopes of landing a plum writing job.
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