An Inevitable Change of Heart

This Tuesday, Obama will be sworn in as President. America couldn’t be more excited. Obama has reinvigorated an entire country and convinced millions that American politics is not a lost cause. He’s been a muse to hundreds of artists, to the extent that the Manifest Hope Gallery is opening up for 3 days in D.C. this weekend to display their work. But this can’t last forever.

Obama might be the best president in American history, but we won’t love him. He’s taking office while we’re involved in two wars and an economic crisis. Not to mention trouble in Gaza, the threat of terrorism, and the rest of the aftermath of the Bush administration.

There is not way that Obama is going to fix all of this. He might avert a depression, but we’re still stuck in a recession. He might catch Bin Laden, but we’ll still have a fledgling democracy on the verge of civil war in Iraq. He might close Guantanamo Bay, but we’ll still have a growing number of terrorists to look out for. He might help end racism against African Americans, but we still won’t have gay marriage at a federal level.

No. Obama is not a God. He can’t fix the world by repeating “Change” over and over again. No doubt he’ll do his best, and he’ll probably do a great job, but he can’t be perfect.

Then what will his supporters say? Will America still admire him when he’s just barely keeping the country afloat, or will we ask for more and blame him for problems caused by George Bush and others?

If history is anything to go by, Obama’s supporters will probably be upset and will probably have a change of heart. Some of them will be disappointed that he won’t bring world peace or fulfill every one of his campaign promises. We can’t let that happen.

Obama probably won’t usher in a new era of prosperity and happiness for America, but we can’t expect him to. Too many people seem to think that Obama is superman. He’s just a regular man (though a smart one). Let’s treat him like one. Obama should not be put up on this pedistal and expected to save the world. When he does his best and just barely saves us, we’re going to have to be more than happy with that.

So, in four years time, when we’re once again faced with an election, let’s think back to right now, and what we think of Obama, and what he’s up against: The Bush era. When Obama falters, let’s not turn on him. Maybe some of us would rather have Clinton or Biden or even Gravel in office, but right now, Obama’s the best we’ve got.

Rising from the Ashes of the Burning Bush

I was nine years old when George W. Bush was elected president of the United States in 2000. I now realize that half of my life has been spent under the rule of King George II. I decided that the best way to commemorate his presidency was to look back on the ups and downs of a tumultuous eight years that changed American culture and society forever.

In September 2001 George W. Bush had been president for only eight months. He became president after one of the most controversial elections in American history. He lost the popular vote to Al Gore, but still found himself sitting at the desk in the oval office at the White House thanks to the Electoral College.

That September America was attacked on the eleventh day of that month. The President was visiting the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. One of his aides whispered in his ear that America had been attacked. What followed was one of Bush’s most critiqued presidential moments. He didn’t freak out, jump up, and run out of the building. Instead he sat and thought. Should the President have gotten up, acted more swiftly and confidently? Should he have sat there like he did as to not panic the children in the room? He did the latter, and days later, on September 14th, in New York City at ground zero he showed a confidence in his ability to track down the people who had crashed a plane into the ground in Pennsylvania, attacked the Pentagon, and demolished the Twin Towers. “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon,” he said.

A year and half later, on March 13, 2003, Bush felt it was time to get back at those who attacked us, but we suddenly found ourselves in Iraq. We had been in Afghanistan since October 7, 2001, the location commonly believed to be near where Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind 9/11 lives. But instead, we chose to focus our resources elsewhere, and we invaded Iraq under pretenses that Iraq had developed weapons of mass destruction.

“Mission Accomplished,” read on a banner a little over a month later on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. Bush said that we had been victorious with our major combat operations. “In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed,” Bush declared. But, we would find ourselves in Iraq to this very day, and the terrorist who had planned 9/11, Bin Laden, still not yet captured.

The President’s re-election bid in 2004 blindsided many Americans who felt he was sure to lose that one at least. He didn’t, and America had just signed up for four more years of “Dubya.”

At the end of August, 2005 brought us the year of Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters in American history. President Bush was criticized for his slow reaction to rescuing and providing aid to the victims of the hurricane. He had appointed one of his friends to be the head of the Federal Emergency Management Association, Michael Brown. Brown resigned shortly after President Bush told him, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” It was also reported that Bush had been vacationing in Arizona at the time of the disaster, and when it came time to visit New Orleans for his first time since the disaster, he flew over in an airplane instead of walking among the people.

The war in Iraq had reached its most difficult year in 2006. Americans wanted out, but Bush stuck to his guns and stayed. Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, also resigned that year after revelations of mismanagement in war strategy and that nine billion dollars had gone missing. Photos of tortured prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq also fueled the fire of American unrest. In January 2007, Bush even committed to sending more troops to Iraq as part of his “surge” plan.

This year, in 2008, we witnessed the devastating fall of the American economy. Private banks were bought by the government to save them from going under. American automakers find themselves on their own brink of collapse. And, now we can officially say that we are in a recession.

As George W. Bush enters his final days in office we can look back and say that he has at least done one thing right. That is his graciousness at a time of the transition of power in America. Barack Obama won the presidency this year, and I’m sure when Obama spoke to Bush over the telephone on election night that he thanked him for doing all that he did over the last eight years, right and wrong (mostly wrong) to help him get elected.