Paul Waldman presents in his article "Goodbye and Good Riddance" one of the best examples yet of why I believe we find ourselves in the middle of a rhetorical or ideological cold war that has only just started. While I respect Mr. Waldman's right to his opinion, I think his vociferously overstated case reveals the depth of the divisions that currently haunt the United States that electing Obama or anyone else in this cycle could not have overcome.
From my point of view, Mr. Waldman's article reveals the depth of the divide of a nation pulled in half for reasons I am not sure I entirely understand. What I do understand is that there are screaming ideologs on both sides of the divide who have become so blinded by something more fundamental than ideology that they can no longer see that their rage serves only to ensure that their opponents will never listen to anything they have to say.
In the mean time, many people far closer to the center find themselves caught in a malestrom of such intensity that they have lost the ability to discern where their interests actually lie. I wonder how many people ended up voting for Obama simply because they wanted to make the TV stop shouting at them about how bad Bush is. This is not to say that their best interests may not still lie with Obama, but I wonder whether they actually know that.
I know that George Bush made all kinds of mistakes during his presidency, but so did all 42 other presidents who proceeded him . I also know that many of the things George Bush has done can only be best evaluated once they become history years from now, perhaps long after he is dead. Unfortunately, the raging ideologs want us to either hate or love Bush before we can accomplish anything else.
This insistance ensures is that one half of the divide will continue to hate the other half of the divide and refuse to cooperate with them so that nothing will get done that actually benefits the United States in the near future. This hatred almost ensures that Obama faces the potential for opposition as vociferous and insulting as the oppostion Bush has faced until this point, opposition that will serve only to be obstructionist instead of centralizing.
What remains is a nation divided by ideology that insists that half the people are uninformed, misguided, and deluded whichever side one happens agree with. What remains is the reality that, before we can come together as a nation, we must first take a hard look at ourselves and realize that maybe we are just screaming instead of thinking.
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As far as the constant bloviating about the Bush legacy goes, I suppose my first instinct was what I wrote before: I agree with you, it's too soon to see. We're too deep in the trees to properly grasp the dimensions of the forest.
As we've discussed here before, the Carter administration hasn't been fully grasped yet and he's been out of office since 1981! It's the people who thought they could write the full story of Greenspan stint behind the head desk at the Fed, only to have him sitting in front of congress of late, second-guessing himself.
Be that as it may, I think time will pass and we'll move on to new topics. Once Obama starts moving on some of his proposals, I'm sure Bush will become a matter of passing reference, as Clinton was during the first part of Bush II's reign, dredged up as a matter of contrast.
Since I've been reading a lot of Lincoln of late (in case it hasn't shown), I'm prone to quote him: "It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction"
Or maybe Groucho is more appropriate and "Time wounds all heels" which is a pun that cuts both ways in this case.
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