Remember me fondly

History has been extraordinarily kind to Ronald Reagan. His missteps and straight-out breaches of laws both domestic and international have been pushed behind the veil of fond memory people have of their lives during his presidency. Will the passage of time be as kind to W? Methinks not. People not only vote their pocketbooks, they remember with them, as well. In W, we have a President who built a national bureaucratic infrastructure designed to do one thing, and one thing only: affirm his ideological positions. From Justice to intelligence gathering, his entire government has been deductive: He knows exactly what the answer should be as informed by his personal redemptive religious philosophy. Any information and data that did not properly support the presumptive truth was simply dismissed as obviously false. This evangelical, redemptive thinking has drained this country morally, militarily and financially. He has also mortgaged the future of his party and any hopes good men like McCain may have had to be considered on their own merits. By subjugating the entire party to his philosophy, and the national bureaucracy to the party, W has effectively created a situation in which the electorate is unwilling to assume that any Republican can operate outside of the "my way or the highway" strictures he has imposed for 8 years. Obama does not have to be the best qualified candidate, he has to be a non-Republican who can fog a mirror. Obama's time to truly benefit this country would not under ordinary circumstances have come for another 4-8 years. He is unripe as a politician and as a candidate. At least we can look forward to 4 years of really good speeches.