Closing the Book on the Bush Presidency

Books have been in the news lately. There has been a lot of talk about the books read by both our current president and our president-elect. Comparing the reading habits of George W. Bush and Barack Obama is going to raise a few eyebrows. Challenge someone’s reading prowess and they are bound to be defensive.

We all assume Obama likes to read. He has been seen recently reading Fred Kaplan’s Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer. Obama’s inaugural speech will be his most important writing to date.

Karl Rove, coming to our current president’s defense, recently claimed Bush read over eighty books last year.

Looking back through the Bush presidency one can imagine he read a lot of Dickens.

These last eight years have been A Tale of Two Cities. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Promising a new style of politics, a heavy dose of the old was given. Partisanship was exacerbated. It did not help that Bush had to fight for the presidency in Court due to the Florida recall. Winning in 2000 with less than a popular vote victory hindered both the legitimacy and the mandate effective presidents long for. Yet his self-confidence never waned. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” Too often this cavalier, cowboy spirit divided us into two fighting camps. It has been a tale of two cities.

Following the scandalized Clinton years we all had Great Expectations. From pipsqueak to president, our President Bush was surrounded by too many Havishams to change the course. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove were a cast of characters who pushed for policies that challenged prevailing best practice. And when their ill-advised ways were discovered all attempts to cover up their mistakes compromised the honesty and integrity of the office. We expected so much more from Bush, a truly likeable person. Like Dickens, this ending could have been different.

As Obama is soon to discover, the presidency has a lot in common with The Old Curiosity Shop. Despite grand intentions, the office has a way of eating up its inhabitants. Bush could hardly have predicted or prepared for the attack on 9/11, or Katrina, or the financial meltdown. Surrounded by an overwhelming shadow government, the federal bureaucracy, and constrained by a political process known for it inefficiencies Bush was given a seemingly impossible job. His demise might have been Gore’s and Kerry’s as well. Soon there will be wonder if Obama can politically survive the dastardly details of this curious time in which we live.

Without question, however, President Bush leaves us with a Bleak House. Bush’s candidacy had a lot in common with John Jarndyce but to our surprise we elected William Guppy. A compassionate conservative was promised but a rejected soul will leave Washington next week. He leaves the Republican Party leaderless. Yet all is not lost. The Chancery courts were reformed, thanks in part, to Bleak House. Our current circumstances as well are bound to change. Obama promised as much. In these hard times, the days look bleak. We are living in a Dickensian time. There is fog everywhere. But as Esther assures us all in the end, “we can very well do without much beauty.” Persistence is what we take from this president.

And what about the Obama presidency? What will he be reading?

Read on. We can only hope it is something a little more cheery.