A Fond Farewell to Bush

Disclaimer:  I am a Bush supporter.  This blog explores my fondness for the current president.  I am not interested in engaging in a debate about the Bush presidency.  If you don’t like Bush and can’t stand reading anything that discusses him favorably, stop reading.  If you’re interested in reading a rational defense of Bush, stop reading.  This piece is not an intellectual exercise.  It is not meant to persuade.  Spare me the unpleasantry of reading through comments ripping the president.  After eight years, I’ve dealt with enough of that nonsense and quite frankly, I don’t give a shit anymore.  I like Bush, I consider myself a sufficiently intellectual person, and I no longer feel the need to defend myself.

Afterthought:  At noon today, as reality of Bush’s departure set in, I felt great sadness.  I don’t dislike Obama, so I thought this would be easier.  It isn’t.  It’s no exaggeration to say that I feel a small emptiness inside me.  My fondness for Bush was greater than I thought, if that was possible.

 

Tomorrow at noon, George W. Bush will no longer be this nation’s president.

I will miss him greatly.

To be clear, I am a social, fiscal, and legal conservative.  I am more inclined to be forgiving of Republican administrations and critical of Democratic ones.  That is the consequence of bias.  Thus, I am undoubtedly clouded in my judgement of any policy failures of George W. Bush when compared to my judgment of personal failures of Bill Clinton.  I am not going to use the forum to engage in a debate over George W. Bush’s policy and record.  Although I think there are plenty that are defensible, I’ve argued with enough of the readers of this blog to know either I’m preaching to the choir or persuasion is futile.  Eight years is a long time and the lines have been drawn.  Rather, this post is less intellectual and more emotional, trying to explore why I adore the president so much.

I am one of the few left in the world to have continually supported George W. Bush throughout his presidency.  I supported him mildly in 2000 and ardently in 2004.  Knowing what I know now, I would still vote for Bush every day of the week and twice on election day, over Barak Obama, John Kerry, and most certainly Al Gore.  Yes, that’s committing voter fraud, but I like the current president that much.*

I have often been asked the question, “Why do you like him?,” but it’s been hard for me to come up with a clear answer.  Some may suggest this lack of intellectual clarity suggests I have no rational reason to support Bush except for his membership in the Republican party.

Maybe, but I doubt it.  I have plenty of Republicans I’m not particularly fond of, including my own congressman and plenty of past senatorial and gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey.  And god knows I have plenty of reasons to dislike Bush’s brand of Republicanism.  To say that I’m less than thrilled with his domestic policies is the understatement of the decade.

So for me to continue to like Bush, to want him to continue as president, to feel sorrow rather than joy tomorrow, there must be something about the president that I find attractive.

It’s possible it’s a relative thing.  I have been old enough to observe and understand only three presidencies:  George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.  I like the last far and away the most.  Admittedly, that may have to do with W’s social and legal conservatism as well as his foreign policy.

But I think it’s more than that.  As much as I found it shocking that a man who was a governor for six years before becoming president and served eights years in the highest office of the land gave press conferences that sounded like a broken record that could give only one answer regardless of the question, his podium moments provided odd relief.  It may be that I felt comfort in his stuttering because he seemed like one of us.  I’m fond of always pointing out to those who accuse Bush of idiocy that 1)  the nation’s only president with a Ph.D., Woodrow Wilson, was an unqualified disaster precisely because he was an intellectual, and 2) unlike Europe, America, the world’s first constitutional democratic republic, has often selected their leaders since Andrew Jackson based on whether they want to have a beer with him over who’s smarter.  I don’t particularly find anything wrong with electing “one of us” as president.  Indeed, I think I share in the American voting ethos.

Or perhaps Bush’s press conferences provided assurances he wasn’t bull shitting me.  Ad hoc rationalization is a favorite pass time in the legal profession.  I have far too often seen cases where it matters not whether the result is right or wrong or defies common sense so long as the presenter articulates the rational well in speech or in writing.  I am an ardent believer that rationalization does not make wrong right. The end doesn’t justify the means, but the means don’t justify the end either.  If you begin with the wrong principles and rational your way into the wrong answer, you’re still wrong.  I shared Bush’s judgment more often than not,** and his failure to elegantly articulate his rational provided an assurance that he was doing it because he knew it was right, not because he deceived himself or us into thinking it was right.

That brings me to Bush’s style of leadership, unprecedented in history and unlikely to be followed in the future.  He made tough, difficult, and controversial judgments.  He didn’t give a damn what the polls said, much less what the (damn) Europeans thought.  From now on when I hear people yearn for politician who have principles, I’ll likely bring up George W. Bush’s name, for the odds are his name will bring fears.  Here is a politician who followed his beliefs, consequences be damned.  I have at least a summary knowledge of each American presidency, and I can’t think of one that even resembled Bush’s style.

To be sure, I don’t know whether Bush’s approach is right.  Even I can’t state that it was a smashing success.  Importantly, we live in a democratic republic where politicians ought to reflect the views of the people in one way or the other.  I know for certain I would not have approached governing the way Bush did.  But I respected the man for making the tough decisions and fully committing to them.  He may have been stubborn, but principled and compromising is a near-impossible balance.  If I had to pick one quality over the other, I’d pick the former.

I’m already becoming nostalgic writing this piece.  I have plenty of policy reasons why I supported Bush, but I feel it’s for whom he was rather than what he did that I will miss him the most.  America had its share of bad times under his presidency, but I always enjoyed and was reassured by having Bush as our president.  My support for him was ultimately personal.

“There are some good days and there are some bad days, but every day is a joyous day,” Bush apparently told the feel-good-story-of-the-year baseball player Josh Hamilton when he visited the White House last December.

I like that quote, as did Josh Hamilton.  And that’s why I’m greatly fond of Bush, because he often said similar things that made me feel good about myself and this country.

I simply liked the man.

*  No, I did not commit voter fraud.  Nor do I endorse voter fraud.  I am merely attempting to express my level of enthusiasm for the president.

**  Although I have said I am not interested in defending Bush, I will provide this one thought.  People have accused Bush of lying; I have no evidence he knowingly misled and deceived, which requires that he 1)  knew that the information was false at the time he made a statement, and 2) made the statement anyways.  To me, “should have known” simply does not rise to the serious accusation of being a liar.  As I’ve written before, I have no tolerance for people who make insinuations without evidence while criticizing the politicians for being “dirty.”  I have withheld judgment for Bush for lack of evidence and I do hope I’ve shown Obama the same respect.