There's a new sheriff in town...

WHY OBAMA?
Can someone explain to me why all of a sudden this Barack Obama guy is considered a potential candidate for President in ’08? Don’t get me wrong—I am certainly ALL FOR some fresh faces and new ideas in Washington, but why is this guy suddenly everyone's sexy choice to be Prez? I realize the Democraps are desperate for someone—ANYONE—to trot out there and lead them, but this guy with the terrible initials has only been in Congress a short while, so what’s so special about him? Surely, it’s not just on the strength of the big speech he gave at the Dem. Convention in ’04 alone, is it? The fact that he’s black doesn’t bother me at all (hell, I’ll take a PLAID President at this point, if he’s worth a damn!), but I just don’t get how someone can just suddenly come along out of nowhere and get everyone’s tongues wagging over him when he hasn’t really done anything.—B. Holland, January, 18, 2007

I guess we’re about to find out, huh?  It was almost two years ago today that I posted the above remarks, and we’ve come a long way since then.  While I’m still not completely sold on whether Obama can cut the proverbial cheese as our Commander-In-Chief, I can’t believe he could possibly be any worse than the Village Idiot he’s replacing.  Even if Obama is a mediocre President, that’s still a step in the right direction.  One issue I have already, though:  I saw where today’s inauguration cost us taxpayers anywhere from 150-170 million semolians to execute.  I’m sure if McCain had been elected, it would’ve been just as exorbitant, but given today’s economic climate, it seems to me that it would’ve been more appropriate to do a slightly more frugal swearing-in ceremony…

Anyway, I was in a fairly celebratory mood at work today around the 11:00 hour, not so much because #44 was sworn in, but because I was finally able to literally utter the phrase “Former President Bush”.  The news media this week kept reporting about a “wistful” George W. Bush in his final days in office—an oxymoron on a par with “wistful” Charles Manson, "wistful" O.J. Simpson and “wistful” Jeffrey Dahmer.  Many of the news stories I’ve read this week are about the Bush apologists saying that history will vindicate Dubya in the long run as it did Harry Truman, but I ain’t buyin’ it.  Neither are some historians quoted at History News Network, who feel that #43 will finish 43rd in the Best President of All-Time standings.

Like this one:  “No individual president can compare to the second Bush…Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill.  In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

And this one:  “With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct…When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency.  Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of area:  China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”

And this one:  “George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States…Bush does only two things well—He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for fucking up everything else he even approaches.  His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.”

Another historian indicated that his reason for rating Bush as worst is that the current president combines traits of some of his failed predecessors:  “the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover. . . . . God willing, this will go down as the nadir of American politics.”  Yet another remarked that Bush’s “denial of any personal responsibility can only be described as silly.”  Still another (and my personal favorite) classified Bush as “an ideologue who got the nation into a totally unnecessary war, and has broken the Constitution more often than even Nixon. He is not a conservative, nor a Christian, just an immoral man . . . .”  I can’t possibly top any of that, nor do I need to try—the man's work speaks for itself.  All I know is we can all exhale now...

As for Barack Obama, in the words of Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin:  "From here on, sonny, sonny, sonny—it's a long and lonely climb..."