What a difference a president makes to a free people.
What Milton, the poet of Paradise Lost, might write about our fall from light to dark between 2000 and 2008.
What a price we paid for the other half of the American electorate supporting George W. Bush: not once, but twice. Now the disgraced president, about as popular as Queen Marie Antoinette, dare not be seen in the public square
Sobered up on this new year's day in 2009, all see clearly the nation will never get its money back. Nor will we ever know the true cost in money and morale, bloodshed and war crimes in the price we paid for this presidency.
In military parlance, what's the "lesson learned" in all this? Surely something to do with taking responsibility in a democracy.
That begins with a simple truth that a wise vote for president influences one's own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Instead, we got the kind of president a careless electorate deserves, a divider if there ever was one. Contrary to his campaign slogan, Bush never reached to the center to govern as a "uniter" once in eight years.
By stark contrast, this land was "high cotton" at the turn of the millennium, with peace, prosperity and confidence about our "Indispensable" place in the world, Bosnia, Kosovo and all that foreign policy jazz gave us the international stature of peacekeepers who worked well with others in NATO.
Let's face it, we lost something along the way. During the golden good times, we collectively got complacent and forgot how much a president matters to our lives. We took things for granted after a point and got, well, lazy when it came to defending our way of life.
The press in 2000 matched this mood and displayed a cavalier, casual attitude toward the presidential election. By their own admission, reporters covering Al Gore, the Democratic nominee, took a personal dislike to him which colored their coverage. The press corps traveling with Bush rather enjoyed his roguish ways and portrayed him as someone you, as the voter, would rather have a beer with. As if that was the best way to choose a president.
During the tense Florida tiebreaker, the situation was often written and presented as Gore challenging Bush's victory, while young Republican operatives who disrupted vote counts flew under the media radar. The bare-knuckled partisan politics of the 5-4 Supreme Court decision was never held up to the light of public scrutiny until years later.
Thank you very much, Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy and William Rehnquist. You gave new meaning to "one man, one vote" in a breathtaking deed that will live long after you.
Whatever you thought of President Bill Clinton personally, the record of results is robust, with an SUV in every suburban driveway, a bull stock market, full employment, falling crime, blossoming and booming big cities, high home ownership, a balanced budget and a nice Treasury surplus (long gone.)
I might add, I still like the guy, though SUVs are not my favorite things.
In retrospect, the Clinton era was the feast before the famine. The last seven years have also felt a bit Biblical. After a seven-year harvest period of working hard but riding high, looking forward to the future, everything changed on September 11th, 2001.
But it wasn't only 19 terrorists that spooked the citizenry. The Administration made the atmosphere more edgy, with fearful new household words like "homeland security" and "weapons of mass destruction." We were told to watch what we said.
Bush and the president's men seized the Sept. 11th attacks to wage three wars: on terror, Afghanistan and Iraq. Ends justified means in a grim new world view and so we let some civil liberties go without a fight in the "Patriot Act." International law on treating prisoners of war was not far behind. With a pre-emptive war based on false premises in Iraq, the United States lost its place as a lighthouse or beacon to the rest of the world.
We became more like the biggest, baddest fraternity house on campus, trashed at the end of the term. Fraternity president was, after all, Bush's claim to fame at Yale.
Hurricane Katrina brought the truth home to us in 2005, that New Orleans might as well be Baghdad for all Bush cared. Competent government help was not on the way. At the end of a late summer day, our most beguiling city was gone with the wind and the water; frankly, Scarlett, the president didn't give a damn. The dots between domestic and foreign policy were at last connected in the public mind.
With the global financial crisis as his parting gift to us, the Bush record is complete as an activist and bellicose president who made trouble at home and abroad. Quite seriously, he could not have done a better job of wrecking the republic and its spirit if he had tried.
For Americans who repent casting precious presidential votes for Bush, learn your lesson well. Presidents do matter. What you can do to make it up is to lend whole-hearted support to Barack Obama, the president-elect who has a very easy act to follow -- but a huge mess to clean up in the White House.
Jamie Stiehm is a political journalist in Washington.