People who know me think I really like Obama and really disliked Dubya.People who really know me know better.
By the way, before we really get cookin' here, I refer to the man as Dubya only to differentiate him from his father because it's easier to use the nickname than to keep typing George W. Bush. It is not meant to denigrate or unduly ridicule the man.
That said, I freely admit that I completely disliked Dubya, almost from the moment he appeared on the national political scene with a tractor trailer full of money and/or backing from his daddy's rich oil friends and that really annoying Beavis and Butthead "heh-heh" way of presenting himself.
And while the pro-Bush (and I'm sorry, but I can never see that phrase and not think of someone who is in favor of legalizing porn) folks in defense of their guy would point, if to nothing else, to Dubya's manning up on 9/11, standing in the rubble at Ground Zero and swearing to search to the ends of the earth, yada, yada, I can only offer that in that moment, with that horrific assault on our humanity, just about anybody standing in the rubble and swearing to search to the ends of the earth would have been lauded, applauded and accoladed.
"Hello, my name is Ingo Montoya...you took down the Twin Towers....prepare to die...."
Hell, I even got a little choked up watching him stand there and promise to open that can of whup ass.
Of course, a few years later, Michael Moore showed us all the video of W. sitting in that Florida classroom for what seemed like an eternity, with a look on his face that, perception being reality, honestly looked like "what the eff do I do now?" and, just like with those generic brand pork and beans, there turned out to be a lot more air in that can of whup ass than there was whup ass.
Don't you just hate when that happens?
But, as is my wont, I digress.
I disliked Dubya and I think, contrary to what the loyalists believe, that history will judge his time in the White House to be essentially a failure of planning and execution on just about every front.
That's not to say, though, that Barack Obama is going to end up faring any better.
At this writing, he has been in office just shy of ten months and the only substantive thing he seems to have accomplished on his own is proving that America has grown up suffciently to elect a black man President of the United States.
And it may well turn out that the right man at the right time from the historical perspective wasn't, in the end, the right man for the job itself.
Time and exit polls in 2012 will tell.
While we wait, here's a thing.
If there is no other measure of the unhappiness that the country, by and large, felt at the job that George W. Bush did as President of the United States, there is only to look at the end result.
The Democrats successfully tarred John McCain with the Dubya brush.
And America was so determined to get any whiff of Bush (sorry, saw it comin', couldn't get out of the way in time) out of 1600 Pennsylvania that it swallowed its own prejudices long enough to elect the first black man in the history of the country.
It was inevitable that the racial ceiling would someday be broken through.
Barack Obama was the man that fate and fortune chose to be that ceiling breaker.
Do I respect and admire that accomplishment?
Undeniable.
Do I like this guy?
Not yet.
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