We Picked the Wrong President

Our country faces two simultaneous wars. Our economy is plummeting. Deep divisions spread over moral and ethical grounds fracture our nation. In the search for a leader of sound mind and body to guide us, the American people chose poorly. We should not have elected the President we did. We should have elected John McCain.

Instead, we put George W. Bush in office.

In 2000, Republicans across the country had a chance to make a difference. In the Republican primaries, John McCain ran against George Bush, and was lost in the shuffle, just as he almost was in 2008. Had the party been more aware of the times we were to face, and the sheer enormity of the choice they were making, I like to think they would have put the better man in office. While I can't pretend to know how McCain would have reacted to the crises which plagued our nation in the last 8 years, I can at least state with certainty based upon the man's record that he would not have created as many of his own as were perpetrated by the current administration.

It may be wrong to speak ill of George Bush. He proved himself a leader who spoke from the gut and shot from the hip. He was never as dumb as he appeared, nor was he the nice guy you could have a beer with that he wanted you to believe. He was a President with a set of guiding moral values and a sense of what was right for America which he refused to abandon. While he made many wrong moves, let us not forget that he made them because he honestly believed them to be good for the country. When Obama was elected by landslide, Bush had no harsh words for the party which had painted him so negatively over the years or its candidate. Instead, he promised a smooth transition to power, and applauded America for overcoming such a hurdle in our history as to finally put a black man in office. George Bush was not many of the things he thought he was, but a simple look at his cabinet and his work in Africa will show that Kanye West has completely the wrong idea about the man.

But among those things he is not is the leader that was right for our times. Should we villify anyone in the years to come, I hope it is Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. Their tactics of dividing the nation on moral lines caused a wave of hatred to sweep over this country. Spreading misinformation and encouraging ignorance were their way of winning votes. The right to disagree with your government, a foundation upon which America was built, became unpatriotic. George Bush was not the leader for our times, but the men behind him were not right for this country or this world.

We would have done better with John McCain. Now, his time has passed.

Let's hope we did it right this time around.