Jan
National Hope
I rarely wax political in my writings, but the situation deserves it. Tomorrow, Barack Obama replaces George Bush as president. The change is a welcome one. We do not know what to expect of the man from Illinois, but we assume it just has to be better than Bush.
George Bush’s claim to fame is that no further terrorist attacks happened on US sail since September 11, 2001. That is a small place to hang one’s hat when we consider his many flops. He dropped the ball on Katrina and got us into a needless war in Iraq. Our economy has been thoroughly trashed, our world standing is tarnished and our ideals were thrown out the window. Bush was a stubborn, self-righteous man who spent the last eight years on a “dry drunk.”
People asked how Bush got re-elected for a second term. Two factors come to the fore. First, the Democrats picked a poor candidate in John Kerry. He was not electable as president. Kerry was not a personality who inspired the people, and his own record made him questionable. Consider that Al Gore was not a winning personality, either, and he almost won. The Democrats picked two lackluster candidates in a row. Secondly, Bush used a bogus issue to manipulate a large bloc of Evangelical Christians. He hyped the question of gay marriage, making it a campaign issue. At the time it was an issue that had already been getting a lot of attention.
This time, the Democrats learned their lesson. Instead of an old boy candidate, they picked someone who was electable.
Today, editorials worldwide are slamming George Bush. One gets the impression that the whole world is glad to see him slip away into obscurity.
Like many of us here in the USA, I have hope that our new president will be able to erase many of Bush’s wrongs and set our nation on a better course. The encouraging thing is that Obama seems to have a knack for picking good people and listening to them. That is a good beginning.
Tomorrow the new president is inaugurated. Let us all wish him the best, and may our hope for better times be rewarded.
