His Show Now

In a few days, it'll be his show. He won't be the candidate, the president elect, the heir apparent, or any of those things. He'll be the president of the United States. It will no longer be his dream or the dream of many who are basking in the afterglow of the events of last year. It will be for real, for all the marbles and everything that happens in the next four years will be on him.

Mr. Bush will be back on his ranch in Crawford, TX, a faint and distant memory. If things go right and progress is made, the new president will get all of the credit and adulation. If things go bad (and they will) he'll get all of the blame. It's on him now. This is after all what he wanted. He's made history... he'll never be forgotten. The thing is, how will he be remembered? I digress...

This is a rotten time to be elected as president of the United States. I don't have to list the litany of things that are wrong with this country right now. It seems everything went south so fast. This is the worst time to be the newly elected leader of the free world but, if you're going to do a job, you might as well take the biggest challenge right? If you're a doctor, do you want to remove a kid's tonsils or do you want to transplant a heart?

I think he's up to the challenge. I think he has an idea of what he'd like to do. Furthermore, it looks like he has lined up some people who have a clue as to how to make his life a lot easier. Time will tell. Right now, the country he has inherited is a strange one. If he can straighten half of this mess out, he'll look good and guarantee himself re-election for another four years to try and finish what he started.

I often wonder if Franklin D. Roosevelt felt the same way on the eve of his first inauguration. He inherited a country that was in the same mess that this one is in now. People were losing their jobs, their farms, their homes, and all hope. It took him four terms but, he turned America around and brought it new prosperity. I wonder if he knew... if he had a clue... as to whether or not he could do that on the eve of his first innauguration?

People are expecting our new president to be Jesus Christ and Superman all rolled up in one. Newsflash... he's neither! He's going to do the best he can to striaghten out a mess that he didn't start and that really wasn't completely the fault of the last president. No, the seeds of this mess started back in the 1980's. It just spread, festered, and got swept under the rug until there was no more room to hide it. It just burst out and spread all over our living rooms like so much dust.

So here we are... here he is... on the last weekend he has to be innocent and free from blame. After Tuesday, the buck stops with him. It's all on him. It's his show. I, for one, will be watching and rooting for him to pull it off. In my minds eye, I see him turning to America and saying cooly and with much swagger, "America, don't fret baby... I got this."