The View From Crawford, Tex.

The soon to be former president, reduced to a punch line, an abstraction McCain ducked and Obama abused, slithers back to Crawford in tatters this January. Lost in the dust storm of Obama and his many millions of supporters stampeding toward Washington to reclaim a country they once loved is the departure of the bumbling Texan, our president, George W. Bush.

Finally, the end. Away with the destroyer of freedom and humility and the virtuous America. Be gone, creator of chaos and starvation and shame. The day is here at long last. The king is dead! Rejoice!

I always thought these would be my emotions on the eve of Bush’s exit. A joyous relief, an exhale after years of suffering in bated breath. He was handed an America at the pinnacle of its power and influence, a nation with legitimate potential to make the world a happier, more stable place where the atrocities of the past were confined to the extreme margins. But once America hit his fingertips he fumbled it, sending our nation crashing to the floor, which wouldn’t have been too bad if he didn’t begin frantically stomping on it, rendering it the unrecognizable scramble of limited opportunity and widespread pessimism that we see today.

He did everything wrong. He won the 2000 republican primary by sending out robo-calls suggesting McCain had an illegitimate black daughter. He won the general election because complicated ballots in Florida took hundreds if not thousands votes away from Gore. He failed to recognize pre-9/11 memos warning of an impending attack. He failed to do anything but sit, read and wet his pants when he was told the country was under attack. Failure after failure after failure. Afghanistan. Iraq. The deficient. Guantanamo. Abu Ghraib. Iran. Katrina. Suspension of habeas corpus. Millions of jobs lost. Deregulation. Record oil revenues. Valerie Plame. Axis of Evil. Osama ‘dead or alive’ bin Laden. World economic collapse. Disengagement in Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Blackwater. Decline on the dollar. Decline in American power. Decline in American influence. Decline in quality of life.

The world is a worse place because of George W. Bush. Think of what America has lost because of this man and his cronies. Think about what this man can never give us back. We hate him for it. I was twelve when he came into my life, and now, at 20, I look back and feel robbed of something.

But as a period punctuates the end of Ch. 43: GWB I find my hatred toward him tempered by an involuntary sympathy. Despite legitimate grounds to despise him, I cringe at the tremendous weight of being a complete and utter failure, a weight he will never get out from under. Try to feel the colossal burden he schleps back to Crawford. Not too many people are universally despised. What’s it like going through life knowing that you may very well have brought the greatest nation in the history of world to its knees? Imagine destroying the country you love. How is he supposed to keep on living? Where is happiness found when you know tens of thousands of people are dead because of you? What’s it like on that west Texas ranch?

He’s on his porch surrounded by nothing but the people he loves and a vast expanse of meditative rolling hills that disappear into a setting sun, and everyone trades fragments of funny memories but in the midst of the simple pleasures and “remember when’s” his mind reflects on all that he couldn’t help but destroy. An intense disappointment in self permeates his every action such that nothing and no one offers him refuge. Looking in the mirror before bed he cannot but shake his head and avoid his own eyes in shame.

Or is it something else. Is he something else? Is the post-presidency W. someone far less desolate? Has he not been shattered by the lives he helped end, the legacy he helped squander, and the once burning American promise he helped snuff out? Could he really be evil enough to be joyous in the aftermath of the carnage — holding tea parties at his stately ranch as the ashes of this scorched country crackle around him?

Now in the dining rooms he mumbles a prayer then transitions seamlessness into small talk about farm animals. A hilarious story about a one-legged chicken that tried to stand on a fencepost is recounted to the delight of his guests before the spring pea soup with fernleaf lavender is brought out and the eating commences. Pleasant goodbyes are exchanged and later that night he watches the last ten minutes of Sportscenter before gently kissing his sleeping wife on the forehead and, swelled with distinguishment and pride, comfortably falling asleep himself.

Surely he can’t forgive himself that quickly. I don’t wish the man physical harm, as surely millions do, but I want him to be human enough to be emotionally crushed by what he has done. After all he has ruined he owes it to us to return to Crawford sad and lost and in as terrible a condition as our country is. The thought of the proprietor of the severe American downfall that’s taken place over the last eight years being able to sleep at night disgusts me. It’s not enough that he meant well; he ruined, he ruined and he took lives and for that he shouldn’t be allowed to forgive himself.

So there it is. A somewhat pacifistic kid from suburban Pennsylvania demanding that a former head of state undergo a long and painful depression A country elated, seeing hope in the wresting of power away from this terrible president. A reflection of what he’s done, of the things and people and nation he has broken.

Tony Manfred is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at tmanfred@cornellsun.com [1]. The Absurdity Exhibition appears alternate Wednesdays.