Immediately after 9/11, Bush had a
92% approval rating. But mismanagement of the War on Terror, mismanagement of the post-Katrina disaster relief, and a half-a-dozen domestic scandals has driven that rating to its
palindromic opposite. A lot of people here approach this development with glee, and they're the people who, for the last six years, have been demonized as traitorious fellow-travellers, as terrorist-enablers, as any anti-American epithet you can sling into the public sphere, and it's the sound of the worm turning; just payback. I wish I could join in the celebration, but I can't. Truthfully, Bush's approval dipping into the moaning twenties doesn't make me happy. It only fills me with inexorable sadness.
After 9/11, we wanted a strong leader, we
needed a strong leader, and we thought we had one. Bush's remaining supporters can't say we didn't rally behind the President; the numbers are there. We
wanted to believe, didn't we? We wanted a Lincoln to tell us that "A house divided against itself cannot stand", we wanted a Roosevelt to tell us that "We have nothing to fear but fear itself".
Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?
We got the machinations of a little-known but powerful political cabal dictating our foreign policy. We got the President's partisans bent on dividing our country from the get-go. From the get-go. And Bush did nothing to stop this viciously partisan backstabbing- to the contrary, he encouraged it. It was coming from his "base". And that's why we're at where we're at.
We got a divider, not a uniter. We got someone who, when faced by crisis, saw opportunity- to ram through the political agenda of his advisers. We got half of the population telling the other half that they weren't interested in defending America, they were interested in helping terrorists to destroy America. He could have put a stop to it, right then and there, he could have shored up his base and told them- we're all in this together. Instead, he did anything but, he blithely sat by and watched as the American body politic ate its own. After 9/11, Bush and his partisans didn't fight terrorism. They fought liberals.
That is why we're at where we're at now. Think about it; what if Bush had stayed his attack dogs and rallied the whole nation behind him, not with pretty, cheap words, but with vital, decisive, proper action? What if his hand was sure, what if it was he, and not Giuliani, standing at Ground Zero to tell us that, by Heaven, America will stand? We got none of that. He hid in parts unknown and was lost to us for weeks. America can forgive ineptitude, it can forgive corruption, it can forgive and forgive and forgive. But there are some things that are beyond forgiveness. A house divided against itself cannot stand.
So that's why, as his approval rating slinks ignominiously into the 20's, I feel no schadenfreude, only sadness. We deserve better. We needed better. We needed someone to tell us- things won't be OK, but we'll pull through like we always do. And we didn't have that, ever. We got pretty and pacifying words before we got tough talk that lead us into a vanity war. That failure to bond us together when we so desperately needed it is the greatest failure in an administration wholly defined by failure, and that is the template in which he will be judged by history.