Today sees George Bush leave the White House for the last time. In his stead comes a man who's already earned his place in American history.
With approval ratings of 79% (even Republicans and conservatives can't help rooting for him) Obama's got a tough gig ahead of him. The promise of change is always easier to deliver than change itself. Expectations for Obama's presidency are huge. Can he possibly live up to what we've all imagined him to be capable of?
It's also time to say goodbye to George Bush. Will he be missed? Not by me. I've never been an 'anti Bush' nut, but you'd have to be an idiot not to recognize his shortcomings.
His legacy will be a bloody war overseas, an economic crisis and a political climate in which conservatives encroached alarmingly on territory normally reserved for rational, sane politicians.
But I've sometimes stood for Bush - most noticeably in the 2004 election. My best friend and Wife disagreed with me fiercely, but I somehow think that today's inauguration of Barack Obama proves that Bush winning the 2004 election was the best thing that could have happened.
Imagine if John Kerry had become president? On a campaign based on nothing more than 'Vote for me, because I'm not Bush.' Mediocrity was not the answer: In some ways, things had to get worse before they could get better.
It took four more years of 'Dubya' to change the political climate sufficiently for last year's elections to take place. What historic elections they were!
For the first time in American history, politics was no longer the playground of rich, white men. We nearly had a female president. We nearly had a female vice president. What we ended up with was even more historic - the first African American president in American history.
If we'd had four years of Kerry, could this have happened?
I don't think so. In many ways, it took four years of Bush to make this possible.
But that's not the only reason to recognize George Bush's presidency. Like it or not, he exhibited some admirable traits. He might have been wrong about many things - abstinence-only sex education and the war in Iraq, for example - but he wasn't afraid to stick to his guns. He believed in things and he'd doggedly defend those beliefs even in the face of overwhelming public opinion.
It was that dogged determination to maintain untenable positions which earned him his dismal approval ratings - but in many ways, I think that characteristic will earn him a more favorable consideration by future generations.
He came across as an arrogant, swaggering idiot at times - but was also a very 'real' President, who wasn't afraid to address his own shortcomings. Despite being born with a silver spoon in his mouth - far more elitist than Obama could ever be considered - Bush somehow represented the working and middle-class of 'middle America.'
He didn't 'talk pretty.' He readily admitted he was a 'c' student at college. He used more malapropisms than Larry the Cable Guy. He was a former drunk, once a cocaine abuser and a convicted drunk-driver - yet he became a 'born again' Christian (which somehow gave him the moral authority to attack the rest of America's shortcomings.)
He came across as a likable guy - the sort of bloke you could go for a pint with. For the leader of the free world - and the rich son of a former president - he sure did seem like 'one of us.'
