Poor George W., sitting in his huge instant megamansion in Dallas like Gatsby gazing forlornly across the waters at Daisy Buchanan's East Egg dock. No green light will beckon him. Nobody, including Daisy, wants anything to do with him.
As George W. gazes across the pond at events in Europe, surely even he can see how the rest of the world is going gaga over his successor, a truly presidential man who possesses all the gifts Bush so patently lacks: he's articulate, respectful, conciliatory, mature and calm. And, to rub salt in his psychic wounds, every ounce of the praise being heaped upon Obama by world leaders comes with a hidden jab at George W. Take French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who ended last Friday's press conference by saying, "It feels really good to be able to work with a U.S. President who wants to change the world and who understands that the world does not boil down to simply American frontiers and borders. And that is a hell of a good piece of news for 2009."
In some ways—at least judging from his weeklong excursion into the heart of "Old Europe"—Obama's approach should warm the hearts of conservatives, though they'll never admit it. That is, Obama has been all but begging out of making the United States the sole mover and shaker on the world stage. At times, he even sounds like an isolationist, suggesting that other nations get their acts together and we'll try to get ours together too. For example, at a joint appearance with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a German reporter asked Obama about his "grand designs" for NATO. "I don't come bearing grand designs," Obama said. "I'm here to listen, to share ideas and to jointly, as one of many NATO allies, help shape our vision for the future."
It hadn't dawned on me until this trip how relieved the rest of the world is that George W. is safely inside his mansion. Perhaps because Bush was so widely despised in the U.S. during the last two years of his mis-administration, we forget how wide was the enmity felt toward him elsewhere. Not only did he act as if he could dictate policy to other nations, he projected the arrogance of a man who has never known a moment of humility or doubt. Like all narcissists, Bush was never wrong; he could only be wronged.
Imagine now how much more productive will be international conferences without the presence of this cock of the walk sucking all the oxygen out of the room. It will take some time to live down those creepy backrubs of Chancellor Merkel, infantile wisecracks to Tony Blair, malapropisms and lack of knowledge of world history.
One example says it all. In his first term (February, 2002), Bush went to Japan and made a speech in which he told the Japanese that his Asian trip "begins here because for a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific."
One of the great alliances? Forget Japan's genocidal rape of China in the 1930s, Pearl Harbor, four bloody years of fighting in the Pacific, the viciousness of the Japanese occupation of Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Burma (few Asian nations were spared), the war crimes against Allied troops (including my grandfather) by their Japanese captors. All of this just, willy nilly, gets deleted from the empty box inside Bush's head.
It struck me then that an American president who could make a statement like this, and then not try to amend it in some way, was not just ignorant but dangerously so. If one chooses to ignore genocide in favor of a soundbite, where does one stop pretending that the dead bodies are really just invisible phantoms?
I guess we've had our answer—haven't we?—in the ensuing years. And that sort of person ends up inside a mansion in a gated Dallas suburb, gazing forlornly at nothing at all, while the rest of the world just hopes he stays there until the end of his days.
