The 2008 election cycle has been over for more than a week now (in most parts of the country anyway, there are still a few races yet to be called) and the presidential transition process has begun.
What has been remarkable during the last week is how amazingly helpful the Bush Administration has been with the transition process so far. So willing to work with the Obama transition team it’s verging on bipartisanship on the part of the Bush White House.
Having seen President Bush on TV giving a decent (for Bush standards) speech welcoming Obama into the club of American presidents was amazing. Then watching President Bush and President-Elect Obama walk into the White House together Monday blew my mind. Yeah, it’s pretty standard that the outgoing president invites the new guy over for a tour, but this seemed almost friendly as they walked in the door together.
What I want to know is where this version of Bush was for the last eight years?
Where was the man who could pat a victorious Democratic candidate for president on the back and walk him into a White House still controlled by the GOP, if for only a few more weeks? Where was the Bush that said, “I’m a uniter not a divider” hiding for the majority of the last eight years? Seriously… where has he been? Dick Cheney’s undisclosed location? Locked away in Crawford, Texas, so as not to ruin a neo-con agenda? I’m really curious.
The last eight years were pretty miserable if you’re of a liberal mindset. What if this “uniter” we’re seeing now during the transition process had been around over the last eight years? The Iraq War probably would have still been waged but maybe there wouldn’t have been a feeling within the Democratic Party that maybe the president didn’t hate us as a party, he just disagreed. There are a lot of what ifs that come out of this that would have made the last eight years more bearable. Maybe everything would have been the same.
I know one positive that has come out of George the Uniter being stashed away by George the Divider, and that’s this election. With the help of George the Divider, we were given Barack Obama. George the Divider helped Obama earn 364 electoral votes and 53 percent of the popular vote. George the Divider helped the Democrats gain in both the House and Senate, giving them a sizable majority in the former and a nice majority in the latter.
Thinking about it in those terms, maybe George the Divider was not so bad. Maybe he’s the best friend the Democratic Party recently has had. After all, if it hadn’t been for George the Divider, we might not have accomplished so much in 2008. If it had been George the Uniter for the last eight years, we could have had President-Elect McCain, and that’s not something I like to think about.
At this point as Democrats, all we have to worry about is making sure Obama sticks to the platform that got him elected and doesn’t stray too far to the left. The last thing we need is the savior of the Democratic Party to come in and make us look like left-wing whackos. Then again, even if he does, all he has to do in 2012 is remind everyone that his first four years weren’t nearly as bad as the years that George the Divider ruled over the land.