Burn Before Reading

Maureen Dowd opened her column Wednesday Morning with the image of G.W. Bush leaving Washington D.C. in a green helicopter. She characterized his departure as “Exit the Boy King,” an apt metaphor I would say. Polite to fault, the Obamas waved goodbye as the Bushes got into the aircraft and took off. The crowd of 2 million down below cheered his departure, not so much with a job-well-done in their hearts, but more like good riddance, as a national nightmare had come to an end, as, finally, an intelligent adult has taken the reins of power and brought with him a team of the best and the brightest who are “shovel ready” to try and save the nation before it sinks like the Titanic.

I had my morning coffee while I watched the “Morning Joe” program on MSNBC. He and some of his friends were criticizing people on the left for booing Bush and Cheney yesterday, for having that ‘good riddance’ attitude. I have no objection for Obama to pull the country toward the center and to treat Bush within the context of the presidential respect. But Bush can’t leave town without blame for what his decisions have wrought, both in terms of dollars and lives lost or severely damaged; he can’t step away with the memory of torture on the minds of the most of us, a stain of revulsion that he left behind; and by refusing to enforce regulation he allowed the moneymen on Wall Street and Main Street to run amok with greed and debt schemes that have brought our economy to its knees, with another depression becoming more and more a possibility. The indictment could go on and on. He left the nation “tangled up and blue” and to say ‘good riddance’ is not an extreme statement from an angry populace. It is not a moment to turn the other cheek; there was too much of that over the past eight years, in the Congress and among the people of America. But it is time to bring the better angels of our nature to the fore. President Obama struck the right note on Monday when he said,” Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin the remaking of the nation.”

Besides the stirring words of the inaugural ceremonies, there is the image of that crowd of 2 million people, of happy, jubilant people of all colors and creeds, young and old, all freezing together on the Mall but warm inside with the fires of hope and a new beginning.