Emotional history

Watching the news reports from Washington, I'm surprised at how disappointed I feel that I didn't make the trip. Yes, there are crowds -- massive crowds, it's true -- but I can only imagine the excitement that folks like NTodd and Kenneth Quinnell must be feeling as they prepare to witness history (and chronicle it for the rest of us).

The teevee keeps encouraging all of us to embrace unity and bipartisanship on this day and, presumably, forward into the Obama administration. Indeed, on most Inauguration Days I can recall, there's at least a modicum of melancholy for the outgoing president, who generally is, as CNN said today of George H.W. Bush while watching his son Drunky McStagger leave office, "wistful" as he contemplates his departure from the White House, and I'm usually willing to share in that feeling.

Usually.

Thing is, I'm having a very hard time mustering any kind of sympathy or warmth for this outgoing president. Defiant to the end, our soon-to-be-former president continues to insist that he did the right things, that he wasn't negligent or ignorant or, worse, malevolent. He and his dwindling cadre of aides and supporters are convinced, or deluded, that history will vindicate him, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Granted, that's par for the course for the hubris-laden sociopaths who populate the Bush crime syndicate, led by Drunky himself, but if you were looking for some sort of deathbed conversion for the Gang of Thieves, you'll be disappointed.

See what I mean? Even 20 years ago today, when I personally attended the inauguration of George H.W. Bush as our 41st president, I felt a little twinge for Ronald Reagan of ... well, if not exactly sympathy, then at least recognition of his impact on American and world history. But I have trouble disguising my contempt for today's outgoing president, who I truly believe should be retiring to a prison cell, not to Dallas.

Does that make me just another angry DFH? Maybe. But only the most ardent, Kool-Aid-infused Republicans can deny that the last eight years have been extraordinarily detrimental to America's strength and standing domestically and abroad. I encountered one of those last night at rehearsal, when one of my fellow singers, a former Giuliani supporter who knows well my own political stance, only half-jokingly asked me whether I would be "sad to see a great statesman leave office tomorrow," a man who he truly believes "kept us safe." They refuse to acknowledge Drunky's dismal, historic failure to keep us safe on 9/11, when he was warned a month earlier of Osama bin Laden's "determin[ation] to strike" the United States yet did nothing. They refuse to acknowledge how he and his cronies almost gleefully abandoned New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. They refuse to acknowledge his utter contempt for the Constitution; indeed, they find ways to justify and celebrate it.

Yes, today is a day of American unity as Barack Obama becomes our 44th president. But I hope we never forget the disastrous era that ends today, so that the good feeling that accompanies the inauguration doesn't lead us to repeat history by ever again installing sycophants, hypocrites, and apologists in positions of power.