Celebrating the end of Bush years

David Williams showed up at my polling place yesterday morning with an iPod, a bottle of water, and a magazine - determined, the apartment building super said, "to wait all day to vote if I have to."

The article he brought to savor had the headline "The Final Days." It pictured President Bush slumped in his chair, watching John McCain on the TV screen.

I told Williams that the president had scheduled a low-key day - no public appearances, no election booth photo ops. Bush had already voted absentee.

"I wish he'd done that the last eight years," Williams replied. "I can't wait to see his helicopter take off for the last time."

That will be the money shot for a lot of Americans. As Bush was to watch returns in the White House with his wife, Laura, whose 62d birthday it was, he enjoys, if that's the word, a popularity rating of about 25 percent, almost Nixonian.

Two months after 9/11, his approval rating was 88 percent.

W's been a pariah in this presidential election, starring in opposition ads, skirted by Republican candidates. Asked in March whether he'd campaign for McCain, the president said he'd do what was best for the party. "If he wants me to show up, I will. If he wants me to say, 'You know, I'm not for him,' I will."

I asked Williams, a 67-year-old goateed African American who takes photographs in addition to taking care of buildings, why he celebrated the end of the Bush years.

He took me back to 1958, when he joined the Air Force and was undergoing basic training. "We saluted the flag, and I got chills. For the first time, I felt, this is my country."

That pride lasted until Bush & Company took us into war, he said. "After 9/11, they had the sympathy of the world, but they blew it. We even had Iran. We are now not a respected entity in the world."

We talked of torture, Guantanamo, the arrogance of thinking you're not subject to international law. Williams hoped Barack Obama could restore America's primacy.

While Bush has been unseen, he has not been unheard. A New York Times piece Monday detailed his administration's quiet punchlist for the final days: making scores of regulatory and rules changes to weaken the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights.

Back in September, when I wrote something unflattering about Sarah Palin, a Philadelphia lawyer named Joseph Ferry predicted I'd need industrial-strength grief counseling after Obama lost.

He called the Democratic senator "the single most unqualified candidate for president in history," which naturally led to my asking Ferry what he thought of Junior.

"He won two wars, rescued us from the Clinton recession, kept us safe for seven years and, notwithstanding the Democrats' and their media abettors' fervent wish for a recession, has staved off a recession."

Ferry was just warming up.

"He also disarmed Gadhafi, enforced the U.N. Security Council resolution against Saddam Hussein, rid the world of him and his two sociopath sons, steadfastly resisted the surrender ethos of you and your colleagues to the supreme betterment of the world, created millions of jobs. Made two great appointments to the Supreme Court. Revoked the ban on offshore drilling."

I didn't engage - I just wished him good luck, and hoped he didn't reproduce. If I'd taken him on, I would have made a few points:

A national debt flirting with 10 trillion dollars. Five million more people dropping into poverty. Seven million others without health insurance. Two costly wars.

And one more legacy - though, when you think about it, maybe it's not so bad:

Bush and his advisers systematically strengthened the executive branch of government through administrative decrees. His successor will need all of that power to get us out of the mess he's inheriting.

And we can thank W for that, too.

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