George W. Bush, a personal memoir

On the inauguration day of Barack Obama, my thoughts turned to the outgoing President, George W. Bush.

My mind cast back to over eight years earlier to our first meeting, that indelible image of that affable Texan, projecting hope and optimism on his Presidential campaign trail, promising to unify a country deeply divided by Washington partisanship and the broader culture struggles in the country at large.

Back in 2000, I was not a particularly political person. I had recently started sixth form, and was still very much in the growth stages of what one might call any sort of political maturity. I was deeply unaware of the ideological differences between George Bush and his Democratic rival, Al Gore, nor was I aware of anything either of them stood for.

But from what I had seen, George was my candidate. I don't recall what he was promising America, nor remember anything of note that he said. I do remember feeling drawn to his easy manner and his natural ability to connect with his audience. I also remember his reassuring cadences, now lost to a world. Add to this the factor that his father, George H.W. Bush, had been the President I remembered growing up with. Whilst born in the year of Ronald Reagan's 1984 landslide victory, my earliest recollections of America were of Bush Snr.

My early recollections of the George W. Bush's Presidency were of him speaking eloquently on the execution of the Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh. I will always remember the first Bush protestors - those who had come out to express frustration with his early declaration of Kyeto withdrawal - and how it struck me almost immediately that we were going to have a very different sort of Presidency to the popular Clinton administration that had just departed.

Fast forward to November 2004 and Bush's bid for re-election. Whether or not it was true, the world felt unrecognisable to the one four years earlier. The 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington had changed the paradigm of the White House's priorities, and with a Republican congress Bush energetically turned his attention to national security and the defence against America's enemies. Military invasion had led to the disposal of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, whilst American forces were engaged deeply in a proctracted conflict in Iraq following the invasion of that country 2003.

I was a Politics student at the University of Sheffield when Bush faced his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry on that election night. I remember the anger, the frustration - the overwhelming feeling amongst almost everyone in the Student Union to 'get that man out of the White House', the complete committment to the the Kerry/Edwards ticket, not for any particular affinity for those two candidates, but for the fact they were not Bush / Cheney. The feelings were not personal - they were directed at a sense that power was being misused and abused, and that something had to be done to return a sense of reasonability and restraint back to politics.

Which takes me back to my sense of disappointment then, and now, that George W. Bush didn't seem to be able to utilise those strengths he had shown as Governor of Texas and to follow through on the hopefulness of those messages on the campaign trail - of unity, strength and peace, greater personal morality in the White House and a humble, co-operative domestic and foreign political spirit.

His term drawing to a close, and on leaving the oval office, the outgoing President showed considerable gracefulness in assisting in the transition to the next administration. I am still left wondering whether the circumstances might have differed to have allowed the early humanity and humility of George W. Bush to eclipse the hubris that came to engulf his two terms in Washington.