BY KAREN WEBB

I didn’t watch, but I have read about the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and I heard a little on NPR about it. All of the living presidents were there.

“Being president above all is a humbling job,” President Obama said. He said there are moments that they make mistakes and wish they could turn back the clock, but “we love this country and we do our best.”

Considering that Dubya’s term in office rivaled Ronald Reagan’s for the most arrogant, Obama saw the Bush years in a different light than I did.

Cheney [former Vice President Dick] and Rummy [former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld] were both more arrogant than Dubya and still are.

“We’ve had enough Bushes,” said Barbara Bush, the wife of George H.W. Bush [Bush 41] and mother of George W. Bush [Bush 43]. She spoke in an interview with NBC’s Today show.

I have on a couple of occasions agreed with Mama Bush and I certainly do on this statement.

“A free society thrives when neighbors help neighbors and the strong protect the weak and public policies promote private compassion,” Dubya said.

“As president, I tried to act on these principles every day. It wasn’t always easy and certainly wasn’t always popular … but when future generations come to this library to study this administration, they’re going to find out that we stayed true to our convictions.”

Bush certainly did help his neighbors, but the weak do not live in his neighborhood and private compassion was overshadowed by public policies favoring his wealthy neighbors.

The last line is as honest as Dubya gets because they definitely stayed true to “their convictions” which ignored most of the Constitution, applied torture to the Golden Rule, sent other people’s children to fight and die in Iraq using fiction as justification and they disregarded anyone else’s convictions.

Hey, but it is Dubya.

– Karen Webb lives in Moore, OK and is an occasional contributor to The Oklahoma Observer