Thank You President Bush

Somewhere in my long search to understand the United States, I encountered an author - long forgotten - who made an interesting observation on history. He said that five hundred years from now the story of England and the U.S. would be viewed as a continuum rather than the divided experience we hear about today. [After all, England "arrived" in what is now the U.S. in 1607 with the first permanent European settlement at Jamestown, Virginia.] If you know your history and ponder that statement deep enough, you soon realize it is the opinion of a wise man. Five centuries is a long time to distill the essence out of a national experience. And in the hourglass of history, even a president's eight years in office is a mere speck, a grain of sand on a vast beach.

Last night, George Bush chose the high ground to say farewell to the nation as its president. In a very narrow description of his accomplishments, he focused on two primary points. First, was his response to the Islamo-fascist attack on the nation on September 11, 2001. For seven years, his policy has prevented a repeat of that event on American soil. His second point was the liberation of Iraq from the hands of a bloody tyrant and establishment of a fledgling democracy in a deeply troubled region. President Bush acknowledged that the pursuit of security at home and liberation abroad has come at a high cost that can be measured in more than dollars. Would he have done some things differently? Yes. Would the strategies have changed? Probably not. In the end, we find a president leaving office having done his very best to uphold the values and laws of a nation that he loves.

He is not alone. Students of American history have told us that every president challenged by war, at home and abroad, has taken extraordinary steps in bending the rule of law to insure that his policy objectives succeed. Presidential history books are full of examples - I'll let you search them. More often than not, those presidents have also faced great opposition at home.

So President Bush will leave office in a few days to become Citizen Bush. The best and worst of his time in the White House will be history. What we will remember, I'd say far sooner than 2509, will be those eight years of security at home and the continuation of the nation's two centuries of virtuous attempts to plant the seeds of freedom and democracy abroad. The waves of history will reveal the essentials and they will be appreciated.

[Sounds a bit lofty? It's time for you to read the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Wild experiment then. Wild experiment now.]