Bush's Legacy

Heard at a Sarah Palin rally in northern Florida:

“John McCain! Not Hussein!”

So goes the latest popular chant on the campaign trail with Gov. Sarah Palin, demonstrated at a morning rally in central Florida[...]

A similar chant, “Vote McCain, not Hussein,” was heard at a campaign event for Ms. Palin in Williamsport, Pa., earlier this week[...]

After the rally in Florida ended, two of the people leading the chant explained why they did so.
“Because it rhymes,” said Shirley Mitten, 64, a volunteer at a pregnancy center and a resident of Brooksville, Fla.

She said she does not know if Mr. Obama is a Muslim. “He says he’s not, but we have no way of knowing,” Ms. Mitten said.

Her husband, John A. Mitten, 64, took credit for starting the chant. “I was trying to get it going!” he said. “I just do not want Obama to be elected.”[...]

The middle name Hussein, he said, added to the suspicion. “I guess Obama was named after Saddam Hussein,” he said.

I am going to take a different tack on this. Really, I think that this is the worst legacy of the last eight years. While both sides of the political spectrum have been willing participants in the extreme partisanship which today poisons this country, this division is a legacy primarily of George Bush.

I know, I know, I am just a Democrat obsessed with President Bush. That's the clear response to this type of viewpoint. I truly believe that Bush's worst legacy at home is the division he has helped foster here. He won election in 2000 in a very contested contest which, for all intents and purposes was tied (with Gore winning over half a million more voters nationally). Yet, when he took office he appointed a single, toothless Democrat to his cabinet (for Secretary of Transportation, no less), and moved to govern from the extreme right, pushing aside any Democrats or moderates whose views did not gibe with his own. He rammed through his desired legislation, often by bare margins in the Congress, which was okay to him because that way, he did not have to make any concessions to his initiatives in order to achieve bipartisan consenus. All of this despite promising repeatedly on the campaign trail that he was a "uniter, not a divider."

A political party cannot operate this way, and it in great part why the Republicans find themselves where they do today. Additionally, by kicking Democrats with every vote and move for several years, Bush and his party allies succeeding in harderening a permanent state of anger and resentment in Democrats, a rancor which we have seen boil over for years. It also well on display at raucous party rallies for Barack Obama.

The product of the national political division Bush has created and cemented into many people is evident everywhere, and especially at events like these political rallies -- on both sides. It is a sad state of affairs, it testifies to the dangers of not governing from the center, and I wonder if the national division will finally be erased under a new President. I doubt it.