Dear President Bush

It occurs to me, at times, especially those of national stress (in other words, more and more frequently), that your ultimate goal as president, perhaps to some extent not fully intended yet by no means unplanned either, is actually to divide the country irreparably, to "stick it" to your critics, pursuing your various agenda items, both domestic and international, unabated and without compromise in the least.

Playing to your narrow base to the very end of your tenure may indeed seem to be a good way to enshrine your self-image as an unbending "leader," but it comes at a price, and with great risk for your long-term legacy. Realize that much of the country currently despises your policies, and probably will for the foreseeable future.

You squandered the national good will that seemed to galvanize in the aftermath of the horrible events of 9/11/2001. You then divided us into loyal Bushies versus Bush haters; into rich cronies versus poor losers; into freedom-loving chickenhawks versus cut-and-running Islamofascist sympathizers; into red versus blue; into tax-cutters versus tax-lovers; into the faithful versus the faithless; into straight versus gay; into Climate Change deniers versus Chicken Little doomsayers; into pro-life versus pro-abortion; into anti-terrorist versus pro-terrorist; and so on and on.

Has any previous U.S. president insisted so adamantly, with such ferocity and apparent relish, with such relentless and skillful manipulation, upon such domestic invidiousness? Let me submit that you've been presiding, simultaneously, over two undeclared civil wars that you primarily fostered, one abroad and the other at home.

Might you consider, in your remaining months in office, not about starting another deadly war and unleashing new destructive campaigns but about providing a few expansive Lincoln-esque healing gestures? A "wartime president" ought to be trying to bring the nation together rather than sniping forever at his critics.

It would require that you change your ways first and foremost, and then maybe others will follow your example. If you truly are, as you think you are at heart, a uniter not a divider, then you cannot simply demand unity on your terms and blame subsequent division on those who fail to bend to your decrees.

Why not try it -- something big, bold, enduring -- that would actually please, uplift, and surprise liberals? It could be a daring measure that irritates your base for a while but ultimately brings, or aspires to bring, the nation together to some symbolic extent. Think outside your box.

Leadership doesn't necessarily mean staying put in your ideological "comfort zone," as you stubbornly seem to think it does in your "I'm-Reagan-in-Berlin" fantasy moments. Nixon opened China. Your father, reading more than just his own lips, saw the critical need for taxes. Your father did what he thought was best for the country's long term fiscal health even though he alienated the hard line anti-tax faction, those think-tank zealots who want to dismantle all democratic government.

As of now, your father will be remembered as a decent-enough president, and you will be remembered as an abject failure. Oh, when one of us pesky bloggers makes such a point, you and your enablers circle the wagons and dig in and redouble your efforts -- that's your reactive instinct -- and then look for all-too-clever ways to stick it back to the opposition, attacking the messenger, going for the kill, turning defense into offense, playing hardball. It seems to work for a while.

Enjoy those petty Pyrrhic victories of yours. But you're eventually going down, down hard, and it seems as if you are trying to make the entire world into your personal Titanic.

Captain, you need to change course. In the spirit of your favorite philosopher, you -- your presidency -- needs redemption, some miraculous way of genuinely transcending politics-as-usual.

If you are the believer that you say you are, have you thought about begging for forgiveness? I know, that would be SO out of character. Maybe, however, just maybe, it's what the country, if not the entire world, needs right now from you as president, a sincere expression of humility and a heartfelt attempt to mend deep wounds, a gift from nowhere. Are you big enough to rise to the occasion? Or will it be bombs, rhetorical and otherwise, from here on out?

Sincerely,

John Seery
Huffpo Blogger

Comments

[BBackSoon]

Like he said as long as his wife and his dog are on his side he will continue.

Maybe you should appeal to the dog.

[seawolf77]

The Republican party is a despicable group of people. They operate on a single principle, if the other guy wins obstruct and destroy. I work in a field that is 90% red and I can tell you if someone other than a red guy has an idea there is absolutely no chance it will succeed. Remember Clinton. Beat em fair and sqaure. Beat em like they daddy. They spent more money investigating this guy than any pres in history and came up with nada. Imagine how great a president he would have been except for these bozos gettin in his way. I'm tellin you people there's no workin together aanymore. They have declared war on us. Don't wait until you're in jail or in a convention center after a hurricane or in a men's room being solicited by ole wide stance.

[mkellyo]

I've contacted through email my representatives in Congress in the House and Senate, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. My voice is trapped in the great internet tangle. Sometimes I receive form letters in return- often with only the vagueist reference to the topic of my original email.

Now Bush is bound and determined to bomb Iran.
He will justify the action with the slightest provocation by Iran, which by the way Bush will
engineer.

And our legislators are doing nothing! Sen.
Jim Webb's resolution to stop Bush from invading Iran and Rep. Udall's resolution are not on the senate and house schedule.

There is a sense of hopelessness and malaise among my friends and neighbors about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the threat of bombing Iran. What can we do? Our outcrys have been ignored. We are frustrated by our representatives obliviousness to the will of the people.

[Sundialsvc4]

It works like this... When a criminal enterprise sets-up in the halls of government, at whatever level it may be, the first thing that it tries to do is to put on sheep's clothing. It tries to cloak itself in normalcy; tries to pass off its own words and motivations as being representative of the country. It usually finds enough disaffected groups within the country that they will (whether they know what they're doing or not) echo its words and thus add "legitimacy" to them.

The "flaming Christians" were a pretty easy mark, for instance.

The unique feature of "The Rove Doctrine" was that, if you slice-and-dice the country so that you set those various groups against one another -- if you, shall we say, "disaffect them" by what you are doing and by the sense that what is happening to them is somehow "inevitable" -- then you can gain power quite rapidly indeed.

But here's the rub: it's still, fundamentally, a criminal enterprise. So when you start finding ways to apply pressure to it, the wool begins to fall off ... off the wolf, and off the public's eyes. Faced with a choice between what it is and what it would like to seem to be, a criminal enterprise will drop all show of pretense...

For example, the American military has basically been employed as an adjunct, all these years, to the hired-thugs like Blackwater. (Whose name, appropriately enough, means "sewage.") The true goal is, and always has been, trillions of dollars' worth of oil. If the Iraqis, et al, won't play-along with the pretense of being "democratic," then (to the criminal way of thinking) they will be crushed. If an all-out world war is the way to ensure that this happens, then an all-out world war (with nukes) will be started.

The criminals well-know that if the people of the United States ever perceive that they are, and always have been, "UNITED We Stand," THEY could be impeached and find themselves(!) at the end of a rope.

[Malarcus]

"Are you big enough to rise to the occasion? Or will it be bombs, rhetorical and otherwise, from here on out?"

Ummmmm, what was the second thing, again...?

[bestmom3]

Dear Mr. Seery

Your letter was so right on the money! I couldn't have said it better myself. So many Americans feel the same way you do and the President is only "amused" with those who criticize what he is trying to do and has already done. That's what he said about the Grassroots organization. He was AMUSED! What an egotistical, enemy we have for a leader. I applaud your work!!!

[larryfishkorn]

This post is written for Huff readers, and will be read by Huff readers only. I seriously doubt that anyone with access to this post will read it and pass it to Bush, in the hopes that he'll read it and have it mean something to him. It actually serves the opposite effect, because it shows how there are liberal haters out there who will always be against Bush no matter what, like how the Republicans will always hate the Clintons,. so it's actually an affirmation to Republicans that they must be doing something right. Unfortunately, if you look at just the facts in the world, like extreme weather, the tanking dollar, Middle East war, the vanishing middle class, the coarseness of the national dialogue, etc it looks like these Republican policies are total garbage. To them, however, things are great and will not change until they are eliminated rom decision-making policies. They see tragedy differently, because they see disaster and make money off of it.

[Sundialsvc4]

If certain Englishmen in 1776 felt the way you do, Larry, this country would not even exist.

We're not the first country to face well-entrenched criminals working in the halls of government ... dividing the country against itself to weaken it ... "let them eat cake" and so-on. Oh no, not the first, nor the last.

But we can thank those Englishment for being courageous: they knew they were signing their name to treason both when issuing the Declaration of Independence and even when creating the Constitution. THEY did not look at the situation that surrounded them and wring their hands and say, "oh woe, nothing can be done..."

[Sundialsvc4]

In a word, that is "The Rove Principle." Divide, and Conquer.

Abraham Lincoln said that a house divided against itself cannot stand, but Karl Rove said that a house that presents itself as divided can do whatever it wants because there's always "the other guy" to blame. You can see this principle being applied everywhere.

The American public has also been an easy mark: with just a little prodding from the news, it willingly accepts the notion that the American people are madly divided against one another.

The first thing that we need to reject, then, is this notion. "E Pluribus, UNUM."

[texanna]

This guy left my state in tatters and when there was little else he could do to it, he moved on to a larger venue, my country. He's not interested in apologizing, because his agenda is to do exactly what he's done. I'm sorry you bought the Uniter thing, it wasn't your fault. I mean everybody with access to any media sold you on that concept. What he actually wanted to do was make money for his REAL base -- the oil guys and the military-industrial complex guys. And, he's done exactly that. Can you say, "Doh!"?

[ljsfolly]

I often wonder if bush/cheney had the plan to destroy our country when they started the path to the white house. Cheney self selected himself for his job when he figured he could also be president without having to run for the office. All he had to do was to prop up bush and display him while he, cheney made the choices and decisions. It is not uncommon for someone to make the person who is just the mouthpiece think he came up with the thoughts/decisions. I and many other figured out bush was destructive the first four years and yet the machine of big business and the fear enhanced talk put them right back into office to destroy more of the country. I hope to know at some point befoe I die, why people still believe anything the administration says and does is in the citizens best interest. We have lined the pockets of all of the cronies and big business that put them there and we have had our loved ones be sacrificed in the name of our country while bush/cheney hired another army to do the dirty deeds and get immunity for it. Sad sad world they made while we watched.

[research]

Bush says: "wadda ya mean? everythings going great!"

[metsfan1]

You already know the answer to that one! No, no a thousand times NO! How can a Bush of this caliber possibly admit any mistakes? He doesn't think he has made any. Besides, Uncle Dick would be oh so very mad at him! Wouldn't that be too bad?

[tjruler]

Takes a strong person to apologize like that. Someone with a checked ego.

From what I've seen of Bush he's not one of those people.

[JimSullivan]

John:

The problem with a president and a Republican party who think in binaries is, as you note, that these binaries become self-fulfilling; the labels become realities by polarizing us and preventing any genuine dialogue and compromise.

For me the question is not will Bush move to heal these divides. For me, the question is how can the rest of us initiate some kind of genuine conversation about reconciliation.

Thanks for more greating thinking about all of this.

Jim Sullivan

[INQUIRER]

Fuck reconciliation. I want the Republicscum to be permanently disgraced. I want them to suffer for the rest of their lives as it becomes increasingly obvious that they not only were wrong about everything, but that the rest of us are never going to forgive them for their bullying, their insufferable and wholly unjustified sense of superiority, and their total lack of the knowledge of fair play and decency. I want Bush to try everything he can think of to rehabilitate his reputation while everyone in the nation utterly rejects him. I want him to die wistfully musing that someday people are going to think better of him.

[jqcitizen]

Seery-
When the Pres. addressed the housing market and impending forclosures on many American families, he didn't rely on his White House mouthpiece to remind us of the good-old days, when he said "you could go to your Savings and Loan" and buy a house at a fair rate.
What he didn't say is the Savings and Loan outfits were ripped off by the likes of his brother Niel and other so-called important people like "Kenny-Boy".
The Sins of these thieves are paid by us fools who think they are actual leaders.
The current 10 Trillion Dollar national debt should not stop the voter from electing another War Lover to the White House.
Keep on praying voter, but remember, George won't be in Florida, with other brother Jeb, to hand out ice-water after a hurricane. Doubt that Rudy will either.