Angst About the Bush Administration

Yesterday morning as we drank our coffee and read the newspapers my husband looked up from the Times and said "Babe, I really didn’t think it mattered this much, I didn’t think that one man could do as much damage as Bush has done. I always thought the presidency was a constitutionally weak office. But Good God, he’s fucked everything up."

"Congress let him." I said back. "The 545 spineless bastards in the house and senate are at least as much to blame as the Current Occupant."

He has been prone to Bush-bashing of late. He is distressed at what he sees happening to his life’s work. Before he enlisted in the Air Force in 1976, his father, a Marine's Marine who served on the front lines during the Korean War, sat him down and they had a chat about the Honor Code. This was on the heels of Vietnam, and the military was dispirited at best in those dark days. The Honor Code lay in tatters, and my father-in-law told his son that unless he was willing to take on the task of mending our nations fractured honor, he shouldn’t enlist.

He served from 20 April, 1976 and he put his backbone into resurrecting the Honor Code. He knew his Airman and he treated them with respect, and it was rewarded with respect returned. When it was time to stand up, he never once sat down. Make no mistake, every day I am thankful and proud to be his wife and to have played my role in helping him fulfill his. We both feel that we married very well. And we are both correct on that account.

And now, he sees what he struggled to rebuild lying in ruin once more, and he is angry. Angry that the commander-in-chief has lowered the bar of conduct, chucked the rules of war, set himself above the law, and violated the civil liberties of countless Americans. He is angry that every dark suspicion he felt about Bush as the Supreme Court deliberated has borne true. He is angry that one man has been able to do so much damage. He is angry that history repeats itself. He is angry that it’s the freaking McKinley Administration all over again, minus one disturbed and determined anarchist.