Aselin

As I watched President and Mrs. Bush board Marine One, leaving the White House for the last time I was touched by the understatement of the moment. The genial couple departing without significant fanfare. Waving to a few onlookers as they departed for Camp David.

I can only imagine what those first few moments in the helicopter must have been like. The sighs of relief and maybe regret. I can’t fathom what it feels like to have the last 8 years be almost over. As I reflect on what this controversial President has meant to all of us, I get teary eyed grateful over something that gets overlooked: we get to complain.

Unfortunately we can all remember that September 2001 day when our whole perspective of American life was shattered from Manhattan through Topeka to Los Angeles. To this day I can’t imagine the kind of person who perpetrates such evil, it’s completely outside my mental and emotional capability.

Yet, as we all can quickly conjure up the images we have also had the luxury of not having to. There were many moments that day and in the following weeks that I was confident we had moved into another phase of American life. Where terror attacks would become part of our shopping mall, supermarket and school days. Where the talking heads would nightly be recounting the casualties on our own soil.

Instead we get to complain about other things. Things that matter much less, have less permanence. We get to complain about the housing market, and the Poulson bailout, the auto industry. We get to criticize the methods he has used, and the people who helped. We get to cast dispersion on his ideas, his intentions and his intimates.

I am so profoundly grateful that from the safety of our soil we get to complain. Thank you Mr. President.