Whittled to the Core

I just watched President Bush's farewell address, which struck me as symbolic.

If you remember the 2004 campaign, you'll remember that in order to get into any of his campaign appearances, you had to sign a loyalty oath (okay, I don't think it was called that, but you had to state that you supported Bush just to get in to see him). This room, like those rallies, had only loyal supporters in them. Bush has almost never subjected himself to hostile crowds. The thing that strikes me about this performance is that it was a feeble attempt to recapture the glory days of cheering rallies that were full of people that supported him and his policies, but it is now whittled down to a small core of die-hard supporters.

And that core was sorely whittled down. From the high of post 9-11, where frankly, we would have rallied around any leader that may have been in office at that time, through the contentious and divisive 2004 election, to now, we have seen the biggest erosion of support in modern history. Support does not erode away by itself or through a lack of understanding. People usually earn disapproval. Each challenge, disaster, and revelation of Bush's Presidency has uncovered more flaws. There was a constant shedding of supporters, until here at then end, only a small core remains. Only the people with an exact match in Bush's values, or those that stood to gain from the way the game was rigged under Bush are left by his side.

For a President that rarely exposed himself to questions from the press, his final press conference in Iraq was also symbolic of the miscalculations of his Presidency. Putting aside why we went into Iraq and whether we were justified, I believe the President buys into his own propaganda about his role in Iraq. He feels that the people in Iraq should love him because he rid their country of a dictator. Unfortunately, the shoe throwing Iraqi was a fair indicator of what most Iraqis think of our President. Were we greeted as liberators? Is Iraq better off today than it was when we went in? None of that counts if the typical Iraqi is looking forward to the day we leave their country. Does anyone in this country count the Iraq War as a success? Even within his supposedly most loyal core of supporters, the troops that volunteered to serve under Bush, his support is dwindling. Too many veterans have had their families shattered under continuous rounds of deployments and too many wounded soldiers have failed to get the support and treatment they deserve when they returned. You can see them turning their backs on a leader that convinced them to support his misdeeds.

The biggest irony, while watching Bush make one last attempt to spin his legacy into something positive, something to be proud of, was the comparison to the other big story of the day. Visions of a passenger plane going down and ditching in the Hudson river were all over the news. This proved to be a more interesting story than the President's farewell. I could not help but see the parallels. A small group of traumatized people waiting patiently to get out safely from a serious plane wreck, where the events were so disastrous, that they should have had no hope of getting out unscathed. Just like the Bush Presidency.