Bush booed badly, banished before Barack’s big moment
During the inauguration I was nowhere near the stage but directly adjacent to the White House and right behind the Washington monument. From where I stood, you could see the white moving vans at the West Wing’s door.
Anytime George W. Bush came on the big screen boos would swell from the crowd. From that point of view, white moving vans could be seen at the West Wing’s door.
When the outgoing president and vice president were shown on the big screen, the boos swelled up from the crowd, each time someone nearby saying “There he is” as if they were ready to embarrass him.
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Because after all, what kind of show of appreciation is it to boo a president on their way out the door. Ugly, some may say but it wasn’t a very good looking eight years either. Maybe it’s the kind of exit befitting the least popular president in modern American history, with job disapproval numbers above 70 at one point, the worst since Gallup began asking Americans what they think more than 70 years ago.
Towards the front of the crowd they were singing and you immediately have to imagine the world’s perception of the public disapproval of a crowd of two million people.
The people spoke when they elected Bush twice, even with a divided voice. We spoke when we elected Barack Obama. And both Obama and the people spoke again Tuesday, giving him the shaft on the way out the door.
“Go back to Texas and look for those weapons of mass destruction!” a person near me yelled.
“We don’t want him in Texas!” yelled back Keith Matthews, a resident of Dallas, the city Bush will call home after two terms in office. Matthews is a registered Republican who typically votes down party lines in local elections but didn’t vote for Bush in the two previous elections. He voted for Obama in 2008 not just because he was “ready for change” but because he was very disappointed in his Republican ticket and party.
He cried tears of joy after Obama’s swearing in both for the momentous occasion and his parents who lived under oppressive Jim Crow laws.
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At the end of the day, people celebrating as they jubilantly boot you out the door is a much softer slap in the the face then the impeachment that never happened or even being arrested and tried for war crimes as some have suggested.
History will likely show Obama’s inaugural speech and actions in his first few days in office and bigger rejections of GW, the man and his policies, then any angry crowd.
