A few thoughts on Obama-eve....

So we're down to the last twelve hours or so of the Bush era, and I'm certainly in the "good riddance" camp on that front. But I'd like to take a sec to look at the other side of that sentiment, just because it may be a bit before there's a good opportunity to do so.

William Kristol and Christopher Hitchens both ran columns today offering defenses of Bush and his policies. Kristol starts off with his rabbi's admonition to the congregation (BTW: is congregation the correct term, or is that strictly Christian terminology?) to offer prayers for the incoming administration and "for all who exercise just and rightful authority..." He (Kristol) then goes on to reflect on "the man who has shouldered the burdens of office for the last eight years," a man who "has exercised his just and rightful authority in a way--I believe--that deserves recognition and respect." His basic arguments on this front are that a) Bush has been "one of the greatest friends the state of Israel--and, yes, the Jewish people--have had in quite a while", and that he has been so "when he had no political incentive to do so", and b) "winning the war in Iraq, and in particular, his refusal to accept defeat when so many counseled him to do so... was an act of personal courage and of presidential leadership."

Hitchens offers that "I still do not wish that Al Gore had beaten George W. Bush in 2000 or that John Kerry had emerged the victor in 2004." The point of Hitchens' column is harder to pin down than Kristol's; he spends a bit of time mocking the left-wing obsession with Bush's supposed character flaws, pointing out that Oliver Stone's W contains "an unnoticed omission, or rather there is an event that does not occur on-screen: the crashing of two airliners into two large skyscrapers...This cannot be because it wouldn't have been of any help in making Bush look bad." So why would it be omitted? "The answer, I am reasonably certain, is that it is the events of Sept. 11, 2001, explain the transformation of George Bush from a rather lazy small-government conservative into an interventionist, in almost every sense, politician. The unfortunate thing about this analysis, from the liberal point of view, is that it leaves such little room for speculation about his Oedipal relationship with his father, his thwarted revenge fantasies about Saddam Hussein, his dry-drunk alcoholism, and all the rest of it." (The preceding has been edited (by me) for style and grammar, by the way, because the editors over at Slate apparently can't be bothered). Hitchens is fairly liberal by most measures, but he's been unapologetically fanatical in his opposition to what he terms Islamofascism, and he takes as a given that taking up arms against it is an unambiguously just cause.

I bring this up now because I think that one of the big, massive flaws in the thinking of left-wing types over the last eight years has been that Bush and everyone in his camp have pursued their agenda out strictly for base, cynically self-serving motives. If you know the kind of people I know--and if you're reading this, I'm pretty sure you do--you hear it all the time: this was all about oil, this was all about enriching business interests, this was all about oppressing the poor, etc. etc. And the thing that I've always gotten from Kristol and his ilk, the thing that I think Hitchens is trying to get at (in his airbaggy and off-point way), the thing that I've always thought is true of Bush himself, is: these people really believe this stuff. They really do believe that they've struck a blow for individual freedom and liberty and democracy and all of that stuff that you believe in too.

And why this is important is: you don't have a prayer of changing these people's minds if you don't grant them that--however (in my opinion) disastrously misguided their approach--(most of) their intentions are, if nothing else, sincere. That's not to say that there aren't other motives mixed up in there (but ask yourself--no, I mean seriously ask yourself--if your don't have a few competing agendas in your own life), but at least grant them that they take the approach that they do for what they think are righteous motives. Because the standard party line of "these people are just out for money/power/influence and nothing else" is just the left-wing version of "liberals hate America."

This shit is way, way more complicated than what I've just written. But I think it's something to keep in mind nonetheless.