Yeah, I Do Miss Dubya

by JASmius

Not as much as I miss the Gipper, but alongside the dictator in the White House, I could almost miss Sick Willie.





I guess you could call it a libertarian impulse - I am, in a phrase, tired of being worked.  I'm tired of being harassed, I'm tired of being harangued, I'm tired of being lied to, I'm tired of being assaulted, I'm tired of being insulted, I'm tired of being regimented.  I'm tired of the president of the United States being the enemy of my own country.  Maybe you could also call it battle fatigue, or the feeling that inhabitants of a surrounded city have after a long siege.  Whichever way you slice it, I've had enough.

Like President Bush's decisions and policies or don't like them - and there was certainly more than one with which I was sorely disappointed - but he was a good man, and he was an American president.  Remember the "beer summit" O had after he insulted the Cambridge police officer (James Crowley) that arrested black race rabble rouser professor Henry Louis Gates for disorderly conduct after he broke into his own house?  Aside from everything else, that setting always seemed ersatz as powdered eggs to me.  Barack Obama, in terms of his own cultivated public image, is the antithesis of a guy you'd hang out with and have a few beers.  You would never see The One join Homer Simpson at Moe's Tavern or Peter Griffin at the Drunken Clam.  He's too regal, too aloof, too "cool" to hob-nob with the hoi palloi, or to be just "one of the guys".  Which must have made the afternoon of July 30th, 2009 more than a little surreal for Sergeant Crowley.

But George W. Bush?  Aside from inserting the modifier "root" in front of the word "beer," you can entirely see him as a guy who would invite you over to hang out, or watch the ball game, or come over to help you dig that stump out of your backyard, or whatever.  His handshake would be firm and friendly, not limp and clammy.  He'd look you straight in the eye, not down the length of his nose.  You wouldn't spend the whole visit with an overpowering urge to keep a hand on your wallet.  And after you or he left, you wouldn't have a like compulsion to go through delousing.

In short, Dubya is like your neighbor.  Barack Obama is the ultimate Herb Tarlek.

So, yeah, I do miss President Bush.

Don't you?