If Bush had done that…

Some supporters of former President George W. Bush, conservatives and others like to ask rhetorical questions that begin with the phrase, “Can you imagine the outcry if Bush would have…,” or something similar in an attempt to show President Barack Obama is getting an easier ride with the media. These anguished cries remind me of those made by a comic strip teenager who thinks his younger brother gets softer treatment than he did.

Before you fire off that angry email to me, let me explain.

President Bush did get a lot of criticism – some of it he earned, some of it he did not. It is now President Obama’s turn to travel down this presidential road of unequal criticism. However, the circumstances surrounding these two presidents are different, making the “what if” comparison difficult, if not impossible to apply with any accuracy.

Nine months into his presidency, President Bush was leading a nation that had suffered gruesome terrorist attacks. Eight years and three weeks ago today, American men and women were sent to war in Afghanistan. We were rallying and a patriotic fever spread across the nation. President Bush was boldly leading and Americans stood firmly behind him. There was no time for partisanship. We had to stand together and face this unknown and evil threat. Bush’s popularity surged.

President Bush faced obstacles his predecessors could have never imagined. It would have been foolhardy to try to equate his first nine months in office to those of President Bill Clinton. Our country had never been through anything like this before. Clearly, the same can be said for President Obama. He took office during an economic crisis unlike any our country had seen and we are waging a war on two fronts. It is not feasible to develop a scorecard that could determine which president faced the more daunting tasks. More important, there is no point in trying to do so.

As President Bush’s first term continued, he made decisions that some would laud and others would decry. His political opponents tried to vilify and belittle him. He won reelection and he made some mistakes. His detractors became louder as his once skyrocketing poll numbers became a distant memory. Americans appraised President Bush for how he led and few were those who tried to compare Presidents Bush and Clinton. They are their own men and they were different leaders in dissimilar times.

Those in the media have a job to do and most of them are committed to trying to seek the truth and report it. As the circumstances, personalities and world events faced by Presidents Bush and Obama are disparate, so too are today’s media and that of the Bush era. As the news industry enters a new age, news rooms that were once crowded seem empty. Many newspapers have disappeared as consumers adapt to a still evolving array of electronic mediums. Perhaps, President Obama has been received by some reporters better than was President Bush. I do not know, nor do I care. For I, like most Americans, see it as my duty to seek out the truth and wade through the ever present biases on my own.

President Obama has an agenda and a leadership style that is starkly different from President Bush. Only time will tell what Mr. Obama is able to accomplish with his presidential opportunity. The American people will likely shake off the cries of “what if” and appraise Mr. Obama on how he does the job. Just like the comic strip teenager, the sooner we focus on what is the best way forward and cease worrying about who “momma likes best,” the sooner we can begin to make headway as a country.

This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register blog entry.