A President Like No Other

October 22, 2008
By Armando Vega
Staff Writer

I’ll never forget the days when I opened up to the political discourse in this country, and how at the outset of cognizance, I knew with scantly any need for orientation where my political tendencies lay; Knew my blood ran so blue you could have twiddled a harmonica to it.

Sure, before all this I knew of, say, the three branches of government.  But the extent of my political awareness prior to 2000 was that Bill Clinton wanted mandatory school uniforms during his ’92 campaign (something which appealed to the 1st-grader in me who had to compete with my better-dressed peers) and the Lewinski scandal, upon which my immediate sense was that Clinton had clearly erred but that at the same time perhaps he’d been treated unfairly.

All of this registered as mere blips on my radar, forgotten with the shortest passage of time.  I guess somewhere along the line I’d picked up the idea that the debates over this and that were merely exercises in dialectic.  I didn’t need to care.  We lived in America— the grownups were taking care of business.  The best ideas always traveled to the forefront and were implemented as swiftly as was prudent by the best and brightest our country had to offer, who surely rivaled if not surpassed their peers worldwide.

During the fall of my freshman year of high school, the country was engaged in a seemingly interminable election with indeterminable results.  It was all the adults wanted to talk about.  “I think we should just pick someone,” said my English teacher, with a roll of the eyes in frustration at the ambiguity.

 Just pick someone? 

‘What a strange thing to say,’ I’d thought.  The leader of the free world should just be decided on a whim?  It couldn’t be so difficult to do an accurate recount, or even a second recount if needed. What’s the problem?  I shook my head and went back to sleep. As Sept. 11 was visited upon us nearly a year later, I looked around at all my disaffected peers who hardly seemed perturbed.  We were just a bunch of kids, after all.  I wiped the moisture from my eyes, slung my book bag over my shoulder, and ambled on home.  I didn’t need to worry about it.  Our President—Bush?—he’d make sure we got done what needed to be done.  We’d fight back; we’d rebuild.

What ensued nationally over the course of the next few years seemed to pass like a blur, just like my own life.  Not fully grasping the merits of the arguments for and against going into Iraq, all I knew was that the people all around me just seemed too eager to do so.  Nobody wanted to question the wisdom of that choice, or at the very least deliberate. It couldn’t be right to be so rash, could it?  I started to read: books; newspapers; the occasional magazine.  Living in the fairly conservative community of Livingston County, I needed affirmation that I wasn’t alone in my alarm.  Even the kids who listened to NOFX and Green Day in my area were exuberant over the prospects of “taking it to the ‘ragheads.’”  What was our President thinking?  Shouldn’t a President seek to inspire the best of the nation’s citizenry—to promote a thoughtful and engaged one, not brash in bloodlust?

The more I witnessed, the more distraught I became.  Policies which were clearly errant.  A lack of dialogue on the direction the country had taken.  Blatant lies and misconduct on the part of pundits and politicians, disproportionately coming from one party in particular…Were people really so cynical they just assumed this was the way things were supposed to be, having thrown up their arms in acquiescence long ago, if ever

To all this did George W. Bush become the embodiment of what I saw going wrong in this country.  It hung around his neck like a reeking hagfish.

I’d always understood that America had a history intermingled with the ugliest facets of conduct you could ask for in a nation, but as a youth I also understood we’d made great strides in coming to terms with that past, and believed, on balance, we truly were the greatest country in the world.  Not just the strongest, not just the richest, but the greatest.  We were a nation of progress, always striving for our professed ideals.  Cīvis Americānus sum.

I’m sorry to say I experienced a wavering of patriotism during those dark ages, between 2003 and 2007.  There are more than a few things that have since reinvigorated that sense of patriotism: the swelling of grassroots, progressive communities; the supplanting of television as a medium of news by the Internet, which has also served purposes of discourse and collaboration; the dilution of the apathetic class; the rise of a historic candidate from Illinois…

Though amazing in his own right, that candidate would probably not be favored to win today if it were not for George W. Bush.  The historical waters simply wouldn’t be so primed.  The electorate in general would not be so disaffected with the politics (and policies) of the right.  The youth who serve as his base would not be quite so galvanized today—I would know, I stand among their numbers—to these historic proportions, if not for our current President.  George W. Bush; less than one-hundred days and counting.  Oh, he’ll go down in history all right.