Leftist Heresy
The Bush Years Teach the Need for Forgiveness and Compassion
From my moderate friends, I get sympathy when I tell them that I have grown to kind of like George W. Bush. They nod solemnly, and below their breath, explain to me, “Yeah, you know… me too…” From my Leftist friends, all I get is disbelief, like some sort of alien has colonized me. And from my Rightist friends, I get silence, because most of them are embarrassed about George Bush. Anyway, my change of attitude toward Bush is the response to Bush’s humanity and own human failings. It is difficult sometimes to remember that our Presidents are actually people, and therefore our equals. Nothing more and nothing less.
I was quite critical of President Bush during his eight years. He would regularly say the craziest things, because he was speaking off the cuff. I know how this is- Growing up in Indiana, I happen to utilize rather strange constructions when I speak too, and I attribute it to the terrible education system in that state. When I am giving a lecture or something, occasionally the words I say in my head will not come out of my mouth the way I intend them to- Sometimes they will accidentally offend, sometimes they will be bizarrely incorrect. Either way, it also sometimes happens that I trip all over myself trying to correct myself, and usually, I just say something far worse, just so I can play off the original mistake and act like I had been joking the entire time. (Thank God blogs are written and not spoken!)
While some people claimed to like Bush’s “plain speech” (code for “marginally intelligible” or “grossly inaccurate”), and though I fully understood what he going through when he would try to speak off script, it nonetheless really irritated folks like me. More than a source of humor for me, it really frustrated me that the President was actually dumber than me. Why do I owe my lesser any obedience? So why should that person be in a position to make decisions which directly affect my life? That is what I disliked the most about George W. Bush. His policies were what they were and I could explain, reasonably why they were objectively bad for the country, but that was nothing compared to the very personal and visceral contempt I felt toward the man who, through no fault of his own, found himself in the White House.
Now- when he took his legislative beating in 2006, when the Dems took control over the House for the first time since 1994 following his inept handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, I cheered. That loss was a mortal wound to W. and it became clear to me that he was no longer invincible, and we merely had to bide our time for two more years. But then, in early 2007, Bush went to the Walter Reed Hospital and gave a speech apologizing for the failure of the hospital to deliver a lot of wounded vets adequate services for their recovery. He had been to the hospital almost a dozen times before that, visiting the casualties of his decisions. But this happened to be the first time I was aware of it.
And my opinion of him changed almost overnight. In his apology for the conditions at the hospital, I heard a man making an apology for his policies that led to those people being in that place in the first place. He has never come out and said the war was a bad choice, and given what he knows, he would have done anything differently, but I feel that for the first time, I saw a human being in front of me, a person for whom I should have some compassion. Not because he was less than me, but because he is my brother. And because he realized the full weight of the responsibility that he bore for making the decisions he made. He was not immune to the human suffering he had caused. He knew it, and I believe he felt it, very acutely.
I have a far more favorable opinion of George Bush now that I see him in this light than I ever did when I protested against his murderous policies in the Middle East. And I think that, among all the people who served with him during those years, he is one of the most human of all of them. He was a person with tragic flaws who was completely inadequate to meet the crisis in front of him, surrounded by a bunch of cynical or downright amoral bastards who he picked as his closest advisors. He did and said some pretty monstrous things in office, and I know it is difficult for a lot of people who feel personally injured because of those things to see him in any other light. But I can say, if I had the chance, I would really like to meet him and tell him thank you for the good things he did get done, on a human level, and tell him I am sorry for thinking such terrible things about him as a person.
As I watch Trump in his role of President, I see some of that too. I see a person who is sort of like The Wizard of Oz- He has to put up this front that he is in control over everything because he is hiding a real feeling that he is not up to the task. And I think he believes his own hype, which is a real problem- he has yet to be humbled by the choices he has made. But I believe, under all of this, there has to be a good person who has taken a lot of bad advice. I think, if you separated Trump from the cynical demons who surround him, he would act differently. He would be willing to work with people to get things done, things which benefit a lot of people, and not things which divide society against itself.
If I am wrong, I am wrong and I’ll take the hit for being optimistic about the character of a person. But I really think that the problem are the people who are using him, just like with Bush, because I really do want to believe that there is some good there. I hope I am right, but if not, he can’t be any worse a person than the Left currently thinks he is…
