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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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January 20, 2005
Congratulations Mr President
Not that he's likely to read these words, but I want to publicly congratulate President Bush on the occasion of his second inaugaration. He fought hard and fairly clean in his re-election campaign. It was a sterling effort, and his whole team can be proud of their achievement. You won fair and square.
Note also that he really did run on issues and his record. He didn't slip in with nice meaningless blather about it being morning in America, as did the last Republican to get re-elected. Having been the first president in awhile to get an actual majority of votes, and having run on some hard issues, he's got more right to claim a mandate for his agenda than anyone since Reagan's first election.
This does not mean that I necessarily support the president's agenda. I did not vote for him. Indeed, after about a dozen chances in primaries and general elections, I have never ever voted for anyone named Bush. I will give him some qualified support in the war on terrorism, but I never for a second bought the "compassionate conservative" business.
Indeed, I've been known to cuss the president up on side and down the other. I can and have gone on about the many ways W and his people have screwed up.
However, precisely because I count myself an opponent of the president, I want to publicly recognize his legitimacy and wish him good luck. I have been particularly unimpressed with the inaugaral protesters, and the whining losers complaining about the cost of the inaugaration, and even the cost of Laura Bush's dress. That's just cheap, petty resentment.
I'm even less impressed with all the schmucks (including Kerry) who have been carrying on with cheap demagoguery about how Bush somehow supposedly didn't legitimately win. This nonsense is factually false, and it's really bad for the whole country, undermining the whole democratic system. If their guy can't be president of the club, they'd rather tear down the whole clubhouse.
I'll give the president a fair amount of personal level credit. President Bush impresses me as being a sober and responsible adult, pretty consistently doing what he thinks is best for the interests of the American people. You may or may not agree with his decision to go into Iraq, but you can feel confident that he's not going to be bombing aspirin factories just to distract attention from his own legal problems.
Even more significantly, W has shown a clear will and intent to deal with some big issues with an eye to the longterm, rather than just whatever will get him the easiest path through the next news cycle. Again, you may disagree with going into Iraq, but he certainly didn't do it because he thought it would make him popular or seal his re-election. He knew how little good it did daddy- and that was when everything went smoothly.
Tomorrow I'll be back to taking W apart. Hey, he's on OUR payroll, so he can expect his 300,000,000 bosses to rag him out. He's got it coming.
Today, however, is HIS day. It's also OUR day to recognize the continuing success of the American experiment in self-government. We had a big election, and the president won a modest but clear majority. Therefore, he gets to run things for four more years.
Really, President Bush isn't so bad- considering who's doing the hiring. Every ignorant red state redneck, every dysfunctional ghetto dweller, every hateful pinko college professor- they all get to vote. Most especially, every jerk bureaucrat and greedy welfare rat (particularly the rich ones) with a hand in the public till gets to vote.
As per Mencken's famous quote, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it- good and hard." Really, President Bush is probably better than we deserve.
posted by Al at 1/20/2005 06:20:00 AM
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