Wait, Is This Guy Still President?

It's almost an eerie feeling watching George W. Bush stand up to give the State of the Union address tonight.  With all the attention that has been devoted to the historic primary campaigns in both Parties and the reality-show atmosphere that has accompanied them, it has been almost too easy to forget that a man named George W. Bush still holds the Executive seat in the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Too easy to forget that Dick Cheney, standing behind the Bush's lectern with the crooked smile and sinister avuncular presence of a grand puppetmaster, still wields power from his undisclosed bunker when not presiding as the head of the Senate.

It is not without reason that Bush is at this point the almost-forgotten president.  His Administration has been an utter disaster that has run the emotional arc after 9/11 from hope to disbelief to outrage and, at least, to sheer fatigue.  Even Republicans have grown, if nothing else, simply weary of the destructive influence of Bush priorities, PNAC foreign policy, royalist incompetence and insouciance, and Rovian politics.

It is one thing to be a lame-duck president on the way out of office, with one of two clear possible successors in line to take his place.  It is quite another to be so despised that the public is so desperate to move on and never see his face again that they obsess over just which of many attractive candidates should put a welcome end to an Administration that cannot leave soon enough.  The eagerness to end this presidency is such that, just as the frontrunner in the opposition party runs the risk of losing votes through fear of nepotism while simultaneously trading on the name of a former President, the strongest potential candidate the current President's own party may have had to offer is prevented from running by the sheer radioactivity of sharing the President's last name.

Such is the desire to be rid of this painful era in American history that change has become the mantra of nearly every serious candidate on both sides of the aisle.  The clearest clarion call for change has, of course, come from Barack Obama's campaign.  To his credit, Obama has been unchanging in his call for change not only from the policies and politics of the Bush Administration, but also from the politics and many of the policies of the previous decade as well.  Whether or not he wins the Democratic nomination, it is clear that his message of change is resonating:

• After her defeat in Iowa, Hillary Clinton's campaign messaging switched from "experience" to being an "agent of change"; that message of change over experience continues to this day in her advertisements in California
• John Edwards portrays himself as the only real change agent who will do something about the corporatism of the Two Americas
• Mitt Romney has, with all of Clinton's audacity but none of her political skill, done an almost comical about turn from his message of executive experience to portraying himself as an outsider "change" candidate.
• Even Rudy 9iu11iani, most hilariously, is now calling himself an "agent of change", only a week after deriding the concept of change for change's sake.

Meanwhile, John McCain is embracing his maverick status among independents and Republicans tired of Bush policies that don't include the word Iraq, portraying his candidacy as a return to straight talk, honesty, and competent leadership.  Even if he's not calling for "change" specifically,  his appeal to credibility, military experience and honesty are a rebuke, justified or not, to the occupants of the White House for the past 16 years.

When the pollsters and focus group consultants for multiple presidential campaigns in both parties are so clearly in tune with one another in pushing their own candidates as change agents, the conclusion is inescapable: change is in the air.  The public is not only clamoring for it: they're demanding it.  Bush's promise to be a uniter and not a divider has been ironically fulfilled: America is united in demanding a change--not only from Bush hismelf, but from the politics and hyper-partisanship that have brought us to this pass.  It is an historic time of realignment within the two parties, as each one gazes into its respective navel and determines what shape and face it will take in the altered political landscape.

No matter whom the two parties nominate this summer, and no matter whom the public sees fit to elect in November, the public will not rest until they have gotten the change they demand.  If the next president fails to deliver on that promise of change, they will be thrown out of office as unceremoniously as the current Administration has been thrown out of the collective memory and mindset of the American populace.  

It is against this backdrop that we watch George W. Bush deliver his "legacy" speech this evening.  It is no wonder, then, the speech already seems like old news: an address given by a ghost, to an assembly that appears to be present in body, but not in spirit.  Nor is it surprising that any statements made from that podium, no matter how full of sound and fury, will signify nothing to the American public or the pundits who drive  the conventional wisdom when more significant issues arise the next day that concern the real people they do care about.

People like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, John McCain and others.  People who, authentically or ridiculously, claim to be credible agents of change.  Because, to the people that matter--to the civic-minded citizens of the United States of America--the man speaking at the podium is nothing more than a dead man walking, gripping onto the reins of power with the increasing rigidity of onset rigor mortis.