Lately, “legacy” seems to loom largely on the landscape.
And aint that an abundance of awesome alliteration.
Up front, let me offer that I’m probably as weary of poking Dubya as you are reading me doing it.
So, while I cant make a pinky swear promise that you’ve read the absolute last of it, believe me when I tell you that, like the high carb stuff that has been flowing like water since Halloween, I’m going to start doing my best to wean myself off of it.
Today, though, I’d like to ponder, for a moment, the concept of fairness.
Bush’s detractors, and I count myself among them (well, come on, I’m relentless, but I’m not stupid…) suggest that there isn’t a single redeeming factor to be found in the eight years that America gave the guy to lead and/or inspire.
Which, by the way, aint always one and the same.
But that’s another blog.
And since he leaves office the most “unpopular” president in the history of the presidency, I don’t think it unfair to say that his is a failed presidency.
Okay, there’s that fairness thing again.
Bush’s advocates, on the other hand, while doing a pretty good job of staring at the floor and shuffling their feet when almost any discussion of the guy comes up, do express their belief that if he accomplished nothing else (and, again, even his advocates admit, if only in private, that nothing else about sums it up) suggest that he should be given credit for the fact that America, under his administration, has not been attacked again since 9/11.
Okay, let’s be fair.
That statement is, factually, true.
America has not been attacked, directly, since 9/11.
And for the sake of not wandering too far off the point, I’m willing to reserve, for another day, discussing the idea that, were the administration as militarily savvy as it has always wanted us to believe, the 9/11 attack shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
So, let’s just give the guy a little wiggle room and say that the Bush administration didn’t actually begin on Jan 20, 2001 and that it began on September 12, 2001.
Fair enough?
In that light, it is absolutely fair to say that America has not, in fact, been attacked directly since 9/11.
And since Bush has been in the White House every day since then, he should rightly be credited.
It’s only fair.
And those folks who hold fast to the idea that the legacy of George W. Bush should be, at the very least, his keeping safe from foreign attack the United States of America deserve to have the point conceded.
Fair is fair.
And since Bush has been in the White House every day since then, he should also be saddled with the responsibility of an economy that has taken us all to the brink of the second great depression, an environment that grows more poisoned every day, a health care system that ignores the heath needs of its citizens and makes fatter the wallets of the health corporate, an education system that is neither systemic, nor educates and a disillusionment about the entire political process that has not been experienced in this country since Herbert Hoover was sent packing in 1932.
Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair.
It’s said that, in life, we can’t have things both ways.
Actually, we can.
Actually, in certain cases, we are required to.
The simplest of those, taught from our very first cognitive moments, is that we are accountable to each other, not to mention God, for both the good and the bad we do.
The right and the wrong.
The good, the bad and the ugly.
Can’t have one without the other.
Love and marriage, love and marriage….
Sorry. I tend to hear songs in my head at every turn of phrase.
If the legacy of George W. Bush is to include his successful safekeeping of America, it must also include his failure to accomplish almost anything else.
Otherwise, the legacy would be incomplete.
And that wouldn’t be fair.
Would it?
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